Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Jeremy Corbyn will resume Brexit talks with the prime minister on Thursday, after Labour tensions over a second referendum burst into the open, with the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, writing to colleagues to insist any pact must be put to a public vote.
Both Labour and Downing Street described the discussions as “constructive” and said they would hold technical talks, facilitated by civil servants, on Thursday.
Kate Ferguson on the the crisis in the Latin American country, Michael Derham on its avocados, and Alan Knight on Prince Charles’s trip to Cuba
Julian Borger is right to draw attention to growing anxiety in Latin America as the Trump administration ramps up its rhetoric towards Venezuela, and to acknowledge the problematic trajectory of US-led armed intervention since Bush’s war on terror (Mexico raises concerns over US legal justifications for war, 3 April). Greater transparency in the formal legal justifications for military intervention is not just needed at the UN but here in the UK (which is why the public administration and constitutional affairs committee has rightly opened an inquiry into authorising the use of military force).
But with respect to Venezuela, what should be at the forefront of our minds is the human rights catastrophe facing Venezuelans. Their government has engaged in the systematic use of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence since February 2014, to the extent that they are likely to constitute crimes against humanity.
Labour MP Rosie Cooper has spoken in the house of commons about the attempted plot to murder her. Jack Renshaw, 23, admitted to preparing an act of terrorism after he bought a machete to kill Cooper. She said that ‘our freedoms, our way of life, our democracy is under threat’. Speaker of the house, John Bercow commended her courage, adding that Parliament will not be ‘cowed’ and ‘the sooner the purveyors of hate, of fascism, of nazism, of a death cult realise that, the better’
Exclusive: western donors urged to ‘put children before politics’ in face of food shortfall
The head of the UN World Food Programme has called for the White House and other western donors to put children’s lives before politics and fund a major injection of aid to North Korea despite the failure of Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un.
David Beasley, a former Republican governor of South Carolina who backed Trump’s campaign for the US presidency, said he had heard concerns that responding to an appeal from Pyongyang would prop up the Kim regime.
During seven hours of meetings on Tuesday described as tense and gruelling, the prime minister struggled to keep order among colleagues who are vying to take her job.
Failure puts UK’s reputation as responsible nuclear power at risk, auditors say
Storage of obsolete nuclear submarines has cost the UK taxpayer £500m because of “dismal” failings in the government’s nuclear decommissioning programme, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.
The Ministry of Defence has twice as many submarines in storage as it does in service and has not disposed of any of the 20 vessels decommissioned since 1980, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.
During Foreign Office questions in the Commons earlier, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, said that staying in the customs union would not be seen as a “true Brexit”. Responding to a question from Greg Hands, the former international trade minister, who asked what assessment the Foreign Office had made of the customs union option, Hunt said:
I think people would see it as very curious that a country that voted to take back control is choosing to cede control in a number of areas of vital national interest.
And I think they’d also be concerned that it would not resolve the national debate on Brexit because many of the people who voted for Brexit would not see this as delivering a true Brexit.
This is from my colleague Rowena Mason.
Jeremy Corbyn tackled at shadow cabinet over why Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett still in their frontbench jobs despite defying whip on second referendum indicative votes- answer came there none, according to shadow cabinet sources
Some Whitehall departments are taking innovative steps to tackle disparity – but in others, the problem is just getting worse
A once-in-a-lifetime professional opportunity to work at the heart of government and contribute to our future with the EU”. This job ad for a senior policy adviser, with a salary of up to £70,302 and the ability to work flexibly, is for the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU). We know the civil service needs new staff – it is hiring at least 15,000 recruits to cope with whatever lies ahead in the UK’s relationship with Europe. More interesting is that the job was posted on Mumsnet. It’s a sign that some parts of the civil service are finally starting to think more innovatively about how to tackle its widening gender pay gap.
It’s no coincidence that DExEU, a new civil service department created in July 2016 after the Brexit referendum, has been more agile in addressing the gender pay gap, including leadership programmes for female staff. Clare Moriarty, its new permanent secretary, is one of just five women departmental bosses in Whitehall, out of a total of 16.
John Bercow, the Speaker, is telling MPs that they have half an hour to cast their vote, on paper in the division lobbies.
MPs are now voting on four propositions for #IndicativeVotes2 on light blue coloured between 8pm-8.30pm:
(C) Customs Union - Clarke (D) Common Market 2.0 - Boles (E) Confirmatory Public Vote - Kyle/Wilson (G) Parliamentary Supremacy - Cherry pic.twitter.com/550xBpSAMk
Vicky Ford, a Conservative, says she will back the custom union amendment. Being in a customs union is not the same as being in the customs union, she says. She says the UK would be out of the common agricultural policy and out of the common fisheries policy.
Remainers and Brexiters alike threaten to resign as MPs prepare for second round of indicative votes
Theresa May’s government is on the verge of meltdown as cabinet ministers prepare to clash over whether to support plans for a softer Brexit and a possible lengthy delay before leaving the European Union.
In a decisive intervention, David Gauke, the justice secretary, said on Sunday that the prime minister would have to accept the possibility of backing a customs union if the measure is supported by parliament this week.
Shadow foreign secretary also says it is likely Labour would pursue policy of leaving the EU in government
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, has said Labour is considering calling another vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government following parliament’s failure to pass her Brexit deal with 10 days before the UK is due to leave.
The prime minister survived a vote of no confidence in January, the day after her Brexit deal was rejected for the first time. Her deal has since been voted down two further times.
MP says Jon Conway only joined Beaconsfield Tories to defeat confidence motion
Dominic Grieve has blamed a former Ukip opponent for orchestrating an insurgency of his local association which has plunged his future into doubt after he lost a confidence vote.
The remain-supporting Tory MP is facing de-selection from his party after the Conservative association in his Beaconsfield constituency said it no longer had confidence in him at a “rowdy” meeting on Friday.
Welcome to Yorkshire calls in investigators over its boss Gary Verity’s expenses
The Yorkshire tourism body that has appointed independent investigators to examine its chief executive’s lavish expenses accepted £14.89m in public money over the past five years, the Guardian has learned.
More than half of Welcome to Yorkshire’s (WTY) income derived from the taxpayer between 2013 and 2018 but the organisation will not answer detailed questions about how that money was spent by its boss, Sir Gary Verity, who resigned last Friday.
Exclusive: Yemen rebel chief says foreign secretary ‘cannot be a peace broker and arms salesman’
The leader of the Houthi movement in Yemen has condemned the British foreign secretary for pressing Germany to relax its arms sales ban on Saudi Arabia, saying it was not possible for the UK to be a peace-broker in the country and an arms seller.
“Britain sending aid does not change the tragic reality of its arms sales. Jeremy Hunt cannot promote peace while at the same time acting as an arms salesman,” said Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the supreme revolutionary committee, in an interview with the Guardian.
Scotland Yard has now updated the arrest figures for today’s rallies:
As of 21:00hrs five arrests have been made at the demonstrations in central #London today: x2 for assault, x1 drunk & disorderly, x1 for assaulting a police officer & x1 male arrested after being identified as wanted for an offence in Herts. All are in custody.
Andrew Parker and Cressida Dick say numerous plots have been foiled in recent years
Far-right terrorism has been identified as a key threat to the safety and prosperity of the country, according to the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, and Cressida Dick, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police.
Writing in the Times, the pair warned that while Islamist terrorism remains the largest by scale, they are also “concerned about the growing threat from other forms of violent extremism … covering a spectrum of hate-driven ideologies, including the extreme right and left.”
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including reaction to the latest Commons Brexit votes and to Theresa May’s announcement that she will quit before next stage of negotiations with EU
Theresa May is now embarked on a new strategy to get her Brexit deal through the Commons. Her new strategy seems largely driven by the decision of John Bercow, the Speaker, to declare that he will rule out repeat votes on the same proposition (a ruling that he firmed up yesterday, and again today). The details of the new approach are complicated, and at this stage not all 100% clear, and some MPs are already questioning the legality of what she is trying to do. But this is what we know.
DUP to vote against government on withdrawal agreement
For avoidance of doubt, DUP will vote against agreement tomorrow, party source says
The Commons sitting has been suspended but, as my colleague Dan Sabbagh and others report, there is a bit of a row going on about the fact that the mace is still there.
Speaker has walked out suspending proceedings until the indicative votes are counted. But Tories are furiously pointing to the mace, still in its place, and trying to encourage deputy speaker Eleanor Laing to take the chair. Which would be a parliamentary take over...
The mace is still in place which I think is the cause of the uproar. It’s not meant to be there if we’re not sitting, but I don’t know if a brief suspension counts. It’s not normal for the Chamber to be occupied without anyone in the chair.
Speaker suspends sitting & vacates chair while we wait for results of this evening’s votes - as he had said he would do. Tory MPs object that the mace is still there. They object by trying to raise points of order to an empty chair. What a total shambles of a parliament.
John Bercow, the Speaker, says he is not able to announce the results of the indicative votes ballot yet because they have not all been counted. But he says he hopes to be able to announce them soon.
Theresa May has promised Tory MPs she will step down as prime minister within the next few months in a bid to get Eurosceptics to back her Brexit deal.
The prime minister indicated she would resign only if her Brexit deal passes in order to allow a new leader to shape the UK’s future relationship with the EU.