Brexit: Theresa May faces defeat in commons vote after refusing eurosceptic demand to rewrite motion
Downing Street faces defeat in a key Brexit vote on Valentine’s Day after refusing Brexiteer demands to shift the government’s position.
On Thursday MPs will vote on a government motion that endorses previous non-binding decisions taken by MPs – including one that takes a no-deal Brexit off the table.
After a key figure of the Brexit-backing European Research Group of Tory MPs said it could not back the motion as a result, Number 10 said on Wednesday it still would not re-write it.
It means Ms May faces an embarrassing government defeat in London at a critical juncture, as she tries to negotiate for a new deal in Brussels.
Asked if the government is minded to change its motion to gain Brexiteer support, Theresa May’s spokesman said: “I don’t expect that to happen.”
The government motion for Thursday’s debate and vote endorses “the approach to leaving the EU” backed by the commons on 29 January.
On that night, MPs said the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ plan should be replaced by “alternative arrangements”, but they also said a no-deal Brexit should be ruled out.
Speaking to the BBC, Mark Francois MP, ERG vice chair, said: “We cannot vote for this as it’s currently configured because it rules out no deal and removes our negotiating leverage in Brussels. “The prime minister, if she went through the lobbies for this tomorrow night, would be voting against the guarantees she has given in the commons for months. It is madness.”
It came after Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay was also forced to reject suggestions that the government is moving to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
Dark money is pushing for a no-deal Brexit. Who is behind it?
In Britain, for example, we now know that the EU referendum was won with the help of widespread cheating. We still don’t know the origins of much of the money spent by the leave campaigns. For example, we have no idea who provided the £435,000 channelled through Scotland, into Northern Ireland, through the coffers of the Democratic Unionist party and back into Scotland and England, to pay for pro-Brexit ads. Nor do we know the original source of the £8m that Arron Banks delivered to the Leave.EU campaign. We do know that both of the main leave campaigns have been fined for illegal activities, and that the conduct of the referendum has damaged many people’s faith in the political system. But, astonishingly, the government has so far failed to introduce a single new law in response to these events. And now it’s happening again.
Since mid-January an organisation called Britain’s Future has spent £125,000 on Facebook ads demanding a hard or no-deal Brexit. Most of them target particular constituencies. Where an MP is deemed sympathetic to the organisation’s aims, the voters who receive these ads are urged to tell him or her to “remove the backstop, rule out a customs union, deliver Brexit without delay”. Where the MP is deemed unsympathetic, the message is: “Don’t let them steal Brexit; Don’t let them ignore your vote.”
So who or what is Britain’s Future? Sorry, I have no idea. As openDemocracy points out, it has no published address and releases no information about who founded it, who controls it and who has been paying for these advertisements. The only person publicly associated with it is a journalist called Tim Dawson, who edits its website. Dawson has not yet replied to the questions I have sent him. It is, in other words, highly opaque. The anti-Brexit campaigns are not much better. People’s Vote and Best for Britain have also been spending heavily on Facebook ads, though not as much in recent weeks as Britain’s Future
At least we know who is involved in these remain campaigns and where they are based, but both refuse to reveal their full sources of funding. People’s Vote says “the majority of our funding comes from small donors”. It also receives larger donations but says “it’s a matter for the donors if they want to go public”. Best for Britain says that some of its funders want to remain anonymous, and “we understand that”. But it seems to me that that transparent and accountable campaigns would identify anyone paying more than a certain amount (perhaps £1,000). If people don’t want to be named, they shouldn’t use their money to influence our politics. Both campaigns insist that they abide by the rules governing funding for political parties, elections and referendums.
As they must know better than most, the rules on such spending are next to useless. They were last redrafted 19 years ago, when online campaigning had scarcely begun. It’s as if current traffic regulations insisted only that you water your horses every few hours and check the struts on your cartwheels for woodworm. The Electoral Commission has none of the powers required to regulate online campaigning or to extract information from companies such as Facebook. Nor does it have the power to determine the original sources of money spent on political campaigns. So it is unable to tell whether or not the law that says funders must be based in the UK has been broken. The maximum fines it can levy are pathetic: £20,000 for each offence. That’s a small price to pay for winning an election.
Since 2003, the commission has been asking, with an ever greater sense of urgency, for basic changes in the law. But it has been stonewalled by successive governments. The exposés of Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian, openDemocracy and Channel 4 News about the conduct of the referendum have so far made no meaningful difference to government policy. We have local elections in May and there could be a general election at any time. The old, defunct rules still apply. Our politicians have instead left it to Facebook to do the right thing. Which is, shall we say, an unreliable strategy. In response to the public outcry, Facebook now insists that organisations placing political ads provide it (but not us) with a contact based in the UK. Since October, it has archived their advertisements and the amount they spend. But there is no requirement that its advertisers reveal who provides the funding. An organisation’s name means nothing if the organisation is opaque. The way Facebook presents the data makes it impossible to determine spending trends, unless you check the entries every week. And its new rules apply only in the US, the UK and Brazil. In the rest of the world, it remains a regulatory black hole.
So why won’t the government act? Partly because, regardless of the corrosive impacts on public life, it wants to keep the system as it is. The current rules favour the parties with the most money to spend, which tends to mean the parties that appeal to the rich. But mostly, I think, it’s because, like other governments, it has become institutionally incapable of responding to our emergencies. It won’t rescue democracy because it can’t. The system in which it is embedded seems destined to escalate rather than dampen disasters. Ecologically, economically and politically, capitalism is failing as catastrophically as communism failed. Like state communism, it is beset by unacknowledged but fatal contradictions. It is inherently corrupt and corrupting. But its mesmerising power, and the vast infrastructure of thought that seeks to justify it, makes any challenge to the model almost impossible to contemplate. Even to acknowledge the emergencies it causes, let alone to act on them, feels like electoral suicide. As the famous saying goes: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Our urgent task is to turn this the other way round. • George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Brexit: UK has rolled over just £16bn out of £117bn trade deals
The government’s push to roll over EU trade deals from which the UK currently benefits has yielded agreements covering just £16bn of the near-£117bn of British trade with the countries involved. Despite frenetic efforts by ministers to ensure the continuity of international trade after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, the trade secretary, Liam Fox, has so far only managed to secure deals with seven of the 69 countries that the UK currently trades with under preferential EU free trade agreements, which will end after Brexit.
Fox’s department has yet to sign agreements with several major UK trading partners – including Canada, Japan, South Korea and Turkey – while sources have said that sufficient progress is unlikely to be made before the Brexit deadline in less than 50 days’ time
Labour MP launches astonishing attack on Jeremy Corbyn
Labour MP Neil Coyle has launched a blistering attack on Jeremy Corbyn. The MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, who backs a second referendum, accused his party’s leader of driving members away from the party over Brexit and allowing antisemitism to continue in his name in a scathing tweet. Mr Coyle wrote: “I can’t make Parliamentary Committee today and as emails are screened I thought I’d tweet the boss instead. So Jeremy Corbyn here goes. “Members leaving in their thousands over Brexit. Councillors quitting. MPs will leave. “Antisemitism continues in your name. Only you can change all this.” The extraordinary attack came as deep divides in the Labour Party continued to reveal themselves.
Earlier this week sources revealed that the Labour leader is deliberately pushing through Theresa May’s Brexit plan so that he can ‘wash his hands of it’. The same source from within Labour said Mr Corbyn removed a reference from an open letter he wrote to the Prime Minister about the possibility of a second referendum without telling his shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer. The party leader wrote to Mrs May explaining the steps she must take in order to win Labour’s support for her deal – without mentioning the possibility of a so-called People’s Vote. The letter revealed the extent of Labour splits over Brexit. Former leadership contender Tom Watson said he was thinking of resigning over the suggestion the party could support Mrs May’s Brexit. Labour’s official policy is that it is keeping a second referendum ‘on the table’, but Mr Corbyn has stopped short of endorsing the idea outright. Mr Starmer has spoken much more favourably about another vote, saying it could be the only way to break the current impasse.
The accusation that Mr Corbyn is allowing antisemitism to flourish within Labour follows the news on Monday night that Labour had received 673 allegations of anti-Semitism by its members over the past 10 months, leading to 12 individuals being expelled. Following a meeting of the shadow cabinet on Tuesday, a Labour source said: “The shadow cabinet welcomed the transparency of the release of figures.” Mr Corbyn has faced widespread accusations of failing to adequately tackle antisemitism in Labour
Brexit: Ford warns no-deal would be ‘catastrophic’ and could cost thousands of UK jobs
Ford has said it will do “whatever is necessary” to protect its business in the face of no-deal Brexit as it ramps up plans to move UK manufacturing jobs overseas. The US car giant employs 13,000 people in the UK including 5,000 in manufacturing roles at its Bridgend, Dagenham and Halewood plants and 3,000 at its research and development hub. On Wednesday, Ford warned that crashing out of the EU with no trade deal would threaten the future of its UK operations. “Such a situation would be catastrophic for the UK auto industry and Ford’s manufacturing operations in the country,” the company said in a statement. “We will take whatever action is necessary to preserve the competitiveness of our European business.” During a private conversation between business leaders and the prime minister this week Ford said it was preparing alternative sites abroad, The Times reported. It is the latest in a string of dire warnings from Britain’s car industry and comes just days after Nissan U-turned on a decision to build its new X-Trail in Sunderland, opting for Japan instead.
Labour MPs warn Corbyn: back a second referendum or we quit
Labour leader struggling to balance conflicting forces in his party over Brexit
Jeremy Corbyn faces up to 10 resignations from the Labour frontbench if he fails to throw his party’s weight behind a fresh attempt to force Theresa May to submit her Brexit deal to a referendum in a fortnight’s time, frustrated MPs are warning. With tension mounting among anti-Brexit Labour MPs and grassroots members, several junior shadow ministers have told the Guardian they are prepared to resign their posts rather than vote against a pro-referendum amendment at the end of the month.
BREXIT REVOLT: 80 Tories threaten to REJECT May's Brexit plan in Commons showdown TOMORROW
Up to 80 Tory backbenchers are threatening to refuse to back the Prime Minister in tomorrow’s Commons vote on a Government motion endorsing her push for a revamped Brexit deal. The MPs allied to the European Research Group, chaired by senior Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg, claim the motion effectively rules out a no-deal Brexit. Several Cabinet ministers were also understood to be considering quitting if a lengthy delay in the withdrawal process is agreed.
“It would be very difficult to stay in the Government if anything other than a short extension is adopted,” said one Cabinet source. Tory Eurosceptics were enraged when Olly Robbins, the top civil servant in the UK Brexit negotiating team, was overheard in Brussels bar earlier this week suggesting the Prime Minister will order a “long” Brexit delay rather than allow a no-deal departure from the bloc. They threatened to send a signal of their fury by rebelling in tomorrow’s vote.
'Still waiting!' Tusk lambasts May for failure to deliver 'realistic' Brexit deadlock fix
DONALD Tusk has poured cold water on Britain’s efforts to break the Brexit impasse by declaring no “concrete and realistic proposals” had been tabled by Theresa May.
The European Council President left another scathing comment after meeting with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, in Brussels on Wednesday evening. In a bid to build an EU-wide position after meeting British negotiators , the Brussels officials attempted to sum up the thoughts delivered by London during recent meetings. In a Twitter outburst, Mr Tusk criticised British politicians for failing to bring any new ideas to bring to the table during their recent talks. He said: “No news is not always good news. “The EU27 still waiting for concrete and realistic proposals from London on how to break Brexit impasse.” Mr Tusk risked inflaming relations with Westminster as Mrs May battles to build a majority for her draft EU withdrawal deal in Parliament. Mr Barnier also met with Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator, in Strasbourg today.
The Financial Times says Britain's departure from the EU is likely to hit the Netherlands harder than most other member countries because of close trading links. But the Dutch prime minister has given an interview to the paper saying it is difficult to assess the impact because his country is already benefiting from Brexit - with businesses relocating from what he calls a "diminished" Britain. He says that so far, the Netherlands has only seen gains - and another 250 companies are close to taking a decision to move their offices and staff across. The paper says he added with a smile: "We can't prevent them coming."
For its lead, the Guardian says Jeremy Corbyn faces up to 10 resignations from the Labour front bench if he fails to support a fresh bid to put Theresa May's Brexit deal to a referendum. The paper adds that Mr Corbyn has been struggling to balance the conflicting forces in his party over Brexit - with several other frontbenchers adamant they could never back a referendum. Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell tells the Politico website that Labour's chances of forcing a general election are now "unlikely". Politico says this suggests the party is inching toward a compromise Brexit deal with the government - or a referendum.
Brexit Party leader branded 'distasteful' after claiming foodbanks make kids obese Catherine Blaiklock - whose movement is backed by Nigel Farage - complained emergency handouts for families on the brink are full of “sweet custard and PopTarts”
The leader of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party has been branded "out of touch" after claiming food banks are making kids obese. Ex-city worker Catherine Blaiklock moaned emergency handouts are full of “sweet custard and PopTarts” and people “cannot even be bothered" to buy their hungry children an egg.
Comments
Downing Street faces defeat in a key Brexit vote on Valentine’s Day after refusing Brexiteer demands to shift the government’s position.
On Thursday MPs will vote on a government motion that endorses previous non-binding decisions taken by MPs – including one that takes a no-deal Brexit off the table.
After a key figure of the Brexit-backing European Research Group of Tory MPs said it could not back the motion as a result, Number 10 said on Wednesday it still would not re-write it.
It means Ms May faces an embarrassing government defeat in London at a critical juncture, as she tries to negotiate for a new deal in Brussels.
Asked if the government is minded to change its motion to gain Brexiteer support, Theresa May’s spokesman said: “I don’t expect that to happen.”
The government motion for Thursday’s debate and vote endorses “the approach to leaving the EU” backed by the commons on 29 January.
On that night, MPs said the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ plan should be replaced by “alternative arrangements”, but they also said a no-deal Brexit should be ruled out.
Speaking to the BBC, Mark Francois MP, ERG vice chair, said: “We cannot vote for this as it’s currently configured because it rules out no deal and removes our negotiating leverage in Brussels.
“The prime minister, if she went through the lobbies for this tomorrow night, would be voting against the guarantees she has given in the commons for months. It is madness.”
It came after Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay was also forced to reject suggestions that the government is moving to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-vote-commons-theresa-may-deal-eu-parliament-erg-conservatives-a8777421.html
Another remain voter, comes over to the right side.
Must of had a hangover.
Classy Lady.
In Britain, for example, we now know that the EU referendum was won with the help of widespread cheating. We still don’t know the origins of much of the money spent by the leave campaigns. For example, we have no idea who provided the £435,000 channelled through Scotland, into Northern Ireland, through the coffers of the Democratic Unionist party and back into Scotland and England, to pay for pro-Brexit ads. Nor do we know the original source of the £8m that Arron Banks delivered to the Leave.EU campaign. We do know that both of the main leave campaigns have been fined for illegal activities, and that the conduct of the referendum has damaged many people’s faith in the political system. But, astonishingly, the government has so far failed to introduce a single new law in response to these events. And now it’s happening again.
Since mid-January an organisation called Britain’s Future has spent £125,000 on Facebook ads demanding a hard or no-deal Brexit. Most of them target particular constituencies. Where an MP is deemed sympathetic to the organisation’s aims, the voters who receive these ads are urged to tell him or her to “remove the backstop, rule out a customs union, deliver Brexit without delay”. Where the MP is deemed unsympathetic, the message is: “Don’t let them steal Brexit; Don’t let them ignore your vote.”
So who or what is Britain’s Future? Sorry, I have no idea. As openDemocracy points out, it has no published address and releases no information about who founded it, who controls it and who has been paying for these advertisements. The only person publicly associated with it is a journalist called Tim Dawson, who edits its website. Dawson has not yet replied to the questions I have sent him. It is, in other words, highly opaque. The anti-Brexit campaigns are not much better. People’s Vote and Best for Britain have also been spending heavily on Facebook ads, though not as much in recent weeks as Britain’s Future
At least we know who is involved in these remain campaigns and where they are based, but both refuse to reveal their full sources of funding. People’s Vote says “the majority of our funding comes from small donors”. It also receives larger donations but says “it’s a matter for the donors if they want to go public”. Best for Britain says that some of its funders want to remain anonymous, and “we understand that”. But it seems to me that that transparent and accountable campaigns would identify anyone paying more than a certain amount (perhaps £1,000). If people don’t want to be named, they shouldn’t use their money to influence our politics. Both campaigns insist that they abide by the rules governing funding for political parties, elections and referendums.
As they must know better than most, the rules on such spending are next to useless. They were last redrafted 19 years ago, when online campaigning had scarcely begun. It’s as if current traffic regulations insisted only that you water your horses every few hours and check the struts on your cartwheels for woodworm. The Electoral Commission has none of the powers required to regulate online campaigning or to extract information from companies such as Facebook. Nor does it have the power to determine the original sources of money spent on political campaigns. So it is unable to tell whether or not the law that says funders must be based in the UK has been broken. The maximum fines it can levy are pathetic: £20,000 for each offence. That’s a small price to pay for winning an election.
Since 2003, the commission has been asking, with an ever greater sense of urgency, for basic changes in the law. But it has been stonewalled by successive governments. The exposés of Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian, openDemocracy and Channel 4 News about the conduct of the referendum have so far made no meaningful difference to government policy. We have local elections in May and there could be a general election at any time. The old, defunct rules still apply.
Our politicians have instead left it to Facebook to do the right thing. Which is, shall we say, an unreliable strategy. In response to the public outcry, Facebook now insists that organisations placing political ads provide it (but not us) with a contact based in the UK. Since October, it has archived their advertisements and the amount they spend. But there is no requirement that its advertisers reveal who provides the funding. An organisation’s name means nothing if the organisation is opaque. The way Facebook presents the data makes it impossible to determine spending trends, unless you check the entries every week. And its new rules apply only in the US, the UK and Brazil. In the rest of the world, it remains a regulatory black hole.
So why won’t the government act? Partly because, regardless of the corrosive impacts on public life, it wants to keep the system as it is. The current rules favour the parties with the most money to spend, which tends to mean the parties that appeal to the rich. But mostly, I think, it’s because, like other governments, it has become institutionally incapable of responding to our emergencies. It won’t rescue democracy because it can’t. The system in which it is embedded seems destined to escalate rather than dampen disasters.
Ecologically, economically and politically, capitalism is failing as catastrophically as communism failed. Like state communism, it is beset by unacknowledged but fatal contradictions. It is inherently corrupt and corrupting. But its mesmerising power, and the vast infrastructure of thought that seeks to justify it, makes any challenge to the model almost impossible to contemplate. Even to acknowledge the emergencies it causes, let alone to act on them, feels like electoral suicide. As the famous saying goes: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Our urgent task is to turn this the other way round.
• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/columnists/dark-money-is-pushing-for-a-no-deal-brexit-who-is-behind-it/ar-BBTx7Qh?ocid=spartandhp
The government’s push to roll over EU trade deals from which the UK currently benefits has yielded agreements covering just £16bn of the near-£117bn of British trade with the countries involved.
Despite frenetic efforts by ministers to ensure the continuity of international trade after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, the trade secretary, Liam Fox, has so far only managed to secure deals with seven of the 69 countries that the UK currently trades with under preferential EU free trade agreements, which will end after Brexit.
Fox’s department has yet to sign agreements with several major UK trading partners – including Canada, Japan, South Korea and Turkey – while sources have said that sufficient progress is unlikely to be made before the Brexit deadline in less than 50 days’ time
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/brexit-uk-has-rolled-over-just-£16bn-out-of-£117bn-trade-deals/ar-BBTwZvW?ocid=spartandhp
Labour MP Neil Coyle has launched a blistering attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
The MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, who backs a second referendum, accused his party’s leader of driving members away from the party over Brexit and allowing antisemitism to continue in his name in a scathing tweet.
Mr Coyle wrote: “I can’t make Parliamentary Committee today and as emails are screened I thought I’d tweet the boss instead. So Jeremy Corbyn here goes.
“Members leaving in their thousands over Brexit. Councillors quitting. MPs will leave.
“Antisemitism continues in your name. Only you can change all this.”
The extraordinary attack came as deep divides in the Labour Party continued to reveal themselves.
Earlier this week sources revealed that the Labour leader is deliberately pushing through Theresa May’s Brexit plan so that he can ‘wash his hands of it’.
The same source from within Labour said Mr Corbyn removed a reference from an open letter he wrote to the Prime Minister about the possibility of a second referendum without telling his shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer.
The party leader wrote to Mrs May explaining the steps she must take in order to win Labour’s support for her deal – without mentioning the possibility of a so-called People’s Vote.
The letter revealed the extent of Labour splits over Brexit. Former leadership contender Tom Watson said he was thinking of resigning over the suggestion the party could support Mrs May’s Brexit.
Labour’s official policy is that it is keeping a second referendum ‘on the table’, but Mr Corbyn has stopped short of endorsing the idea outright.
Mr Starmer has spoken much more favourably about another vote, saying it could be the only way to break the current impasse.
The accusation that Mr Corbyn is allowing antisemitism to flourish within Labour follows the news on Monday night that Labour had received 673 allegations of anti-Semitism by its members over the past 10 months, leading to 12 individuals being expelled.
Following a meeting of the shadow cabinet on Tuesday, a Labour source said: “The shadow cabinet welcomed the transparency of the release of figures.”
Mr Corbyn has faced widespread accusations of failing to adequately tackle antisemitism in Labour
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/labour-mp-launches-astonishing-attack-jeremy-corbyn-125332741.html
Ford has said it will do “whatever is necessary” to protect its business in the face of no-deal Brexit as it ramps up plans to move UK manufacturing jobs overseas.
The US car giant employs 13,000 people in the UK including 5,000 in manufacturing roles at its Bridgend, Dagenham and Halewood plants and 3,000 at its research and development hub.
On Wednesday, Ford warned that crashing out of the EU with no trade deal would threaten the future of its UK operations.
“Such a situation would be catastrophic for the UK auto industry and Ford’s manufacturing operations in the country,” the company said in a statement.
“We will take whatever action is necessary to preserve the competitiveness of our European business.”
During a private conversation between business leaders and the prime minister this week Ford said it was preparing alternative sites abroad, The Times reported.
It is the latest in a string of dire warnings from Britain’s car industry and comes just days after Nissan U-turned on a decision to build its new X-Trail in Sunderland, opting for Japan instead.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/brexit-ford-ramps-preparations-move-102500727.html
Labour leader struggling to balance conflicting forces in his party over Brexit
Jeremy Corbyn faces up to 10 resignations from the Labour frontbench if he fails to throw his party’s weight behind a fresh attempt to force Theresa May to submit her Brexit deal to a referendum in a fortnight’s time, frustrated MPs are warning.
With tension mounting among anti-Brexit Labour MPs and grassroots members, several junior shadow ministers have told the Guardian they are prepared to resign their posts rather than vote against a pro-referendum amendment at the end of the month.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/13/labour-mp-submits-plan-for-referendum-on-brexit-deal
Up to 80 Tory backbenchers are threatening to refuse to back the Prime Minister in tomorrow’s Commons vote on a Government motion endorsing her push for a revamped Brexit deal. The MPs allied to the European Research Group, chaired by senior Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg, claim the motion effectively rules out a no-deal Brexit. Several Cabinet ministers were also understood to be considering quitting if a lengthy delay in the withdrawal process is agreed.
“It would be very difficult to stay in the Government if anything other than a short extension is adopted,” said one Cabinet source.
Tory Eurosceptics were enraged when Olly Robbins, the top civil servant in the UK Brexit negotiating team, was overheard in Brussels bar earlier this week suggesting the Prime Minister will order a “long” Brexit delay rather than allow a no-deal departure from the bloc.
They threatened to send a signal of their fury by rebelling in tomorrow’s vote.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1086884/brexit-news-latest-theresa-may-deal-vote-commons-tory-revolt-jacob-rees-mogg
DONALD Tusk has poured cold water on Britain’s efforts to break the Brexit impasse by declaring no “concrete and realistic proposals” had been tabled by Theresa May.
The European Council President left another scathing comment after meeting with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, in Brussels on Wednesday evening. In a bid to build an EU-wide position after meeting British negotiators , the Brussels officials attempted to sum up the thoughts delivered by London during recent meetings. In a Twitter outburst, Mr Tusk criticised British politicians for failing to bring any new ideas to bring to the table during their recent talks. He said: “No news is not always good news.
“The EU27 still waiting for concrete and realistic proposals from London on how to break Brexit impasse.”
Mr Tusk risked inflaming relations with Westminster as Mrs May battles to build a majority for her draft EU withdrawal deal in Parliament.
Mr Barnier also met with Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator, in Strasbourg today.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1086850/Brexit-news-UK-EU-Donald-Tusk-Theresa-May-no-deal-latest
Make GREAT BRITAIN great again.
The Financial Times says Britain's departure from the EU is likely to hit the Netherlands harder than most other member countries because of close trading links.
But the Dutch prime minister has given an interview to the paper saying it is difficult to assess the impact because his country is already benefiting from Brexit - with businesses relocating from what he calls a "diminished" Britain.
He says that so far, the Netherlands has only seen gains - and another 250 companies are close to taking a decision to move their offices and staff across. The paper says he added with a smile: "We can't prevent them coming."
For its lead, the Guardian says Jeremy Corbyn faces up to 10 resignations from the Labour front bench if he fails to support a fresh bid to put Theresa May's Brexit deal to a referendum.
The paper adds that Mr Corbyn has been struggling to balance the conflicting forces in his party over Brexit - with several other frontbenchers adamant they could never back a referendum.
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell tells the Politico website that Labour's chances of forcing a general election are now "unlikely".
Politico says this suggests the party is inching toward a compromise Brexit deal with the government - or a referendum.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-47234307
Catherine Blaiklock - whose movement is backed by Nigel Farage - complained emergency handouts for families on the brink are full of “sweet custard and PopTarts”
The leader of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party has been branded "out of touch" after claiming food banks are making kids obese.
Ex-city worker Catherine Blaiklock moaned emergency handouts are full of “sweet custard and PopTarts” and people “cannot even be bothered" to buy their hungry children an egg.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-party-leader-branded-distasteful-13995970
Stephen Barclay admitted he couldn't yet answer the key queries from the British Chambers of Commerce as he was confronted by the BBC
He then admitted he could not answer the questions yet because "it is a period of uncertainty" facing Britain at the moment.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-secretary-unable-answer-critical-13993580