Boris Johnson’s government has now published details of proposals for a withdrawal agreement to take the UK out of the EU by the end of the month, but the European Commission quickly said that “problematic points” remained in the prime minister’s plans.
Emerging after the PM’s conference speech, the proposals drew swift criticism as “problematic” and failing to safeguard the interests of people and traders on the island of Ireland. “A lot of work is needed,” said Michel Barnier, while noting the concrete offer did constitute progress.
Mr Johnson’s plan, which he billed as a compromise for the UK, would mean customs checks on trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic as well as a regulatory control border down the Irish Sea. One manufacturers’ pressure group described the scheme, which would effectively create two borders, as “worse than no deal”.
The PM used his conference speech to say the UK must deliver Brexit because voters feel they’re being “taken for fools”. And attacking parliament, he claimed MPs “would have been voted out of the jungle by now” if politics was a reality TV show.
In the early evening, Downing Street confirmed plans to prorogue parliament again ahead of a new Queen’s Speech on 14 October.
While the Tory conference drew to a close in Manchester, the debate on the domestic violence bill continued in Westminster. Labour’s Rosie Duffield won praise for, and brought her colleagues to tears with, her account of her own experience of coercive control.
Good morning and welcome to The Independent's live coverage of events at Westminster and Manchester, where the Conservative party conference comes to a close with Boris Johnson's big speech - his first as prime minister.
Boris Johnson will lay down a “take it or leave it” ultimatum to Brussels on Wednesday, warning he will take the UK out of the European Union without a deal if it is rejected.
The prime minister will spell out details of what he describes as a “fair and reasonable compromise” in his keynote speech to the Tory conference. The legal text will be sent to Brussels soon afterwards.
The prime minister has acknowledged customs checks of some sort will be required on both sides of the Irish border once the UK has left the EU customs union, in a major shift away from predecessor Theresa May’s promise to avoid new checks and controls to preserve the Northern Ireland peace process.
Johnson is set to unveil a “two borders for four years” plan that will leave Northern Ireland tied to the EU from the end of the transition period in 2021 until 2025, according to The Telegraph.
Stormont would then be free either to switch to the British mainland’s trading arrangements at the cost of a harder border, or continue with the existing arrangement.
All the details here.
Boris Johnson to give EU 'take it or leave it' Brexit ultimatum
Prime minister to repeat his vow to take UK out of EU on Halloween with or without a dealConservative party chairman James Cleverly has insisted there will be no further delay on Brexit.
As the UK heads for the 31 October deadline to quit the EU, Cleverly told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “No more pointless delay. This is the time for the EU negotiators to recognise that a deal can be done.
“It will require some flexibility, but a deal can be done.”
Cleverly also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Negotiations always go to the eleventh hour … If we can’t get a deal at this point, we’re going to leave without a deal.”
“The UK has been flexible, but a negotiation means both parties need to be flexible. What we need to see now is the EU being flexible.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg is set to ask the Queen to prorogue parliament again – possibly as soon as this weekend – according to reported government plans.
Boris Johnson is hoping to close the Commons on Tuesday next week before a planned Queen’s Speech on 14 October, according to The Times.
The civil rights group Liberty, meanwhile, will seek a judicial review if Johnson’s lawyers fail to confirm whether or not they’re going to break the Benn Act by Friday.
SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC is leading a separate challenge in Scotland, asking the Court of Session to make sure Johnson doesn’t sneakily try to avoid sending the Brexit extension letter the Benn Act requires of him.
Cherry’s team want a nobile officium – widely known as a “nob-off” – which would allow the court’s clerk to draft and sign the letter on behalf of the prime minister.
Boris Johnson will use his speech at the Conservative conference to say “we can, we must and we will” get Brexit done because voters feel they are being “taken for fools” by Westminster’s politicians.
British officials have made clear to EU counterparts that the legal texts which will be presented to the EU are a final offer and unless Brussels is prepared to engage there will be no more talks until after Brexit.
In his speech in Manchester, the prime minister will say: “Voters are desperate for us to focus on their other priorities - what people want, what leavers want, what remainers want, what the whole world wants - is to move on.
“That is why we are coming out of the EU on October 31. Let’s get Brexit done - we can, we must and we will.”
Comedian Shappi Khorsandi claimed that Boris Johnson once squeezed her hand under the table moments before they filmed TV show Question Time.
She told The Independent the experience was “odd and discombobulating” and made her instinctively ready to believe the claim of journalist Charlotte Edwardes that Johnson had squeezed her leg at a lunch.
Boris Johnson accused of squeezing female comedian's hand under table
Shappi Khorsandi said the incident was not assault, but made her inclined to believe groping claims against the PM
Donald Trump is in all kinds of trouble for his contacts with foreign leaders as an impeachment inquiry continues in Congress.
According to a report in The Times, the US president contacted Boris Johnson to “ask for help” on 26 July (only a couple of days after Johnson entered No 10), as he looked for ways to discredit the Mueller probe.
Trump’s attorney general William Barr reportedly brought up the Mueller investigation in his meeting with British intelligence officials a few days later. No 10 officials have refused to comment.
Former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain suggested that the Brexit plan could break the law and “sabotage” the Good Friday Agreement.
The Labour peer said: “By insisting on extra customs checks and different trading relationships across the Irish border the government is proposing to break the law again”.
He said the government would be “contravening Section 10 (2) (b) of the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 which specifically bans ‘border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after exit day which feature physical infrastructure, including border posts, or checks and controls, that did not exist before exit day’”.
Lord Hain added: “This will also sabotage the Good Friday Peace Agreement.”
Sajid Javid has revealed he is considering scrapping inheritance tax in what would be a huge handout to some of the wealthiest people in Britain.
“It’s something that’s on my mind,” the chancellor told a fringe meeting at the Tory conference, agreeing with a questioner who branded it the “most hated tax”.
Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick has all the details.
Chancellor considering scrapping inheritance tax in huge handout to wealthiest Britons
Hint dropped at event hosted by the Taxpayers' Alliance - which has long campaigned for the levy to be axedThe Brexitreferendum caused a man to have an acute psychotic illness, with him suffering a serious of hallucinations and delusions.
It’s the first reported case of Brexit-triggered psychosis, according to a new BMJ Case Reports study which warns political upheaval can take its toll on mental health.
Our science correspondent has the details.
Brexit referendum triggered man’s acute psychosis, doctor says
Patient tried to ‘burrow’ through hospital floor with hands to ‘get the hell out of this place’
Boris Johnson has already briefed “major EU capitals” about his Brexit plan and UK officials were said to have pleaded with EU counterparts to keep the details secret for now.
Little chance of that. It has also been reported Johnson wants a “two borders for four years” plan that will leave Northern Ireland in a relationship with Europe from the end of transition period in 2021 until 2025, according to The Daily Telegraph.
It would accept the need for both a regulatory border between Britain and Northern Ireland in the Irish Sea for four years and customs checks between the North and the Irish Republic.
And there’s been plenty of reaction coming out already.
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the reported plan was “no basis for an agreement” and “concerning to say the least”.
He said: “If there is a proposal that involves customs checks on the island of Ireland, that in itself is bad faith given the commitments the British government has given both to Ireland and the EU over the last three years.”
“The idea that you would be putting a customs border effectively between Northern Ireland and the Republic is not something that is consistent with that, or even close.”
Sources in Brussels have told The Independent that chief negotiator Michel Barnier would give short shrift to any offer that breached the negotiating mandate agreed by the remaining 27 EU states.
“If the concrete text is rubbish, I think Mr Barnier will not need much time to say that,” said one EU diplomat.
One EU official told The Guardian that “if it’s anything that looks like what was floated in this leak, it is going to go down like a bucket of sick.”
Another EU diplomat told The Telegraph: “The proposal means you need to do declarations for goods flowing between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and manage a new border between North and South.
“It leaves Northern Ireland marooned, with frictionless trade with no-one.”
More reaction. The Irish government has flatly rejected a leaked version of Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan for the Irish border, ahead of its official unveiling on Wednesday.
Our Europe correspondent Jon Stone has the details.
Boris Johnson's Brexit border plan rejected by Ireland before he even announces it
'It doesn’t look like the basis of an agreement, that’s for sure'
Stanley Johnson has been talking about his son, the prime minister.
“When we said come out we have to come out, and Boris is going to deliver that for the nation … so I’m backing Boris,” he told Sky News.
Asked about the prime minister’s reputation as a joker, his father said: “When a fellow from time to time makes a joke, when he from time to time livens up a room when he comes in … I mean, I like to make a joke but that doesn’t mean to say I haven’t read the most unbelievably boring books.”
“We Johnsons can be serious if we have to be,” he added.
“He is very serious about this – I lived with him for 20 years and watched this evolving Euroscepticism come to fruition. It’s not a rather light-hearted career move, I can promise you that. I lived with him in Brussels – we shared a house for a while.”
Despite his father Stanley’s remarks – “we Johnsons can be serious if we have to be” – there is some scepticism about whether Boris Johnson is really serious about reaching an agreement with the EU.
The former Northern Ireland negotiator Jonathan Powell has articulated that view best.
An audience member at a Conservative conference event addressed by Boris Johnson joked that Jeremy Corbyn should be hung, footage shows.
Video from a reception hosted by the DUP in Manchester also shows the Labour leader being branded a “traitor”.
Tories laugh at joke about putting Jeremy Corbyn's head in a 'noose' during Boris Johnson speech
Labour leader also branded 'traitor' at Conservative conference DUP event attended by prime ministerTory MP Steve Baker – chair of the ERG and self-appointed “Brexit hardman” – has been quoting Satan (from Milton’s Paradise Lost). That’s right, Satan.
The reasons for doing so aren’t entirely clear at the present time.
According to RTE’s Europe editor Tony Connelly, the European Commission will receive Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals later this morning before David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, meets members of the Commission’s Article 50 Task Force this afternoon.
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, will then swing into action.
The Northern Ireland secretary Julian Smith said the government had to be “very careful about upsetting” the “hard-won stability” anywhere along the Irish land border with its fresh backstop proposals.
“I think there are many things we will have to look at in the future relationship but I think the priority now is to get a deal which changes the Withdrawal Agreement but that makes sure we protect trade flows and the hard-won stability at the Irish border,” Smith told the BBC.
“At the border, five miles from the border, 10 miles from the border - the border is a broad area and we have to be very careful about upsetting it.”
Smith has begun speaking at the Tory conference in Manchester and has announced a growth deal funding for Northern Ireland.
Bridget Phillipson MP, leading supporter of People’s Vote, has responded to Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan – details of which emerged overnight.
“Few people will see these proposals as a serious offer designed to secure a Brexit deal, and it remains to be seen if the European Commission will even enter into formal negotiations over them,” said the Labour MP.
She said the PM “is ready to force Northern Ireland into a system of double frontiers that will uniquely disadvantage business as well as make the daily lives of those living on or near the border miserable or worse.
“It is a shocking subversion of repeated promises to avoid any hardening of the border in Ireland.”
