Good morning and welcome to our continuing daily briefing as the UK continues to pick up the pieces after the Brexit vote.
Theresa May and Boris Johnson set to announce bids
The coming battle between Theresa May and Boris Johnson is the focus of the Guardian’s lead story . Both Tory ‘big beasts’ will today announce they are running to become leader of the Conservative party, with each claiming to be the unifying candidate Britain needs as its prime minister after the divisive EU referendum.
The home secretary will be the first to make her ambitions known in a speech at around 9.30am, saying the UK needs to be “a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us”. Johnson, who is widely considered the frontrunner after leading the leave campaign, will make his own declaration at around 11.30am – just half an hour before the deadline for nominations closes.
Alan Travis in the Guardian asks “who is more liberal”?
Angela Eagle set to launch Labour leadership bid
Meanwhile, in the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn continues to resist pressure to resign, including from his deputy Tom Watson. Today Angela Eagle, the former shadow business secretary, is expected to launch a bid for the leadership, pledging to reunify the fractured party, which has been locked in a vicious internal battle since the weekend. An ally of Eagle said:
We’ve got the numbers, we’ve got the big hitters, it will probably be [Thursday] afternoon.
Earlier, Watson became the most senior party figure to call on Corbyn to resign, telling the BBC: “
It’s a great tragedy. He does have a members’ mandate, but those members who join a political party know that you also need a parliamentary mandate if you are to form a government. You have to have the authority of the members and your members of parliament, and I’m afraid he doesn’t have that with our MPs.
Former Labour leaders Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband added their voices to those calling for him to go. Corbyn’s response?
“Leave it, Jez, ‘e ain’t worth it. We’ve all ‘ad a drink.” - “Come back here, Miliband, and say that to my face.” pic.twitter.com/zOWQdBXZ8D
— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) June 29, 2016
Last night, Jamie Reed, the MP for Copeland, tweeted a strong-worded letter he sent to the Labour leader outlining why he should resign, in which he says his “duplicitious behaviour is not worthy of any democratic politician. There is nothing Labour about it.”
My letter to @jeremycorbyn tonight. pic.twitter.com/QHYkhs7sx0
— Jamie Reed (@jreedmp) June 29, 2016
Nonetheless Corbyn continues to draw crowds and addressed a rally outside the School of African Studies in London last night.
A new political party
Arron Banks, the Brexit campaign’s biggest financial donor has said he is considering backing a new political party taking in members of Ukip, Labour and the Conservatives.
In a sign that the referendum aftershocks already rocking the Conservative and Labour parties could be spreading to Ukip, the insurance multi-millionaire and Ukip funder criticised the party’s growth and proposed harnessing Brexit support in a new party. When asked if Farage would be in charge, he said the Ukip leader “may have had enough”. He added:
I think Ukip needs to be reformed root and branch and we will be looking at that. With a million supporters there’s also a wonderful opportunity if we want to do something, to back something. I think a new party, a brand new party.
Ukip grew so rapidly it had problems with personnel and all sorts of issues and I believe that could be better tackled with a new party.
What the papers say
The splash across the front of The Times is drawn from an opinion piece inside the paper by May, in which she seeks to cast herself as a “One Nation” Tory figure who can unite the UK and her party amid divisions in the wake of last week’s Brexit vote as she set out her pitch for the Tory leadership.
It includes a not-so-subtle dig at Boris Johnson, when which she writes about the struggles of some in society:
Frankly, not everybody in Westminster understands what it’s like to live like this. And some need to be told that what the government does isn’t a game.
A photo of Michael Gove and his wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, are splashed across the front of the Telegraph, which focuses on the leaked email in which she warned him about the risks of backing Boris Johnson for the Tory Party leadership without ‘specific’ guarantees on immigration controls.
The Telegraph goes on to report that “friends” of Johnson said he would set out a “positive” vision for Britain as he is joined by Gove today during the launch of a bid to succeed David Cameron at the helm of the Tory Party and the country.
The Financial Times features Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, exchanging pleasantries with Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission.
Its lead story reports how European leaders “issued a stark rebuff” to British hopes of a favourable new trade deal with the EU yesterday, hardening their conditions for allowing access to the single market after the UK leaves the union.
The FT reports that Dalia Grybauskaite, Lithuania’s president, summed up the “stoical” mood at the summit in Brussels, when she said: “Today is about us. Of course we will move on. Who will stop us?”
You should also know
- The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, held a series of meetings in Brussels to press the case for Scotland’s continued membership of the EU.
- EU leaders agreed a joint position on the Brexit vote, saying Britain should notify them of its intention to leave as soon as possible after a new prime minister was in place. They insisted the UK has no prospect of keeping access to the single market unless it continues to accept EU migration.
- The work and pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, was forced to defend his previous opposition on same-sex marriage as his bid for the Tory leadership got off to a rocky start.
Thought for the day
Jeremy Corbyn must do the decent thing. Prune that rosebush outside his front door so he doesn’t have to duck under it every morning.
— Mark Gatiss (@Markgatiss) June 28, 2016
