Labour avoids party split over Common Market – archive, 17 May 1971

17 May 1971: Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle

Labour Party leaders last night came to the sensible conclusion that it was not worth splitting the Labour movement wide open over the Common Market when Mr Heath and the Conservative Party were already faced with the even more immediate and difficult problem of rallying a respectable Parliamentary majority for entry on the basis of Tory votes without the aid of Labour MPs.

That was, to all intents and purposes, the outcome of a full afternoon session of Labour’s national executive committee and the Shadow Cabinet of the Parliamentary Labour Party, at which Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle. For the time being, the heat is out of the European issue inside the party.

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May averts Tory mutiny by agreeing to set her exit date after Brexit bill vote

1922 Committee agrees to let PM wait until after vote on withdrawal agreement bill in early June

Theresa May has agreed to set a timetable for her departure as prime minister in the first week of June, leading MPs to believe she will trigger a leadership contest before the summer.

Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, said she would agree a timetable for the election of a new leader after her Brexit legislation returned to parliament for a final attempt in the week of 3 June.

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Titian masterpieces to be displayed together for first time since 1704

The 16th-century paintings will be shown as a series in London, Edinburgh, Madrid and Boston

One of the most important groups of high Renaissance paintings is to be brought together for the first time in more than 300 years.

A partnership between galleries in London, Edinburgh, Boston and Madrid was announced on Thursday which will allow five of Titian’s greatest paintings to be seen as they were intended – together as a series.

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Fugitive ex-Eta leader Josu Ternera arrested in France

Basque terrorist group’s former political chief tracked down after 16 years on the run

A former leader of the Basque terrorist group Eta has been arrested in France after spending more than 16 years on the run, the Spanish government said on Thursday.

Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, better known as Josu Ternera, was once Eta’s political chief.

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Jean-Claude Juncker: I regret not challenging ‘£350m a week’ claims

EU commission president says he should have spoken out on Vote Leave’s Brexit campaign

Jean-Claude Juncker has said he regrets failing to rebut claims made in the run-up to the Brexit referendum about the hundreds of millions of pounds the UK would save each week if it left the EU.

In an interview in which the European commission president also criticised the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, over his recent Brussels-bashing, Juncker said he could not understand why he had failed to speak out.

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Eco wonder or safety nightmare? Germany to vote on e-scooters

Electric scooters could be on roads by June, leaving UK last major European country not to have approved use

Germany’s upper house of parliament is due to vote on Friday on whether to allow electric scooters on to the country’s roads, following a feverish debate spanning everything from road safety to air quality.

The transport minister is behind the plan, but he has faced a barrage of protests from lobby groups, representing both car drivers and bike riders, who have warned of chaos and accidents if the so-called e-scooters – known locally as e-rollers – are allowed.

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Majority of Europeans ‘expect end of EU within 20 years’

Three in 10 think conflict among EU countries is a realistic possibility, survey finds

More than half of Europeans believe the EU is likely to collapse within a generation, despite support for the bloc hitting heights not recorded in more than a quarter of a century.

In France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, the Czech Republic and Poland, a majority of people surveyed thought EU disintegration was a “realistic possibility” in the next 10 to 20 years.

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Leaders and tech firms pledge to tackle extremist violence online

Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron met companies and G7 nations in Paris for Christchurch Call summit

World leaders and heads of global technology companies have pledged at a Paris summit to tackle terrorist and extremist violence online in what they described as an “unprecedented agreement”.

Wednesday’s event, organised two months to the day since the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, drew up a “plan of action” to be adopted by countries and companies to prevent extreme material going viral on the internet.

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Tax authorities mount raids on 19 German banks and homes

Investigation is linked to Panama Papers and part of money laundering allegations

Eleven banks and eight private homes and offices across Germany have been raided by police and tax investigators as part of a wide-ranging investigation into tax evasion.

The raids, which began at dawn on Wednesday and went on into the afternoon, were part of the same investigation started last November over money laundering allegations linked to the so-called Panama Papers scandal, alleged to involve Deutsche Bank.

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Marine Le Pen makes ‘OK’ hand gesture used by white supremacists

France’s far-right National Rally leader asks ally to remove controversial selfie from Facebook

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally, has asked an Estonian ally to remove a selfie from Facebook in which the pair made a controversial “OK” hand gesture, which has been linked to white-power messaging.

Le Pen was in Tallinn to meet MPs from Estonia’s far-right EKRE party, which recently became part of the country’s coalition government, as part of cross-continent negotiations on setting up a new bloc of nationalist and far-right forces after European elections next week.

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Heavy metals and harmful chemicals ‘poison Europe’s seas’

Three-quarters of areas tested show contamination, European Environment Agency says

Heavy metals and a cocktail of dangerous chemicals continue to poison Europe’s seas, with more than three-quarters of areas assessed showing contamination, according to a report.

The sea worst affected was the Baltic, where 96% of the assessed areas showed problematic levels of some harmful substances, according to the European Environment Agency. Similar problems were found in 91% of the Black Sea and 87% of the Mediterranean. In the north-east Atlantic, unsafe levels of chemicals or metals were found in 75% of assessed areas.

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Merkel: Europe must unite to stand up to China, Russia and US

German chancellor also shares views on Brexit and climate crisis in interview

Europe must reposition itself to stand up to the challenges posed by its three big global rivals, China, Russia and the US, Angela Merkel has said before her final European election as German chancellor.

Facing challenges that range from Russian interference in elections to China’s economic clout and the US’s monopoly over digital services, Europe needs to get better at putting up a united front, Merkel said in a wide-ranging interview shared with the Guardian.

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Cannes festival in row after director and baby blocked from Palais entry

British film-maker claims she was denied access to Marché du Film, then told to pay fee for baby and wait two days for it to be processed

The Cannes film festival has been criticised for its treatment of mothers and babies after a female director claimed she and her child were prevented from entering the festival site.

British director Greta Bellamacina, whose film Hurt By Paradise is screening in the market section of the festival, said the festival had displayed an “outrageous” attitude after she attempted to enter the festival with her four-month son.

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Rooftop pool? Notre Dame proposals defy traditionalists

Designs from architects around world also suggest glass, crystal and metal spires

An architecture firm has proposed replacing the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral with a swimming pool, as France prepares to launch an international competition to restore the fire-damaged gothic edifice to its former glory.

After the roof and spire of Notre Dame were damaged in a fire watched worldwide in April, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was open to a “contemporary gesture” in rebuilding it “more beautiful than before”, and the prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, called for a new spire “adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era”.

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Bulgaria’s pro-Brussels PM: ‘There’s no better place to live than the EU’

Boyko Borisov has praise even for Theresa May, but is less keen on questions about corruption

At a time when some politicians in central and eastern Europe are profiting from hostility towards Brussels, Bulgaria’s Boyko Borisov is taking a different path, aiming to winning favour from Europe through charm and flattery.

“I’ve been all over the world and I can say that there’s no better place to live than the EU,” he said during a recent interview with the Guardian in Sofia.

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Pompeo to meet Putin in Russia amid fears over US-Iran clash

Secretary of state’s visit will be first high-level meeting since redacted Mueller report release

Mike Pompeo is to meet Vladimir Putin in Russia at a time of heightened fears of a clash between the US and Iran, a Moscow ally.

A Kremlin spokesman, before the meeting on Tuesday, accused the US of applying a “maximum pressure policy” against Iran, a reference to a harsh US sanctions regime and military deployments to the Middle East.

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‘A little miracle’: Dutch statesman’s diary found 200 years after it was lost

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt chronicled final months before he was beheaded on 13 May 1619

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is arguably the greatest Dutch statesman, as one of the founding fathers who helped liberate the Netherlands from Spanish rule, but for 200 years the whereabouts of a diary chronicling his final months before he was beheaded has been a mystery.

The prose – written over an eight-month period between 1618 and 1619 – was last seen in 1825 when a pastor, the Rev Adrian Stolker, studied the manuscript and made a copy by hand to be published for wider dissemination.

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Germany’s AfD turns on Greta Thunberg as it embraces climate denial

Rightwing populists to launch attack on climate science in vote drive before EU elections

Germany’s rightwing populists are embracing climate change denial as the latest topic with which to boost their electoral support, teaming up with scientists who claim hysteria is driving the global warming debate and ridiculing the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as “mentally challenged” and a fraud.

The Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is expected to launch its biggest attack yet on mainstream climate science at a symposium in parliament on Tuesday supported by a prominent climate change denial body linked by researchers to prominent conservative groups in the US.

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Trump praises Hungary’s far-right leader Orbán: ‘He’s a respected man’ – as it happened

Trump welcomes Viktor Orbán to White House as Pompeo heads to meeting of EU nations in apparent attempt to soothe relations over Iran deal

Oh, the places you’ll go indeed, Rod Rosenstein.

After giving a commencement address and quoting Robert Mueller - you know, the man whose investigation he oversaw - Rosenstein went on to speak at the annual meeting of the Greater Baltimore Committee, where he continued to make waves.

Ex-Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein in a speech in Baltimore tonight is defending his handling of the Mueller probe and taking aim at ex-FBI director James Comey.

Rosenstein also says: “Based on what I knew in May 2017, the investigation of Russian election interference was justified.”

In his prepared remarks, Rosenstein said Trump, “did not tell me what reasons to put in my memo,” but noted what the special counsel report had said. He said he did not include what Trump wanted because it was not relevant, and he did not have personal knowledge of what Comey had told Trump.

Rosenstein said he “did not dislike” Comey but that Comey took steps that were “not within the range of reasonable decisions” during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Rosenstein suggested that if he — rather than Trump — had been in charge, “the removal would have been handled very differently, with far more respect and far less drama.”

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Senior Tories press May to abandon Brexit deal talks with Labour

PM told that any deal involving customs union would be ‘bad politics and bad policy’

Theresa May is under intense pressure to abandon cross-party Brexit talks, after a group of senior Conservative figures, including leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, issued a strongly worded warning against any deal that involved a customs union.

May’s cabinet, and Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, are both due to take stock of the talks on Tuesday, with neither side optimistic about the prospects for an agreement that could secure a majority in parliament.

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