“The European Union is pursuing a similar goal to Hitler in trying to create a powerful superstate, Boris Johnson says. In a dramatic interview with the Telegraph, he warns that while bureaucrats in Brussels are using ‘different methods’ from the Nazi dictator, they share the aim of unifying Europe under one ‘authority’. But the EU’s ‘disastrous’ failures have fuelled tensions between member states and allowed Germany to grow in power” – Sunday Telegraph
>Yesterday:
Comment: Scott Mann: Let’s write a Brexit cheque for policing and the national security service
“David Cameron believes a Brexit supporter is likely to succeed him as prime minister and that George Osborne has ‘a lot of ground to make up’ if he is to become leader. The prime minister has revealed privately that he fears the European Union campaign will give Eurosceptics the whip hand… Cameron has also told ministers that he thinks Boris Johnson, the most prominent face in the Brexit campaign, is best placed to win the leadership election if it happens before 2019” – Sunday Times (£)
“Nigel Farage has backed Boris Johnson’s bid to succeed David Cameron if Britain votes to quit the EU – and held out the prospect of working for ‘Prime Minister’ Boris. The UKIP leader compared fellow anti-European Johnson to former US President Ronald Reagan – and said he would be a much better leader than ‘pro-Brussels fanatic’ Cameron. In his first major interview since it was announced that he will take on Cameron in a TV debate on the EU, Farage admitted he was a ‘Boris fan’ – while branding Cameron ‘devious’” – Mail on Sunday
“Boris Johnson has been accused by the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, the Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames, of ‘fundamentally dishonest gymnastics’ for criticising a planned multibillion-pound trade deal between the US and the EU that he had previously lauded as ‘Churchillian’ for its brilliance. Soames, the MP for Mid Sussex, said Johnson’s change of position on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was yet more evidence of his ‘complete lack of credibility and coherence’ in arguing the economic case for Britain to leave the EU” – Observer
“The prime minister is not surprised and only passingly irritated by Boris being Boris and opting opportunistically for Brexit. He still says Johnson will be offered a big cabinet job in the post-referendum reshuffle. His fury is reserved for Gove, though the justice secretary looks unsackable after shooting to the top of this month’s leadership poll on the ConservativeHome website” – Adam Boulton, Sunday Times (£)
“A crackdown on hate preachers will be announced in the Queen’s Speech this week as the government steps up its efforts to tackle the ‘poisonous narrative’ of Islamist extremism. For the first time, sweeping new laws will ban hate speakers from working with children and other vulnerable groups, in the same way that paedophiles are vetted to stop them being given jobs in schools” – Sunday Telegraph
>Today:
Tory Diary: Is the Extremism Bill extreme?
>Yesterday:
Tory Diary: Corbyn’s hand in Cameron’s Queen’s Speech?
“HS2 has admitted that ‘nothing is ruled out’ in a cost-cutting exercise which could see sizeable parts of the controversial high-speed project shelved… If costs for the existing scheme cannot be brought down, one option under consideration is to delay or abandon altogether the section to Manchester and build the line only as far as Crewe” – Sunday Telegraph
“Jeremy Corbyn has urged Blairites to get behind his anti-austerity drive as Labour picks a junior doctor to fight in the latest London by-election. Mr Corbyn was addressing moderates at a meeting of the Progress think tank when he insisted that he wanted to build an ‘inclusive politics’ that brought in more people. His speech, which brought polite applause from the crowd, came as councillor and junior doctor Rosena Allin-Khan was selected as the party’s candidate for the Tooting by-election” – Mail on Sunday
“A rare image of the Queen has been released as part of the celebrations to mark the monarch’s 90th birthday. The photo, seen publicly for the first time, shows a young, smiling, Princess Elizabeth with her sister and their father. Princess Margaret and George VI are each holding one of the Queen’s beloved corgis” – Sunday Telegraph
“Hillary Clinton is considering choosing the liberal Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren as her vice- presidential running mate to form an all-female ticket against Donald Trump. Democratic party leaders increasingly fear that Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, could be badly damaged by an FBI investigation of her emails and by the continued primary successes of her septuagenarian socialist rival, Bernie Sanders” – Sunday Times (£)