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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Nicola Slawson (now) and Andrew Sparrow (earlier)

Barnier tells May UK will have to obey EU rules during transition - politics as it happened

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator (left) with Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator (left) with Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome. Photograph: ANSA/CLAUDIO PERI/EPA

Evening summary

We’re going to close this blog for today. Thanks so much for joining us and for all your comments.

Join us again tomorrow, which is set to be an interesting day with Theresa May making a landmark speech on the Brexit negotiations in Florence.

Here’s a final summary of this evening’s news:

Updated

The Guardian has published an obituary for Sir Teddy Taylor, the former Tory MP and one of the most prominent Eurosceptic rebels of the 1990s, who died today.

The former Conservative MP Sir Teddy Taylor, who has died aged 80, was not just a Eurosceptic but a Europhobe; almost a single-issue politician defined by his passionate and lifelong opposition to the European Union. Admirers warmed to his eloquent, quickfire attacks on the European project, but to others he seemed obsessive, and in 1996 he admitted: “I am the biggest Euro-bore there ever was.” Nonetheless, few doubted his courage or the sincerity of his views, which did not help his career prospects.

Anas Sarwar faces fresh controversy

My colleague Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, has this report on Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leadership contender.

Anas Sarwar is facing fresh controversy over his family’s non-unionised cash and carry business after he admitted previously earning up to £20,000 a year from it in share dividends.

His admission raises doubts about his response to questions from the Guardian on Tuesday and to BBC Good Morning Scotland on Wednesday, when he said he received no remuneration from the firm.

Sarwar, who describes himself as a democratic socialist who backs a mandatory £10 minimum wage, has been fending off jibes about the company, United Wholesale (Scotland) Ltd, over its lack of formal union recognition and its refusal to voluntarily pay the so-called real living wage of £8.45 an hour. Nicola Sturgeon goaded him over the issue during first minister’s questions at Holyrood on Thursday.

Under pressure too for his decision to send his children to his old fee-paying private school in Glasgow, Sarwar has repeatedly insisted he has no direct say in the firm’s running as he is not a director or board member, and is a minority shareholder.

The Herald reported on Thursday he had actually been entitled to £20,000 a year in share dividends since 2003, while his wife Furheen took up to £196,000 in total over that time. His spokesman admitted Sarwar frequently took those dividends.

The Guardian asked Sarwar directly about his UWS share earnings on Tuesday, with the question: “Do you actually take any personal wealth from UWS, do you earn anything at all on the shares?”

Sarwar answered: “Do I take any personal wealth? Well I think you can see from my register of interests exactly what my interests are in UWS, and any benefit that I get from UWS.”

He spokesman later confirmed by text Sarwar had no remuneration from the firm. He told the BBC on Wednesday: “I take no remuneration from the company.” His MSPs register of interests shows he has a 23% shareholding in UWS but received no outside income from it or any other source. On paper, those shares are worth £4.8m.

Sarwar’s responses were accurate but arguably incomplete as he opted not to volunteer previous earnings. Sarwar’s spokesman said he stopped taking dividends when he became an MSP in May 2016, but admitted taking the money after losing his Glasgow Central Westminster seat in May 2015, and in previous years.

The Guardian reported on Thursday Sarwar had also received £12,500 in three political donations from UWS soon after he became an MP, in 2010 and 2011. His spokesman said UWS had been regular donors to the Labour party for the past 20 years.

Updated

Alastair Campbell is also making a big speech on Brexit. His is at a dinner for the Confederation of British Industry at Ely Cathedral, this evening.

My colleague Andrew Sparrow has tweeted a quote from the speech, which Campbell has published on his website.

Michael Crick of Channel 4 News has been told that Michel Barnier will respond to Theresa May’s speech pretty quickly tomorrow.

Jeremy Corbyn: Labour is now the mainstream, with Tories in disarray

My colleagues Anushka Asthana and Rowena Mason have interviewed Jeremy Corbyn ahead of the Labour party conference.

He accused Theresa May of presiding over “a government in disarray” and declared that the Labour party revitalised under his leadership now represents the mainstream of British politics.

Here’s some of the key quotes from the interview:

Read the full story here:

Updated

Here’s a not so cheerful thought from the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush for anyone who is sick of talking about Brexit.

Commenting on reports of what may appear in Theresa May’s speech in Florence, Eloise Todd, chief executive of Best for Britain, the campaign group launched by Gina Miller last year, said:

It is reported the prime minister wants to offer to pay £20 billion for single market access and ’some form of customs union’ but hopes to opt out of ECJ oversight and any single market rules - like freedom of movement - she doesn’t want.

Once again this looks like an attempt to dine-out on cake while maintaining a sugar-free diet. She must know this is not realistic.

So it looks like her agenda is to find an excuse to crash out of the EU with no deal at all.

Such an approach would betray everyone whose job depends on trade with Europe, or whose partner or children are from or live elsewhere in Europe. It would be a disaster for Northern Ireland where only two months ago her government released a position paper that stated the UK government ‘must’ reach a deal with the EU.

If Theresa May refuses to take negotiations seriously then we must at least have the option of rejecting her chaotic Brexit full stop.

No Brexit is better than a Bad Brexit.

This is Nicola Slawson taking over from Andrew Sparrow for the evening. Here’s an excerpt from some commentary from Ian Birrell on today’s events.

As May prepared for her latest speech of a lifetime, equally significant was a blizzard of tweets from Johnson’s ally, Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave and widely seen as the strategic brain behind Brexit. These were scathing about “the shambles now unfolding”, which he blamed on the “historic unforgivable blunder” of triggering article 50 too fast and, before adequate preparation. He is right: Britain is in a sorry mess and part of the problem was entering negotiations too soon. Article 50 was designed with a two-year timeframe to deter departures.

But, just as with Johnson’s efforts to take back control of his career, Cummings’s intervention implies that everyone else is at fault rather than the architects of this chaos. Such is their arrogant certainty, they broach no compromise. Cummings savaged the more pragmatic Brexit secretary David Davis, cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood and Philip Hammond, the chancellor striving to protect the economy from the most devastating Brexit impact. Even Whitehall’s human resources machine came under fire.

Read the full opinion piece here:

Afternoon summary

  • Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has said that Britain will have to obey EU rules during any Brexit transition. In a speech highlighting how little progress has been made in the Brexit talks so far, he also said the EU would not give Britain a bespoke trade deal with the benefits of the single market but not the disadvantages - even though some briefing suggests this is still Theresa May’s goal. (See 3.48pm.)
  • Cabinet ministers have given their backing to the Brexit strategy May will set out in her long-awaited speech tomorrow. She discussed it with them at a cabinet meeting lasting more than two hours. She will deliver the speech in Florence tomorrow.

That’s all from me for today.

A colleague is taking over and will keep the blog going for the rest of the afternoon.

Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, has said that Britain’s “Brexit bill” will be much higher than the roughly £20bn reported to be Theresa May’s opening offer. Cable said:

Be warned, the £20bn that Theresa May is reportedly about to offer as the biggest divorce settlement in history would simply be the down payment. Brexit will cost a lot, lot more than this.

This government is being utterly reckless with the public finances by preparing to spend an absolute fortune simply to get out of Europe.

Ministers have told the financial services industry “that Britain will seek to develop a distinct regulatory framework from the EU after Brexit in an effort to secure a long term competitive advantage for banks, fund managers and insurers”, the Financial Times (paywall) reports. The FT says the government envisages a new regime coming into force after the Brexit transition. In the interim, it hopes to preserve regulations similar to the status quo, the FT says.

Tory MP Peter Bone says paying €20bn to EU after Brexit unacceptable

The Conservative MP Peter Bone, a hardline anti-European, told Sky News a few minutes ago that paying €20bn to the EU after Brexit - the sum Theresa May will offer, according to various reports - would be totally unacceptable. He said:

Any “divorce bill” would be too much for me ...

If you ask my constituents, in Wellingborough we want an urgent care centre. We’ve been campaigning for years, and it’s a few million pounds. And we are told there is not enough money for that. If we’re then told we’re giving £20bn to subsidise Romania and Poland, I think my constituents, and I think constituents around the country, would be furious about that. The idea that we continue to pay vast sums of money to the EU would completely break one what was one of the main issues in the referendum. So I don’t think for one minute that the government will contemplate that.

Bone also said he did not think the EU would ever strike a Brexit deal with the UK. “The EU just cannot do a deal with us because if they did a deal with us it might well be the end of their European Union superstate.”

Peter Bone.
Peter Bone. Photograph: Sky News

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg has more briefing on Theresa May’s speech. It firms up what the Financial Times was reporting yesterday.

Barnier tells May UK will have to obey EU rules during transition

Here are the main points from Michel Barnier’s speech. The full text is here.

  • Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said there was effectively only one year left to negotiate a Brexit deal.

If we want a deal, time is of the essence. The Treaty on European Union foresees a period of two years to negotiate withdrawal.

6 months have gone by since Theresa May’s letter on 29 March 2017.

6 months will be necessary to allow for ratification before 29 March 2019.

There is therefore only one year left.

  • He said the EU would not give Britain a bespoke trade deal with the benefits of the single market but not the disadvantages. Barnier has said this before - indeed, many EU leaders have said this repeatedly - but his words are significant because the briefing after today’s cabinet suggests that this is exactly what Theresa May will ask for. (See 1.17pm.) Barnier said:

The future trade deal with the United Kingdom will be particular, as it will be less about building convergence, and more about controlling future divergence. This is key to establishing fair competition.

Naturally, if the United Kingdom wanted to go further than the type of free trade agreement we have just signed with Canada, there are other models on the table.

For example, Norway and Iceland have chosen to be in the Single Market, to accept the rules, and to contribute financially to cohesion policy.

But one thing is sure: it is not – and will not – be possible for a third country to have the same benefits as the Norwegian model but the limited obligations of the Canadian model.

And naturally, any agreement must respect the regulatory autonomy of the EU, as well as the integrity of its legal order.

  • He said that he expected the transition period to be “short”. He used the word twice. Previously he has not been drawn on how long it might last.
  • He insisted that the UK would have to obey EU law - and by implication accept the rule of the European court of justice - during a transition period.

I would like to be very clear: if we are to extend for a limited period the acquis of the EU, with all its benefits, then logically “this would require existing Union regulatory, budgetary, supervisory, judiciary and enforcement instruments and structures to apply” – as recalled in the mandate I received from the European Council, under the authority of President Donald Tusk.

  • He said there would be no transition period if there was no deal. The transition would be part of the withdrawal agreement, he said.
  • He criticised Britain for the lack of progress made in the talks so far. The first phase of the Brexit talks is focusing on money, the rights of EU nationals, and Ireland. But “there is still today major uncertainty on each of the key issues of the first phase”, he claimed. On money, he said the EU wanted to know that financial commitments would be honoured. On EU nationals, he said: “The issue of guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom has not been solved.” And on Ireland he said progress was being made, but “there is still more political work to be done.”
  • He said he would listen “attentively and constructively” to Theresa May’s speech in Florence tomorrow.
  • He said that a “rapid agreement” on the UK’s withdrawal was possible, but he suggested that for that to happen Britain would have to put firm proposals on the table “as soon as next week”.
  • He quoted Machiavelli. He said:

To quote Machiavel: “Dove c’è una grande volontà, non possono esserci grandi difficoltà. [Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.]

Michel Barnier in Rome today.
Michel Barnier in Rome today. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has been speaking to Italian parliamentarians in Rome. The full text of his speech is here.

This is from one of his advisers, Georg Emil Riekeles.

I will post a full summary shortly.

No one from the European commission will be travelling to Florence to listen to Theresa May give her speech, the Independent’s Jon Stone reports.

To be fair, no one suggested they would be going.

(Obviously, they will be following it instead on the Guardian’s live blog.)

Sturgeon says Catalonia's independence referendum should be allowed to go ahead

Nicola Sturgeon has backed Catalonia’s right to hold a referendum on independence, saying she is concerned about attempts by the Spanish government to stop the vote. Speaking at first minister’s questions in Holyrood she said:

I think most people would agree that the situation in Catalonia is of concern.

I hope that there will be dialogue between the Catalan and the Spanish governments to try to resolve the situation. That has got to be preferable to the sight of police officers seizing ballot papers and entering newspaper offices.

It is of course entirely legitimate for Spain to oppose independence for Catalonia but what I think is of concern anywhere is for a state to seek to deny the right of a people to democratically express their will.

The right of self determination is an important international principle and I hope very much that it will be respected in Catalonia and everywhere else.

The Edinburgh agreement is a shining example of two governments with diametrically opposed views on independence nevertheless coming together to agree a process that allowed the people to decide and I think that offers a template that can be used by others elsewhere in the world.

A woman gestures as others wave the ‘’estelada’’ or Catalonia independence flags during a protest in Barcelona, Spain, earlier today.
A woman gestures as others wave the ‘’estelada’’ or Catalonia independence flags during a protest in Barcelona, Spain, earlier today. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, told Sky News as he left Downing Street that the cabinet was “very united” and that they were “all behind the speech”.

Gunther Oettinger, the German European commissioner for budget and human resources, has posted a tweet saying the Brexit talks are stalling.

My colleague Severin Carrell says the Scottish government has now published the transcript of Nicola Sturgeon’s interview with the New Statesman and that it shows that she clearly did talk about deciding “whether” or not to go ahead with a second independence referendum. Initially her office was disputing this. See 11.11am.

Here are some more pictures of Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond leaving cabinet together.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hamond (right) leave Number 10 together.
Boris Johnson and Philip Hamond (right) leave Number 10 together. Photograph: Dinendra Haria/REX/Shutterstock
Johnson and Hammond.
Johnson and Hammond. Photograph: Dinendra Haria/REX/Shutterstock

Then they paused for a chat, out of earshot of the photographers.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond after today’s cabinet meeting.
Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond after today’s cabinet meeting. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Leonard and Sarwar clash at first Scottish Labour leadership hustings

Tensions inside Scottish Labour over Jeremy Corbyn finally erupted in the open during the first leadership hustings in Glasgow on Wednesday night, when leadership hopeful Richard Leonard railed against his colleagues who had attacked Corbyn last year.

Leonard, a former GMB political officer who is the relative unknown in the contest to replace Kezia Dugdale as Scottish leader, did not name him but was aiming directly at his rival Anas Sarwar when he accused people who had criticised Corbyn last year of spreading disunity.

Sarwar, the erstwhile frontrunner for the post but regarded by left-wingers as too centrist, was one of 13 MSPs to sign a letter last year urging Corbyn to consider standing down.

Sarwar and the Corbyn grouping at Holyrood have since made their peace, but the leadership contest is breaking down into another power struggle between the Corbyn camp and Labour’s centrists which has its implications too for control of its national executive. The Scottish leader has an automatic seat on the NEC, as well as controlling Scottish selection procedures and policy – changes which Dugdale fought for and won.

Richard Leonard.
Richard Leonard. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Leonard said:

Last year, some people thought, as an act of luxury, even though we were in third place in Scotland, of causing a split inside the Labour party. I don’t know which planet they’re on but we are in a position where we can’t afford the luxury of that kind of disunity.

In his opening remarks, Leonard might also have been tilting at a controversy over wages at Sarwar’s family business, United Wholesale (Scotland), when he railed against widespread poverty in Glasgow.

Set up by his father Mohammad Sarwar, the UK’s first Muslim MP, it only pays the legal minimum wage of £7.45 an hour, not the living wage of £8.45 which Sarwar supports or the £10 an hour that Corbyn wants introduced. Arguing competition in its sector is too fierce, UWS refuses to voluntarily raise its rates.

Leonard said:

What work there is is all too often precarious, short term, agency and zero hours with one in five Glasgow workers earning less than the living wage of £8.45 an hour.

Sarwar insists he is a minority shareholder and has no directorships or control over company policy, but the attack is sticking. Although he was worked as an NHS dentist, his shares make him a millionaire on paper; he and his wife send their children to Sarwar’s former fee-paying school in Glasgow. He insists he is a democratic socialist.

Unfortunately for Sarwar the shopworkers union Usdaw, which has a handful of members at UWS, came out for Leonard on Thursday morning. Usdaw’s endorsement for Sarwar could have neutralised the UWS attacks. As expected, Leonard is attracting all the union support so far, with the highly powerful Unite union joining the rail unions Aslef and TSSA in backing him yesterday.

Leonard won the strongest, most consistent applause at the event but Sarwar showed greater subtlety and adopted softer tones in his answers on policy questions; Leonard’s voice was stuck in rally mode. He also lost on a few key policy points to Sarwar, failing to confirm at one point that, unlike Sarwar, he supported above inflation pay rises for nurses.

It remains unclear whether Scottish Labour members will be swayed by Leonard’s passionate defence of Corbyn. Scottish fully-paid-up members voted for Corbyn’s rival Owen Smith last year, by 6,856 to 6,042 for Corbyn, although Corbyn’s Scottish supporters insist that was cancelled out by a majority of Scottish affiliates and registered members who backed Corbyn.

Yet the UWS controversy will continue to dog Sarwar. He has not taken any remuneration from UWS but he has benefitted from its profits: it donated £12,500 to his office in 2010 and 2011 while he was MP for Glasgow Central. What he may hope is that this controversy runs out of steam once voting opens in mid-October.

Anas Sarwar.
Anas Sarwar. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg has some fresh briefing on the speech.

Theresa May has always said she wants a bespoke deal for the UK after Brexit, not an off-the-shelf one (ie, Norway or Canada), and she said that again this week. But, as I mentioned earlier, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, seems to think this will be problematic. See 10.22am.

According to the FT’s George Parker on the World at One, ministers were given half an hour to read Theresa May’s speech at 10am. May did not arrive and the meeting did not properly start until 10.30am.

The Downing Street press office normally gives journalist a read-out after cabinet meeting, a (normally fairly bland) summary of what was said. But they are not doing that today. “We can’t talk about cabinet without talking about the speech, and we are not talking about the speech,” a spokesman said.

Here is the Johnson/Hammond “show of unity”.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond leave cabinet together.
Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond leave cabinet together. Photograph: BBC

Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has just left Number 10 with Philip Hammond, the chancellor. The two of them are at opposite ends of the cabinet’s hard/soft Brexit axis, but they both seemed reasonably cheery as they left the meeting in what seemed to be a choreographed “show of unity”.

Updated

Brexit cabinet meeting finishes

The cabinet meeting has finished, and ministers have been leaving Number 10.

Several ministers have left Downing Street, but no one has said anything significant to reporters on the way out.

Former Tory MP Teddy Taylor has died

Sir Teddy Taylor, the former Tory MP and one of the most prominent Eurosceptic rebels of the 1990s, has died, the Press Association reports. He was 80.

Sir Teddy, who had been ill for some months, died in Southend Hospital late on Wednesday, his wife, Sheila Taylor said.

First entering arliament as MP for Glasgow Cathcart in 1964, his political career was marked by a fierce loathing of the European Union.

He quit as a Scottish Office minister in 1971 over Edward Heath’s decision to join what was then the common market.

Two decades later he was among a band of diehard Tory rebels - the so-called “whipless wonders”- who had the whip withdrawn and were kicked out of the party by John Major over their opposition to the Maastricht Treaty.

In 1979 he was elected MP for Southend East in a by-election, having finally lost marginal Glasgow Cathcart, and held the seat until he retired from parliament in 2005.

His wife said that while he never changed his views on Europe, he had remained devoted to his constituency and its people.

“He loved being an MP here. The great love of his life was helping his constituents. He really cared about Southend and was very well-liked by everybody here,” she said.

Sir Teddy Taylor.
Sir Teddy Taylor. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

In his Telegraph article Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former co chief of staff, accuses the Treasury of being too gloomy about Brexit. (See 10.58am.)

Sky’s Faisal Islam points out that, if Downing Street wants to show that the Treasury is being too negative, it could always publish the internal government reports about the impact of Brexit.

The Green MP Molly Scott Cato has been trying to get the government to publish these 50-plus studies. Yesterday on Twitter she posted the response she got from the Brexit department.

Sky’s Tom Boadle says the Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam, who has a meeting at Number 10 today, has turned up. Lam is meant to be meeting Damian Green, the first secretary of state.

And the Tory MP Bernard Jenkin has bowled up for some reason, my colleague Peter Walker says.

Theresa May is going to give her speech at the Santa Maria Novella church in Florence, it has revealed.

UPDATE: On Twitter Chris Brooke has sent me this.

Updated

The Brexit cabinet meeting is now into its third hour. This is from the BBC’s Vicki Young.

The Spectator’s political editor James Forsyth has a good article about the Conservative party’s Brexit splits in this week’s magazine (paywall). He says those in cabinet arguing for what is being called an “EEA [European economic area] minus” Brexit outcome are in the ascendant.

Barely a week ago a ministerial meeting about the Florence speech broke up without agreement because Michael Gove had concerns about the ‘end state’ that it indicated. No one in the cabinet disputes that Britain must leave the EU single market. Free movement of people — the price of single market membership — is out of the question after the Brexit vote. But a close second to single market membership is being proposed. This would involve Britain ending free movement, but doing everything else it can to stay in regulatory alignment with the EU’s internal market: what one cabinet minister calls EEA-minus (meaning European Economic Area). Britain would have something close to internal market membership on condition that it would not diverge from the EU on an issue without prior agreement.

To Brexiteers inside government, this removes one of the main points of leaving: the chance to chart a different course on issues such as the economy and technological and medical research. One laments: ‘They’ll have us over a barrel for ever more. It is the opposite of taking back control.’ Critics complain that this plan ‘is coming from a place of trying to keep everything the same as far as possible’. They fear Brexit might not mean Brexit after all.

But the EEA-minus crowd — led by Chancellor Philip Hammond and Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood (one thing that Brexit should explode is the myth that the civil service are impartial actors) — are the ones with their tails up. Talking to keen Brexiteers in the past few days I have sensed an immense nervousness about where things are going. There is a general feeling that they are being successfully cast as zealots and are losing the internal argument. By contrast, the cabinet ministers pushing for EEA-minus (who voted Remain) are upbeat. One predicts: ‘That’s where we’ll end up. Not in but very close.’

But Forsyth points out that pro-Brexit Tories, particularly those MPs in the ERG (European Research Group), the caucus pushing for a hardish Brexit, would oppose this. And it is not even clear if it is on offer either, Forsyth points out.

Then we come to the third issue: one that the British Brexit debate too often forgets: there is another side in this negotiation. Even if May is persuaded to hug Europe close, the EU may have other ideas. One figure who has the ear of Davis at the Department for Exiting the European Union says: ‘EEA-lite is a non-starter as the EU won’t accept it without free movement’, which the referendum took off the table. If this is the case, it will render much of the governmental discussion of the past few weeks irrelevant.

Forsyth also says some civil servants are starting to cover their backs because they fear Brexit could turn out so badly that it results in a Chilcot-style inquiry. “I understand that civil servants in David Davis’s department for exiting the European Union have taken to writing emails setting out the problems, chiefly to ensure that their backs are covered should any Chilcot-style inquiry look into what went wrong,” he writes.

Boris Johnson talking 'nonsense' about people having split allegiances, says Verhofstadt

Boris Johnson faced strong criticism after publishing his Daily Telegraph article last week (paywall) for reviving the discredited claim that leaving the EU would benefit the UK to the tune of £350m a week. His comment about not paying for the access to the single market was also significant, because it was seen as an attempt to constrain Theresa May’s options, although it is now clear that he would accept payments during a transition.

But Johnson also infuriated pro-Europeans by suggesting that those with an allegiance to the EU could not be fully patriotic. He said:

I look at so many young people with the 12 stars lipsticked on their faces and I am troubled with the thought that people are beginning to have genuinely split allegiances ...

You don’t have to be some tub-thumping nationalist to worry that a transnational sense of allegiance can weaken the ties between us; and you don’t have to be an out‑and‑out nationalist to feel an immense pride in this country and what it can do.

Speaking in Dublin today Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit spokesman, said Johnson was talking “nonsense”. He said:

I note that some British politicians, not to name Boris Johnson, criticise their countrymen and women for wanting to keep their European identity. He accused them even of split allegiance. I think that is a binary, old fashioned and reductionist understanding of identity. I think we need to be smarter, and more open and more inventive than that.

It’s not your origin or the fact that by accident that you were born in this or that village, city or country that makes you a good citizen. No, it’s the fact that you embrace the values of your community.

I think it’s nonsense to talk about split allegiance. It’s perfectly possible, I think - I never practice it - but to feel English, British and European at the same time. And I think it is perfectly normal to be a Dubliner, Irish and European without being schizophrenic about split allegiance.

It is this position that needs to be defended by our European Union just as the European Union needs to defend there is no return to the past, to hard borders on our continent, and certainly not to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Guy Verhofstadt (left) meeting the Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar and the Europe affairs minister Helen McEntee outside the goverment buildings in Dublin today.
Guy Verhofstadt (left) meeting the Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar and the Europe affairs minister Helen McEntee outside the goverment buildings in Dublin today. Photograph: Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images

My colleague Peter Walker is in Downing Street.

Sturgeon says case for second EU referendum getting 'more and more difficult to resist'

Nicola Sturgeon seems to be weighing up the merits of holding two fresh referendums after she told the New Statesman the case for a second referendum on Brexit is becoming “more and more difficult to resist”.

In a wide-ranging interview Sturgeon supported claims that voters last year had no clear idea what Brexit meant, and could deserve another say on the final EU separation deal. Yet her interview also presented further evidence she is becoming increasingly ambivalent about staging the second independence referendum which she had demanded in March, and has since stepped back from.

Asked whether she would support a fresh vote on Brexit once the deal is agreed, she said there were striking contrasts between the significant amount of information about Scotland after independence presented in the first Scottish referendum in 2014 and the complete lack of detail about the UK after Brexit offered last year. She said

People did not know what they were voting for [in June 2016]. There was no proposition put forward by anyone that could then be tested and that they could be held to account on. The very fact we have no idea what the final outcome might look like suggests there is a case for a second referendum that I think there wasn’t in 2014. It may become very hard to resist.

She was also asked about her plans for a second Scottish vote. And her answer there was ambiguous. The NS reports today that it asked her: “Will she attempt to hold a second referendum? Could it be off?” To which Sturgeon reportedly replied: “The honest answer to that is: I don’t know.”

Scottish newspapers were struck by that apparent retreat. Sturgeon’s chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, took to Twitter to challenge that reporting, insisting Sturgeon was referring to its timing and not whether it would actually take place. Lloyd tweeted:

The NS has printed an addendum online apologising for the misinterpretation, but even that degree of ambivalence on timing is striking. Sturgeon told the Guardian two days before June’s general election she did not know then exactly when a second referendum would be staged, but still saw it happening “when the Brexit deal is done, when we know the relationship moving forward”.

The SNP’s loss of 21 Westminster seats that Thursday forced her to then announce she would not decide on its timing until autumn 2018 at the earliest. But in her statement to MSPs in June, Sturgeon framed it as a question of ‘when’, not ‘if’. In her New Statesman interview, she suggested greater ambivalence on ‘if’, as well. She told the magazine:

Obviously I’m thinking pretty deeply about it ... [I’m] saying, okay, people are not ready to decide we will do that, so we have to come back when things are clearer and decide whether we want to do it and in what timescale.

There is no evidence of significant public appetite for a second Brexit vote, and Scottish appetites for a second independence referendum remains muted. Sturgeon may not really believe another EU referendum will take place, but she also knows she can’t do both before the next Holyrood election in 2021. Perhaps she is really hinting at neither taking place.

Nicola Sturgeon (centre) playing a block stacking game when she met young carers during a visit to the Edinburgh Young Carers Project yesterday.
Nicola Sturgeon (centre) playing a block stacking game when she met young carers during a visit to the Edinburgh Young Carers Project yesterday. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images

May's speech won't generate 'an immediate breakthrough' in Brexit talks, says her former co chief of staff

In her last big speech on Brexit, deliver at Lancaster House in January, Theresa May said that “every stray word and every hyped up media report is going to make it harder for us to get the right deal for Britain”. She went on:

However frustrating some people find it, the government will not be pressured into saying more than I believe it is in our national interest to say. Because it is not my job to fill column inches with daily updates, but to get the right deal for Britain.

The speech was overseen by her then co chief of staff, Nick Timothy, who may even have written some of it. But Timothy resigned after the election and now he has a new job - filling columns for the Daily Telegraph and the Sun, with regular updates about Brexit!

Today he is in the Telegraph, and he has some interesting things to say.

  • Timothy says May’s speech tomorrow will not generate “an immediate breakthrough” in the Brexit talks.

Nobody should anticipate an immediate breakthrough. In public, the Europeans will be surly. Expect negative briefing from the commission, sarcasm from Guy Verhofstadt, and a polite but not positive reply from Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker.

But EU leaders should be more positive in private, Timothy says, and he claims that what May has to say about UK payments to the EU - offering to pay an exit bill, “on condition that the price is reasonable and our future relationship is agreed” - should “prompt further talks that will get the negotiators to stage two.” Stage two is the part where the UK and the EU will start discussing their future trade relationship. The EU will not open talks on this topic until sufficient progress has been made on money, EU nationals’ rights and Ireland.

  • He criticised the Treasury for being too negative about Brexit. He complains about “the Treasury’s reluctance even to mention such positives of leaving the EU as the Brexit dividend (public money that is freed up).”
  • He suggests reaching agreement on a trade relationship that will allow the UK to diverge from EU regulations, but not by so much as to make the EU think the UK is getting an unfair advantage, is essentially an “inherently technical” problem that can be resolved.

The trickiest issue, however, is about managing what the negotiators call regulatory divergence. The fact that Britain already follows EU rules means that, in theory, a trade deal should be simpler to negotiate. But what happens after Brexit when the two sides diverge? There needs to be agreement that our economies remain in close regulatory alignment. That is what sophisticated free trade agreements require of their signatories. The question, however, is the extent of that alignment.

The EU will not agree anything that allows Britain to become a Singapore-style tax haven, but few in Britain want that anyway. The Europeans, however, might push for such close alignment that Britain would need their agreement to change our laws and regulations. That would be unacceptable, and so would an agreement on alignment that prevented Britain from negotiating its own trade deals with other countries.

A balance will need to be struck and a process for managing divergence agreed. The prime minister does not need to set out the exact solution, but she can set out the government’s parameters.

These details are important but they are inherently technical.

Michel Barnier seems to be much more sceptical about this problem being resolved in a relatively straightforward way. See 10.22am.

  • Johnson says cabinet splits could stop Britain getting a good Brexit deal.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond – who has also been on Brexit manoeuvres this summer – must understand that the surest route to a bad deal, or no deal at all, is to go on behaving as they are. They must stop their games now, because the stakes for Britain’s future are too high.

This is not quite the line Timothy took in his debut Sun column earlier this month, when he said: “Ministers have resolved their biggest differences. The government has a settled strategy [on Brexit].”

Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former co chief of staff, photographed at last year’s Tory party conference
Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former co chief of staff, photographed at last year’s Tory party conference Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has been holding a series of meetings in private to brief people in Brussels on the talks. According to Politico Europe, which has a good report of what he has been saying, Barnier has been telling people it will be like any divorce, “painful, not pleasant, and costly.”

According to the article, Barnier is saying it will take years, “much more time”, to negotiate a final EU-UK trade deal. The UK government wants to have the outline of a deal ready by the end of next year, so that when Brexit happens it will be clear what is coming after the transition.

Politico also says Barnier has also been suggesting that the EU will not easily agree to a bespoke deal.

In meetings with public officials, private citizen groups and business executives, Barnier has warned in recent days that the U.K. will not achieve the “special” bespoke trade deal it has demanded without lengthy negotiations after its official departure. He said the U.K. was rejecting existing models for a future relationship such as those with Norway and Switzerland and advocating a path of divergence from EU standards. The risk for the EU, he said, is that Britain would, in future, try to gain a competitive trade advantage by adopting lower social or environmental standards.

“We are not going to mix up models,” Barnier has said, according to people who have heard his most recent stump speech, in which he refers to existing EU arrangements with Turkey, Norway and others. “But each model is available.”

This is significant because May, when asked if she favours the Norway option, or the Switzerland option, or the Canada option, repeatedly says that she wants a bespoke British option, not something off-the-shelf. She said the same thing again only three days ago in Canada.

Michel Barnier.
Michel Barnier. Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters

Here are some more pictures of cabinet minsters arriving for today’s meeting.

Michael Fallon, defence secretary.
Michael Fallon, defence secretary. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, Conservative party chairman.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, Conservative party chairman. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Liam Fox, international trade secretary.
Liam Fox, international trade secretary. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
Sajid Javid, communities secretary.
Sajid Javid, communities secretary. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
David Davis, Brexit secretary.
David Davis, Brexit secretary. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

According to Sky’s Adam Boulton, Boris Johnson’s six-hour transatlantic ‘make-up’ summit with Theresa May on the plane back to the UK didn’t amount to much. She told him she wanted to get some sleep, Boulton claimed.

Here is Boris Johnson arriving for cabinet. On the way in one of the camermen or reporters asked if he had “backed down”. He did not reply.

This is from the Press Association’s Richard Wheeler.

Here are some cabinet ministers arriving for today’s meeting.

Greg Clark, the business secretary.
Greg Clark, the business secretary. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Chris Grayling, the transport secretary.
Chris Grayling, the transport secretary. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Gavin Williamson, the chief whip
Gavin Williamson, the chief whip Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Justine Greening, education secretary.
Justine Greening, education secretary. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Updated

Boris is not the only member of the Johnson household who has been filing copy to the media recently. His wife Marina Wheeler QC, has an article in this week’s Spectator complaining about the European court of justice. She has got form on this subject; she wrote a lengthy blog in February last year criticising David Cameron’s EU renegotiation because of its failure to constrain the ECJ sufficiently, which was published shortly before her husband’s surprise announcement that he would campaign for leave.

In her new article she says the EU charter of fundamental rights is allowing the ECJ to adjudicate on issues relating to human rights and security in ways that were never originally intended. Here’s an extract

In due course the ECJ will rule on the scope of its own jurisdiction. There is no reason to think it will choose to limit its reach. On the contrary, it has shown itself to be increasingly willing to thwart the will of member states. To the dismay of human rights groups, it blocked a long-standing wish that the EU become a signatory to the ECHR [European convention on human rights]. Why? Because deferring to judgments from Strasbourg would impede its own ambitions to become the EU’s premier human rights court.

In other words, governments of countries that are signatories to the ECHR are bound by decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. But the EU decided that it stands above any such external check on its powers.

Many people were surprised by the integrationist ambitions set out by Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union address. This is because they have chosen to look the other way while power and authority have moved ineluctably to the EU’s federal institutions — away from member states, and their citizens. Reclaiming sovereignty allows the nation to decide for itself how to balance the needs of security with the requirements of privacy and keep its citizens (and visitors) safe. Co-operating with others to improve security plainly makes sense. Giving up the right to decide does not.

The article is not hugely relevant to the current cabinet arguments about Brexit because Theresa May has firmly said that the ECJ will no longer have a direct say over British law after Brexit. (What happens during the transition, and whether the final Brexit outcome involves the UK having to follow ECJ rulings indirectly, remains to be resolved.)

But the charter of fundamental rights is a live issue because the EU withdrawal bill will stop it applying to the UK after Brexit, but ministers will come under pressure during the committee stage to keep it in some form.

Marina Wheeler.
Marina Wheeler. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Theresa May is back in Downing Street. This is from Political Pictures, an account run by a photographer who covers Westminster.

Here is the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg on today’s cabinet meeting.

That prompted this from Nick Robinson, Kuenssberg’s predecessor as political editor.

And that prompted this reply.

Theresa May is back in the UK. She flew back on a plane with Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and they landed roughly an hour ago. But, as Sky’s Beth Rigby points out, they left separately.

Later they will both be in Downing Street for the cabinet meeting where cabinet ministers will discuss the major Brexit speech that May is giving in Florence tomorrow.

I will be focusing mostly on that today. Downing Street has said that it will not be briefing the speech in advance, but there is plenty of speculation about what it will, and will not say, in today’s papers and on the web.

Here is the Guardian’s overnight story about the cabinet meeting.

And we have also got a story about how Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, thanks that Brussels fears an enfeebled May will not be able to stand by any pledges she makes in Italy tomorrow. Starmer’s view is based on what he learnt from talks with all the major players in the EU’s negotiating team

There is only one main item in the diary today.

10am: The cabinet meets to discuss May’s Brexit speech.

But we’ve also got Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s lead Brexit spokesman in Dublin, where he is speaking to parliamentarians about the UK’s Brexit plans.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard’s Playbook. Here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s politics stories in the papers. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must reads.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.

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