UN refugee agency ‘profoundly concerned’ by UK’s illegal migration bill saying it amounts to an asylum ban – politics live

UNHCR says bill extinguishes the right to seek refugee protection in the UK for those who arrive irregularly

Downing Street has said that Rishi Sunak is going to Dover to meet frontline officers dealing with small boat crossings. He will then return to London for a press conference later in the afternoon.

One of the questions raised by Rishi Sunak’s small boats bill – or illegal migration bill, to give it its formal name – is to what extent ministers believe it will work, and to what extent they are not that bothered about whether it works because they believe that, if it fails, they will be able to use this in election campaign against Labour.

Unlike Labour who have voted against taking action on this issue, this government has a plan to break the business model of people ­smugglers.

A plan to do what’s fair for those at home and those who have a legitimate claim to asylum – a plan to take back control of our borders once and for all.

Labour and others who oppose these measures are betraying hard-working Brits up and down the country - they don’t have any answers themselves but they will still seek to block us in parliament.

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Sunak sets out Northern Ireland trade deal to MPs as Labour vow to back agreement – as it happened

Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen say ‘Windsor framework’ has been reached after four months of negotiations. This blog is now closed

Q: Why do you say you will back the PM’s deal when you have not seen the detail? And would you like to see Northern Ireland within the scope of the European court of justice, or outside it?

Starmer says he knows Northern Ireland well and knows the detail. Any deal will be an improvement on the status quo. That is why he is saying he would back it. He says the deal will not come as a surprise.

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Brexiters claim ‘sellout’ after Tories discuss rapprochement with EU

Nigel Farage, John Redwood and Lord Frost rail against news of senior Tories joining cross-party summit to tackle failings of Brexit

Prominent Brexit supporters have hit out at senior Conservative figures after the Observer revealed they had taken part in a private cross-party summit entitled: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”

John Redwood, the prominent Brexit-supporting Tory MP, and Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence party, criticised those attending the summit at Oxfordshire’s Ditchley Park retreat, including the cabinet minister Michael Gove.

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Tories ‘at risk from rightwing insurgency’ warns donor Lord Cruddas

Peer says Conservatives no longer party of centre right and are threatened by Reform UK, Brexit party successor, if Nigel Farage takes leadership

The Conservative party is under threat from a rightwing insurgency after a “drag to the left” under Rishi Sunak, one of its biggest recent donors has warned, amid growing tensions on the Tory right.

Peter Cruddas, the peer who has given the party more than £3.5m, said the Conservatives were “no longer a centre-right party” under Sunak, adding that he refused to back it financially until it changed course.

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Eton College apologises after allegations pupils jeered visiting state schoolgirls

Private school sanctions a number of boys after investigation into misogynistic language and racial slurs

Eton College has apologised and “sanctioned” a number of pupils after allegations that a group of girls visiting from a nearby state school were subjected to misogynistic language, racial slurs and jeering.

The boys’ private school near Windsor, Berkshire, told the BBC that an investigation took place into the incident which occurred during a speech by Nigel Farage last week.

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GB News chairman has history of dismissing threat of climate crisis

Revelation Alan McCormick has tweeted articles denying climate science fuels fears of GB News’s role as climate sceptic platform

The new chairman of GB News has a history of sharing articles that dismiss the threat of climate breakdown, it can be revealed, sharpening concerns about the TV channel’s role as a platform for advocates of the continued burning of fossil fuels.

Alan McCormick, a co-founder of Legatum Group, a Dubai-based investment firm and one of the channel’s key funders, tweeted several articles by climate science deniers, an investigation by DeSmog found, including one claiming there was “no scientific proof” that humans were causing the climate emergency.

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Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie

Analysis: His British friend tried to help but the former president did not want to forget his voter fraud obsession and focus on the future. CPAC loved it but Republicans hoping to take Congress know they are courting disaster

The sagest advice given to Donald Trump all week came from a man who is neither a Republican nor an American.

Nigel Farage, the British politician, broadcaster and demagogue whose Brexit campaign coincided with Trump’s rise to power, warned his old pal against endlessly fixating on the 2020 election.

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After rightwing attacks on rescues, UK lifeboat charity has record fundraising year

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution has had ‘significant’ increase in annual donations after it went to the aid of asylum seekers

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is on course for the highest annual fundraising total in its near 200-year history. Donations swelled after the charity attracted huge public support following rightwing attacks for helping save the lives of asylum seekers at risk of drowning in the Channel.

The RNLI said it has received a significant increase in support, with online donations rising by 50% this year.

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Trump voices old grievances in freewheeling interview with Farage

Conversation broke little new ground as ex-president hinted that he might run for president again

Donald Trump attacked Boris Johnson’s plans for clean power, slammed the Duchess of Sussex as “disrespectful”, and voiced a litany of old grievances during a freewheeling interview with UK politician-turned-broadcaster Nigel Farage aired on British TV on Wednesday night.

The conversation, billed as a “world exclusive” from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, south Florida, and broadcast on GB News, broke little new ground, beginning with the twice-impeached, one-term Republican president repeating the lie that the 2020 presidential election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, was stolen from him.

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Donald Trump accuses Meghan of disrespect towards royal family

Former president says Prince Harry ‘has been used horribly’ in interview with Nigel Farage

The former US president Donald Trump has accused the Duchess of Sussex of being “disrespectful” to the Queen and the royal family.

In a wide-ranging interview with the politician turned broadcaster Nigel Farage, Trump said he thought the Duke of Sussex had been “used horribly”.

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Nigel Farage’s Brexit party saved Labour seats in 2019 election, analysis finds

Experts say while party failed to win a seat they may have denied Boris Johnson a landslide by splitting vote

Nigel Farage’s Brexit party may have saved up to 25 Labour seats in the Midlands and the north at the 2019 general election, denying Boris Johnson a landslide majority of 130, according to new analysis.

Farage’s party failed to win a single seat in December 2019 as Boris Johnson sought to hammer home the message that the Conservatives would “get Brexit done”.

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The Guardian view on Fortress Europe: a continent losing its moral compass

The increasingly draconian approach to irregular migration betrays the spirit of the 1951 refugee convention

Seventy years ago, the 1951 UN refugee convention established the rights of refugees to seek sanctuary, and the obligations of states to protect them. Increasingly, it seems that much of Europe is choosing to commemorate the anniversary by ripping up some of the convention’s core principles.

So far this year, close to 1,000 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean, more than four times the death toll for the same period in 2020. Many will have been economic migrants. Others will have been fleeing persecution. Increasingly, Europe does not care. All were “irregular”. And all must be discouraged and deterred through a strategy of cruelty.

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GB News turns to Nigel Farage as its saviour after ratings freefall

TV station also hit by internal dispute over its direction after Guto Harri dropped for ‘taking the knee’

Nigel Farage is to take centre stage at GB News in a victory for the rightwing faction at the beleaguered television channel. The former leader of Ukip is to host a nightly primetime show from Monday as part of a reboot of programming designed to attract more viewers.

The new channel is facing plummeting viewing figures and a split in management between those angling to keep broader-based regional news coverage and those planning to boost coverage of the “culture wars”.

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Nigel Farage appointed to advisory board of green finance firm

Dutch Green Business, which plants trees for carbon capture, says ex-Ukip leader will ‘facilitate introductions’

He has criticised Greta Thunberg for “alarmism” and wind power as “economic insanity” – but Nigel Farage appears to have made a U-turn on climate change, after signing up as a lobbyist for a Dutch green finance firm, in his first commercial role outside frontline politics.

Dutch Green Business Group, which is listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange, said it had appointed Farage to its new advisory board. The eurosceptic and former Ukip leader will “facilitate introductions to politicians and business leaders in the UK and around the world” while also acting as a spokesman for the company, it said in a press release.

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Come clean on logjams at British borders as new Brexit rules kick in, ministers told

Amid confusion for lorry drivers in Kent, logistics firms call for greater transparency to help lessen disruption

Ministers are facing demands for more honesty and transparency over any logjams at the UK border in the wake of Britain’s exit from the EU, amid concerns that waves of disruption will last for six months.

Several lorry drivers are understood to have been turned away at Dover for not having the right paperwork following the end of the Brexit transition period last week. It has caused concern among logistics and manufacturing companies that more severe problems could occur as trade flows increase later this month.

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The lockdown rebels preparing to defy No 10 on Covid restrictions

From former Tory ministers to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, the key figures standing against a second lockdown

As England braces for a second national lockdown, Downing Street once more faces a rebellion over tougher restrictions. Ahead of a Commons vote on Wednesday, several Conservative MPs are weighing up their options. Here are some key figures who may line up against the government and the broad camps they sit in, alongside Nigel Farage and his plan for a new anti-lockdown party.

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Port of Dover is brought to a standstill by far-right groups

Flag-waving extremists and white nationalists block roads in protest over migrant Channel crossings

Just after 1pm, below the white cliffs of Dover, Nigel Marcham offered his take on one of the summer’s most potent symbols. “Take a knee for the brethren of this fucking country,” Marcham screamed into his megaphone.

Around him a ragtag collection of far-right supporters, white nationalists and neo-nazis knelt on the A20 outside Dover’s Eastern Docks. “Thanks for taking a fucking knee in the proper way,” he said, clearly delighted with his perversion of the global peaceful protest symbol adopted by millions following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

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Steve Bannon hails Dominic Cummings and predicts lurch to right for No 10

Architect of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reveals admiration for Boris Johnson’s aide in interview on dark politics

Steve Bannon, who has previously backed a range of notorious far-right political figures, has publicly endorsed Dominic Cummings for the first time, calling him a “brilliant guy”.

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist also said that Boris Johnson will become an increasingly populist prime minister after jettisoning his political positioning as a “globalist” to “opportunistically jump on Brexit”.

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The high-profile figures who got into hot water over lockdown rules

Ministers, scientific advisers and footballers have all been criticised for their behaviour

Neil Ferguson is not the first high-profile figure to apparently fall foul of lockdown rules.

Related: UK coronavirus adviser Neil Ferguson resigns after breaking lockdown rules

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General election live: Corbyn should not resign immediately if Labour loses election, says McCluskey – live news

All the day’s developments on the campaign trail before Johnson and Corbyn’s first TV debate

Boris Johnson has gone for some Rocky Balboa-type posturing ahead of tonight’s ITV debate. (See 2.33pm and 4.50pm.) As you would expect, Jeremy Corbyn’s warm-up routine is rather different.

Labour leader @jeremycorbyn has arrived for the #ITVdebate, saying he hopes for a respectful debate and prepared by eating a Caesar salad#GE2019 #Leadersdebatehttps://t.co/itw9efaa2W pic.twitter.com/Z2PVqCmgEd

And here is another useful Twitter thread on the likely impact of the debate tonight, from the academic Prof Tim Bale. It starts here.

THREAD: Did a @SkyNews bit today on debates. Here's (some of) what we think we know from research in the UK and elsewhere. 1/8

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