Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Supporters of a second referendum may try to seize control of timetable next week
Rebel MPs are exploring ways to seize control of the agenda from Boris Johnson by allowing parliament to debate and vote on Brexit legislation and a second referendum possibly as soon as next week.
Several MPs told the Guardian this was a plan under consideration if Johnson persisted with his insistence that his withdrawal agreement bill was “paused” until MPs agree to an election on 12 December.
Chancellor says Tories will insist on election but experts outline problems with pre-Christmas vote
Sajid Javid has said the government will repeatedly push for a general election if parliament rejects Boris Johnson’s motion on Monday, as electoral administrators outlined potential problems with a pre-Christmas election including a lack of polling stations and late postal votes.
Johnson on Thursday night threatened to pull his Brexit deal if Jeremy Corbyn rejected the offer of a general election on 12 December, but Labour appeared poised to block Monday’s motion by telling MPs to abstain. The party has said it will only back an early election when a no-deal Brexit scenario can be firmly ruled out.
Prime minister to table motion on Monday for early general election
Boris Johnson has abandoned his “do or die” pledge to leave the EU by 31 October and will ask MPs next week to back a pre-Christmas general election.
The prime minister has written to Jeremy Corbyn saying he will give parliament one last opportunity to scrutinise his withdrawal agreement bill and “get Brexit done” by 6 November.
Prime minister awaits decision of EU27 over extension before next move
Boris Johnson’s cabinet is divided over how to proceed with Brexit, as the prime minister faces the stark choice of pressing ahead with his deal or gambling his premiership on a pre-Christmas general election.
After an inconclusive meeting with Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday morning in an attempt to agree an acceptable timetable for parliament to consider the bill, the prime minister told MPs at Wednesday’s PMQs that he was awaiting the decision of the EU27 over whether to grant an extension before settling his next move. The EU’s decision is unlikely to come before Friday.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have failed to agree a timetable for pressing ahead with the “paused” Brexit bill.
Despite the prime minister’s threat on Tuesday to pull the withdrawal agreement bill (Wab) and press for a general election if MPs rejected his fast-track timetable for approving the legislation, Downing Street confirmed the pair had met on Wednesday.
Self-interested and reckless leadership defines too much of our past – and present
Boris Johnson concludes his Churchill biography with splutters against historians who insist the “story of humanity is not the story of great men and shining deeds”. The story of Winston Churchill, he cries, “is a pretty withering retort to all that malarkey. He and he alone made the difference.”
The story of Boris Johnson withers too. He is shrivelling Britain: making it cramped, poor and irrelevant. Modern historians may sniff at the 19th-century notion that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men” to use Thomas Carlyle’s words. The rest of us should not be so complacent and register the capacity of catastrophic men and women to change the world for the worse.
The Labour MP Sarah Champion says she will vote for Boris Johnson’s deal, BuzzFeed’s Alex Wickham reports (assuming MPs get the chance to vote on the deal tomorrow).
Sir Oliver Letwin has released a note to journalists explaining what his amendment will do. (See 4.05pm.) Here it is.
I am writing this as somebody that voted three times for Theresa May’s deal, who has guaranteed publicly to vote for any deal that provides for an orderly exit, and who will vote for Boris’s excellent deal at all stages through to third reading of the implementing legislation, without any changes whatsoever.
The one issue that concerns me is to keep the Benn Act extension in place as an insurance policy until the implementing legislation is passed by both Houses of Parliament and the UK’s withdrawal Is ratified.
BREAKING: Michel Barnier has told EU Commissioners he is optimistic of getting a deal done today, @rtenews understands
2/ However, there still outstanding issues, so this could go right to the wire.
3/ It's understood VAT has emerged as a last minute problem: if NI remains inside the EU's VAT system, essential for North-South trade, then a new mechanism will have to be created for East-West trade, as the UK will be in its own VAT system
4/ However, it's understood officials are confident that a solution can be found.
5/ It's understood consent is also proving difficult, with a senior EU source saying the DUP are pushing to restore a tighter Stormont lock
6/ The third big hurdle is on the "level playing field" provisions. The EU is concerned at Boris Johnson's bid to dilute Theresa May's commitments to not stray far from the EU's environmental, state aid, social and labour standards
7/ The meeting of EU ambassadors, whom Barnier will brief, is still scheduled for 14hr CET, suggesting that the timings are still on course
ITV’s Robert Peston say the DUP are going back to Downing Street for another meeting.
DUP going back into Downing St, to try to find a way through roadblock. https://t.co/TDNS9amGqy
Former PMs asked princes to support bid for $5bn contract by Ayman Asfari’s firm Petrofac
Two former Conservative prime ministers lobbied a Middle Eastern royal family to award a multi-billion dollar oil contract to a company headed by a major Tory donor, the Guardian has established.
In March 2017, while in Downing Street, Theresa May wrote to the Bahraini prime minister to support the oil firm Petrofac while it was bidding to win the contract from the Gulf state.
Eurosceptics and Labour MPs indicate they could back prime minister’s deal if he clinches agreement in Brussels
Boris Johnson is edging towards the parliamentary numbers needed to pass a Brexit deal after more hardline Eurosceptics and pro-deal Labour MPs indicated they could back a new agreement made with the EU.
The prime minister will need to win over almost all the 28 Tory “Spartans” who held out against Theresa May’s deal if he manages to bring an agreement back from Brussels, as well as either the Democratic Unionist party or a chunk of Labour backbenchers.
Heavier sentences for violent criminals among policies aimed at wooing Labour voters
Violent and sexual criminals as well as foreign national offenders who return to the UK will face drastically heavier penalties under measures that will form the centrepiece of a Queen’s speech aimed at wresting the agenda away from the delicate Brexit negotiations.
With just days to go before the deadline for Boris Johnson to clinch a last-ditch Brexit deal in Brussels, the Queen will on Monday set out his government’s priorities for a new session of parliament, including 22 new bills.
This is from Mujtaba Rahman, the Brexit specialist at the Eurasia consultancy.
Collapse of negotiations now leaves MPs with a huge dilemma. Do they put trust in Benn Act to be robust enough to prevent the no-deal Boris will now gravitate to? Or do they oust him in a VONC to make totally sure? Former more likely- still no sign of agreement on caretaker PM
And these are from the BBC’s Berlin correspondent, Jenny Hill.
Worth bearing in mind the following when looking at No 10’s interpretation of Merkel / Johnson call. 1. This confrontational language / style is unusual for Merkel 2. Germany - more than most - has been careful to avoid leaks / statements which wld inflame tensions between UK&EU
3. My understanding is that German govt still ready to work to find solution not least because....4. Germany doesn’t want no deal. Met president of German exporters assoc earlier - they are horrified by prospect
Downing Street has sought to deflect the blame for the Brexit impasse on to Britain’s EU counterparts, as Boris Johnson’s plans continued to meet a frosty reception.
After the French president, Emmanuel Macron, set a deadline of Friday for progress towards a deal, the prime minister’s official No 10 spokesman repeatedly said Johnson was still waiting for the EU27 to engage with Britain’s plan.
The former Conservative leadership candidate Rory Stewart has resigned from the party, and announced plans to run for mayor of London as an independent.
Stewart, who was among 21 Tories who lost the whip for rebelling over a no-deal Brexit, announced in a tweet on Friday that he would stand down as an MP. He later told the Evening Standard newspaper he was sick of the “madhouse of mutual insults in the Gothic shouting chamber of Westminster”.
The absence of a “take it or leave it” demand in Boris Johnson’s conference speech has offered some hope in Brussels of a prime ministerial U-turn on what EU officials have described as unworkable proposals for the Irish border, my colleague Daniel Boffey reports.
The absence of a “take it or leave it” demand in Boris Johnson’s conference speech has offered some hope in Brussels of a prime ministerial U-turn on what EU officials have described as unworkable proposals for the Irish border.
Downing Street had briefed before the address in Manchester that Johnson would use his platform to make a “final offer” to Brussels, but the rhetoric appeared in the end far more conciliatory than billed.
Boris Johnson agrees pact with Northern Irish party as details emerge of ‘two borders’ plan
Boris Johnson has struck a secret deal with the Democratic Unionist party involving radical proposals for a Belfast-Dublin “bilateral lock” on post-Brexit arrangements on the island of Ireland.
Details have emerged of the prime minister’s final Brexit offer that he will lay out on Wednesday, with Northern Ireland staying under EU single market regulations for agri-food and manufactured goods until at least 2025, at which point its assembly in Stormont will decide whether to continue alignment with EU or UK standards.
Exclusive: Whistleblower tells of links between Paola Cuneo, PM and US businesswoman
A Whitehall official who ran the scheme that granted Jennifer Arcuri a coveted entrepreneur visa had worked for Boris Johnson when he was mayor, the Guardian has learned.
The US businesswoman, who is at the centre of a conflict of interest row over her friendship with the prime minister, beat nearly 2,000 applicants to gain one of 200 sought-after tier 1 entrepreneur visas on the government’s Sirius programme after Johnson helped promote her firm, Innotech, by giving keynote speeches at her events.
The Guardian’s just published a leader on Labour’s universal credit policy, concluding that the “plan makes sense”.
The shocking failings of universal credit are justly blamed on the government having listened to the wrong people when setting it up. The sensible reforms set out by Labour show that the opposition has been listening to the right ones. Never mind that the package of changes announced by Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday was misleadingly described as a plan to “scrap” universal credit. His party’s proposals to end the five-week wait for initial payments, scrap the benefit cap and two-child limit (and heinous “rape clause”) are sound. So are promises to review the sanctions system, ditch the “digital only” approach and hire 5,000 new advisers to help those who struggle with online applications.
The army’s zero-tolerance drugs policy has been scrapped less than a year after it was introduced, the defence secretary has confirmed.
Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Ben Wallace told Tory members he had changed the policy because it should be for commanding officers, and not the government, to decide to strip an individual of their job.
I changed it. I took the view that some people are young and irresponsible and it should be up to their commanding officers to decide, whether it’s a young lad or girl who’s made a mistake, whether they should be allowed to remain in the armed forces or not.
And people who have left and want to rejoin, the same should apply to them as well. I think, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you should be able to do drugs in the armed forces.
It should be up to commanding officers to understand their workforce, to understand whether that individual is the problem, or if there’s a medical problem and they think they need help, or whether indeed it was a mistake.