Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
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.
Donald Tusk has said the EU cannot betray an 'increasing majority' of British people who want to cancel Brexit and remain in the bloc. The European council president hailed those who marched on the streets of London and the millions who were petitioning the government to revoke article 50. Tusk finished his speech by saying: 'They may feel that they are not sufficiently represented by the UK parliament, but they must feel that they are represented by you in this chamber. Because they are Europeans'
Minister promises to investigate report of firefight involving British personnel as claims swirl about child soldiers in Saudi-led force
The foreign office minister Mark Field has promised to get to the bottom of “very serious and well sourced” allegations that British SAS soldiers have been injured in a firefight with Houthi rebel soldiers in Yemen.
He was answering an urgent question asked in the Commons on Tuesday by the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, who suggested the Britons may have been witnesses to war crimes, if weekend allegations were true that UK special forces were training child soldiers in the Saudi-led coalition.
Prime minister under pressure to say publicly she will hand over next stage to new leader
Theresa May is under intense pressure to set out a timetable for her departure from Downing Street to seal the support of Brexit hardliners for her twice-rejected deal.
The prime minister will address Conservative MPs at a meeting of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers on Wednesday as the House of Commons prepares to vote on alternatives to her Brexit deal.
With more than 120 MPs backing an amendment in support of indicative voting, it’s going to be a fraught five days
Many weeks have so far been billed as crunch weeks for Brexit. But with the revised departure date looming, Theresa May’s proposal looking all-but doomed and the prime minister’s own position openly questioned, the next days really do appear crucial. Here is what could happen and when.
Corbyn, Cable and other leaders write to Jeremy Hunt about ‘morally reprehensible’ policy
Five opposition parties in Westminster have called on the UK to end arms sales to Saudi Arabia on the fourth anniversary of the Yemen civil war, saying it has contributed to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
The letter signed by leaders of the Labour party, Scottish National party, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green party, comes as a fragile truce negotiated in December hangs by a thread.
High-stakes Chequers summit breaks up without agreement
Theresa May’s prospects of getting her Brexit deal through parliament this week dramatically receded on Sunday night after a high-stakes summit with Boris Johnson and other leading hard-Brexiters at her country retreat broke up without agreement.
Tory rebels present said that the prime minister repeated “all the same lines” about her deal and that nothing new emerged during the three-hour meeting, at which Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab were also present.
A photo of an ad hoc crisis meeting gives an insight into the efforts made to cope with a floundering British government
As pictures go, it spoke volumes. On Thursday evening in Brussels, Bulgaria’s permanent representative to the EU, Dimiter Tzantchev, tweeted a photograph he titled “In the corridors of the European Council art 50”.
In a play of light and shadow, as if in a Golden Age painting by a modern-day Rembrandt or Frans Hals, a tight cluster of perhaps two dozen figures, some standing, some crouched, pored over a screen: senior EU officials, member state diplomats, Europe advisers to heads of government.
I am going to wrap this up now. Here a few of tonight’s highlights at a glance:
Theresa May tells the British People ‘I’m on your side” ...which side is that? Leave, Remain, or Resign?
The summary of Beth Rigby, deputy political editor of Sky News, is blistering:
May’s national address badly misjudged. She has further angered the very people she needs to win over, MPs. Never before has the power of persuasion and art of compromise been so sorely needed and so clearly missing
Revolt by pro-Brexit cabinet ministers forces PM to request only three-month extension from EU
Theresa May will ask for only a short extension to article 50 delaying Brexit by less than three months, after a revolt among pro-leave cabinet ministers and MPs that threatened her premiership.
PM forced to seek extension of article 50 as No 10 admits it is too late to leave with a deal
Theresa May will be forced to write to EU leaders on Wednesday and beg them to delay Brexit, with her cabinet deadlocked over the best way out of what Downing Street now concedes is a “crisis”.
The government had maintained until the last possible moment that Brexit could go ahead as planned on 29 March or after a brief “technical extension”.
President’s son and US national security adviser in apparent coordinated intervention
Donald Trump Jr and the US national security adviser, John Bolton, spoke out over Brexit on Tuesday in what appeared to be a coordinated intervention by the White House into British domestic politics.
Both the US president’s son and Bolton attacked British political leadership after Theresa May said she would ask the EU for a delay to the UK’s exit from the European Union; in line with parliament’s wish.
Prime minister likely to have to request long article 50 extension after Bercow intervenes
Theresa May’s government has been plunged into constitutional chaos after the Speaker blocked the prime minister from asking MPs to vote on her Brexit deal for a third time unless it had fundamentally changed.
Leak shows Brussels planning for PM’s defeat and making efforts to prevent her deal being unpicked
The EU is war-gaming for the fall of Theresa May amid a complete collapse in confidence in the prime minister after a week of chaos over Brexit, a leaked document seen by the Observer reveals.
In the run-up to a crucial summit of EU leaders where May will ask for a delay to Brexit, Brussels fears there is little hope that she will succeed in passing her deal this week and is preparing itself for a change of the guard in Downing Street.
Party’s leader in European parliament says it must be prepared to field candidates
The Conservative party has contacted all its MEPs to ask them to consider running for election in May if the prime minister’s Brexit deal is defeated on Tuesday.
Ashley Fox, the party’s leader in the European parliament, contacted MEPs to ask them to think about their options in the event that Theresa May’s deal fails again.
The Irish premier, Leo Varadkar, has said London needs to tell the EU about what purpose an extension would serve and how long it would last.
Varadkar said he welcomed Westminster’s vote to extend Article 50 as it reduces the likelihood of a cliff edge, no-deal Brexit at the end of the month.
There seems to be two emerging options – ratification of the withdrawal agreement followed by a short extension into the summer, or a much longer extension that would give the UK time and space to decide what they want to do, including considering options that had been taken off the table like participation in the customs union and single market.
I think we need to be open to any request they make, listen attentively and be generous in our response. This matter will be now discussed further at next week’s European Council meeting and hopefully we will have more clarity from London in the meantime about their intentions.
Why EUCO should allow an extension, if the UK gov and her majority in the House of Commons are not ready for a cross-party approach to break the current deadlock ? https://t.co/lj1Tm4kmIg
Cable has now released a statement on his impending departure:
I indicated last year that, once the Brexit story had moved on and we had fought this year’s crucial local elections in 9,000 seats across England, it would be time for me to make way for a new generation. I set considerable store by having an orderly, business-like, succession unlike the power struggles in the other parties.
So I wanted you, our members, to know that, assuming Parliament does not collapse into an early general election, I will ask the party to begin a leadership contest in May.
Boris Johnson, the Brexiter former foreign secretary, is speaking in the debate now. He says he had hoped that the EU would make the wholly reasonable changes the UK wanted. But the EU refused to do that.
Like Adam and Eve, they sowed a fig leaf that failed to cover the embarrassment of the UK, he says.
This deal has now reached the end of the road. If it is rejected tonight, I hope that it will be put to bed.