Brexit weekly briefing: election vote nears but fight is far from finished
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Version 0 of 1. Response to London Bridge attack may shape political landscape leading up to election vote Welcome to the Guardian’s weekly Brexit briefing. If you’d like to receive this as a weekly email, sign up here. You can catch our latest Brexit Means … podcast here, and for daily updates head to Andrew Sparrow’s politics live blog. Top stories The penultimate week of the election campaign began badly for Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour leader, grilled by the BBC’s Andrew Neil, insisted antisemitism had not risen in Labour on his watch and resisted repeated calls to apologise to Britain’s Jews. Things looked up somewhat, however, when he presented a 451-page dossier which he said proved the showing the US preferred a no-deal Brexit and was demanding the NHS would be “on the table” in talks on a future trade deal. Apparently rattled by an in-depth YouGov “MRP” poll (of the kind that predicted the outcome of the 2017 election) showing the Conservatives on course for a comfortable 68-seat majority, Labour instigated a tactical switch from going after Tory marginals to consolidating seats they already hold and trying to win back leave voters. The Lib Dems, meanwhile, were told by their former leader Vince Cable that their policy of scrapping Brexit without another referendum – which looks like doing them no favours with voters – was “a distraction and not a very helpful one”. The Conservatives, for their part, were embarrassed by Boris Johnson’s decision not to take part in a Channel 4 climate debate, prompting the broadcaster to replace him with a melting ice statue (thought not in the prime minister’s image). Johnson claimed a Tory government would be freed up to give more state aid to struggling companies after leaving the EU, but faced criticism over whether he was prepared to face a Neil inquisition of the kind that had posed Corbyn such problems. The row is unresolved, but tragedy – in the form of a London Bridge terror attack that left two dead – prompted the BBC to invite the PM on to Andrew Marr’s show anyway, where he blamed Labour for the early release of the killer and made a series of questionable and downright inaccurate statements. The independent and respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said neither the Conservatives nor Labour were offering a “properly credible prospectus” in their respective manifestos. And in the polls, the gap between the two parties narrowed. What next First, the election is far from over: no less an authority than Dominic Cummings warned Tory campaigners it was way tighter than it looked. And if he does not win a clear majority, academics said, Johnson may be forced to hold a second referendum. Even if he does it won’t be plain sailing: Ivan Rogers, the UK’s ex-ambassador to the EU, fired another blistering Brexit broadside, saying “diplomatic amateurism” and the PM’s “strategy errors” were sowing the seeds of “the biggest crisis of Brexit to date”. But things may not be that easy on the EU side either, warned the incoming European council president Charles Michel: Brexit may have brought the EU27 together, but the next phase could see internal divisions emerging over trade talks with the UK. Best of the rest Facebook bans Tories’ ‘distorted’ party advert with Laura Kuenssberg UK factories are laying off workers at fastest rate for seven years Lib Dems warn of Brexit brain drain as EU academics quit Britain’s last EU commissioner: ‘There isn’t any pomp, but it is a moment’ Net migration from EU into UK at lowest level since 2003, ONS says Michael Heseltine appears with Lib Dems to urge tactical voting No-deal Brexit ‘would cost UK car industry £40bn by 2024’ Top comment In the Observer, Andrew Rawnsley argues there’s no more deceptive slogan of this election campaign than “get Brexit done”: Top Tweet A famous actor intervenes … |