Theresa May faced fresh pressure as Nigel Farage launched the Brexit party on Friday ahead of the UK's anticipated participation in the European elections next month.
It came as cross-party talks to break the Brexit deadlock continued at Westminster with Labour's John McDonnell involved in discussions with the prime minister's effective deputy David Lidington.
Elsewhere, Julian Assange’s mother accused Ms May of using her son’s arrest as a distraction from the PM’s “Brexit dog’s breakfast”, after the Wikileaks founder was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy on Thursday.
Chancellor Philip Hammond told reporters in Washington on Friday that a second referendum was “very likely” to be put before parliament, although he admitted there would not be sufficient time before Britain is due to leave the EU.
Please allow a moment for the liveblog to load
Today Nigel Farage is in Westminster where he is launching his Brexit Party. Writing in The Telegraph, he said the party “will ask the electorate not only to support a clean break from the European Union, but also to begin a political revolution in the UK.”
The party currently has nine MEPs, all former Ukip members, including Mr Farage, who will contest the European elections in May if they do happen.
“From disaster springs opportunity,” Mr Farage said. “Next month’s enforced ballot will allow us to bring about a far wider change in our broken political system.”
Government 'halts no-deal Brexit planning' after committing £4bn to preparations
The government has halted all emergency planning for a no-deal Brexit despite committing £4bn to preparations, according to reports.
A leaked email reportedly sent to all civil servants in an unnamed “front line Brexit department” said no-deal operational planning had been suspended with “immediate effect”.
The decision was made by cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, according to the email seen by Sky News.
Theresa May hopes for final shot at forcing Brexit deal through parliament before elections
Theresa May has paved the way for a final shot at pushing a Brexit deal through the House of Commons ahead of European elections in May.
The prime minister and her aides repeatedly highlighted that the country could avoid the ignominy of electing British MEPs to the European parliament if the Commons passes a deal in the coming weeks.
It would also mean Britain would not need the full extension of the Article 50 negotiating period until 31 October offered by European leaders last night – a proposal that saw Tory Brexiteers demand Ms May resign on Thursday.
As Theresa May secures a Brexit extension, what happens next?
After yet another dramatic evening in the Brexit process, EU leaders gathered in Brussels agreed once again to delay Britain’s breakaway from the union.
For purely “technical reasons”, and not because it is Halloween as many highlighted, the leaders of the 27 other member states extended the Article 50 negotiating period until 31 October 2019.
All British adults could be automatically registered to vote under radical plans being considered by Jeremy Corbyn‘s Labour Party.
The move could see around seven million voters being added to the electoral register, with huge numbers of young and low income individuals automatically enrolled for the first time.
Mr Corbyn's party believes the current system of individual registration has so far failed to give a voice to huge swathes of the UK public, and Labour will now examine various models around the world.
According to the most up-to-date analysis by the Electoral Commission, between 7.6 and 8.3 million eligible people were not correctly registered to vote across Great Britain in 2015, including one in three under the age of 34.
Coinciding with today’s voter registration deadline for next month’s local elections, Labour told The Independent it is considering adopting automatic voter registration as party policy.
Read more here
"We have been betrayed and the fightback begins today," he told the Today programme this morning.
In response to the launch of the new Brexit party, which is expected to field candidates in the European elections next month, the charity Hope Not Hate has issued the following warning:
“Nigel Farage is deeply unpleasant. He’s an elitist who rails against the elites, a career politician who rails against career politicians, a wealthy former stockbroker who presents himself as a man of the people. He’ll try and present himself as a respectable Brexiteer but no-one should forget that he campaigned for the likes of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and the right-wing populist AfD party in Germany.“This morning, Nigel Farage said that UKIP has chosen “to allow the far right to join it and effectively take it over” but also said that “there is no difference” between the policies of UKIP and of the Brexit Party.
“HOPE not hate’s campaign focus in this election will be on Stephen Lennon ['Tommy Robinson'], and on stopping UKIP – a party that is now unambiguously on the far right – from winning seats. But given Farage’s track record of inflammatory and divisive comments, we’ll be watching him very, very closely.
“If racist comments from leading members of the Brexit Party are uncovered and they’re not sacked, we will act. If the Brexit Party adopts an agenda of Islamophobia, we will act. If Farage or other candidates engage in the sort of racist dog whistle politics we’ve seen in the past, we will act."
Theresa May's effective deputy David Lidington and Environment Secretary Michael Gove will take part on the government's negotiating side and shadow chancellor John McDonnell for Labour.
It comes after the prime minister met briefly with Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster this week, and hopes in Number 10 that Ms May can still get a deal through parliament in time to avoid the UK participating in the European elections on 23 May.
Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party will heap pressure on the Conservatives as Europe is set to dominate the upcoming European Parliament elections, writes political correspondent Lizzy Buchan.
The former Ukip leader will formally launch his party's campaign for the poll on 23 May as he vowed to challenge the establishment over its "betrayal" on Brexit.
Sir John Curtice, who predicted the shock 2017 election result, said the new Brexit Party and Ukip could snatch around 16% of the vote if the poll takes place, with the Conservatives the hardest hit by such a surge.
Asked by the Press Association if he was expecting progress today he said: "I hope so."
Michael Gove, the environment secretary, entered without responding to questions.
Farage added: "All over the world, people look on with incredulity because they still think that we are a great country," he said. "And the funny thing is that we, the people, still think that we are a great country.
"But our leaders are happy to continue down the path of managed decline.
"I genuinely believe right now, this nation, we are lions led by donkeys."
"I know which one I'd rather have representing us now."
Brexit Party URL taken hostage by pro-EU group because Farage forgot to register the website
Anti-Brexit campaigners have seized a website domain for Nigel Farage’s new party in a bid to disrupt his European election campaign.
The Led By Donkeys group claimed that the former Ukip leader forgot to register the URL for the Brexit Party before its launch.
The group has now set up its own page at thebrexitparty.com with the banner “No Brexit Party – Nigel Farage Doesn’t Represent Britain”.
Sketch: The House of Commons had absolutely nothing new to say, and six more futile months to say it
The EU has staged an intervention on Britain, but here was the House of Commons, checking out of the clinic and heading straight back to its dealer, writes The Independent's political sketch writer Tom Peck.
Diane Abbott says extraditing Assange to US could breach his human rights
Jeremy Corbyn has said Julian Assange should not be extradited to the US following his forcible removal from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The Labour leader urged the UK government to oppose the attempt to put the 47 year-old WikiLeaks founder to trial for obtaining classified information from former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Asked whether she tried to convince him to join her in the Brexit Party, Ms Rees-Mogg said: "No, I totally respect his decision-making process.
"He's an individual with his own mind. We see things differently and we agree what the end result should be - the return of democracy and the return of control."
Addressing whether she believed her brother would eventually join the Brexit Party, Ms Rees-Mogg said: "I'd be very surprised."
Boris Johnson's no-deal Brexit claim was inaccurate, official watchdog rules
Boris Johnson has come under fire from the press regulator after he inaccurately claimed that a no-deal Brexit was the most popular scenario among voters.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) ruled that the former foreign secretary breached accuracy rules in his Telegraph column when he said polls showed no deal was more popular “by some margin” than remaining in the EU or Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
A reader complained to Ipso over the weekly column, saying Mr Johnson, who is tipped as a future Tory leader, had failed to cite any evidence for his claim.
A third of UK adults say their mental health has been affected by Brexit
Uncertainty about the future of Brexit is affecting the mental health of a third of UK adults, a new survey has found.
Around 33 per cent of people said Britain's departure from the European Unionhas had a negative effect on their wellbeing, according to a poll by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).
Older people were more likely to be affected by anxieties over Brexit with 37 per cent of over-65s saying it had a negative impact on their mental wellbeing, compared with just 28 per cent of 16-24 year-olds.
Louise Tyler, a counsellor based in Cheshire, said the UK's uncertain future had left people feeling powerless, which was directly impacting their mental health.
