‘David Davis last night warned France and Germany that more countries could quit the EU if they make a doomed bid to ‘punish’ Britain over Brexit…The minister also made a withering attack on the MPs leading demands for Parliament to be given a vote on the terms of Britain’s negotiation. They include ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband, ex-Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg and two Tory ministers sacked by Theresa May, Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan. Mr Davis told them: ‘The mandate for Britain to leave the European Union is clear, overwhelming, and unarguable.’ He said that, while MPs would be consulted, they would not be able to dictate terms, ‘micro-manage’ the process or frustrate the wishes of the people.’ – Daily Mail
>Today:
>Yesterday: Nick Boles on Comment: Immigration. Control and openness aren’t opposites – they go together
‘Theresa May has suggested she could have found herself an ally in the UK’s Brexit negotiations in her Danish counterpart. The Prime Minister said after meeting Lars-Lokke Rasmussen in Copenhagen that he wants to “stand up for free trade”, an issue on which the UK and Denmark “firmly agrees” on…Speaking alongside Mr Rasmussen after their talks, the PM said: “As you have said Lars, we want to stand up for free trade – we want to ensure that people recognise the importance of free trade as a spur to economic growth. “That is something on which I think we think very much alike and on which we firmly agree and we certainly want to be taking that argument forward and continuing to promote free trade.”’ – The Sun (£)
‘Cabinet ministers are being warned that the Treasury could lose up to £66 billion a year in tax revenues under a “hard Brexit”, according to leaked government papers. GDP could fall by as much as 9.5 per cent if Britain leaves the single market and has to rely on World Trade Organisation rules for trading with the continent, compared with if it stayed within the EU, the forecasts show. Such a steep drop in revenue would force ministers to slash public spending or raise taxes. The £66 billion drop, contained in a draft cabinet committee paper seen by The Times, is nearly a tenth of the £716 billion that the government is projected to collect in taxes this year, and is equivalent to 65 per cent of the annual budget of NHS England.’ – The Times (£)
>Today: Anthony Browne on Comment: Here’s why passporting is vital to the City. And why Ministers must strive to keep it.
‘Manufacturing giant JCB is to end its membership of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) amid reports that the digger maker was unhappy with the lobby group’s anti-Brexit stance. JCB, which employs close to 6,500 people in the UK and sells to 150 countries, notified the organisation of its intention to leave following the EU referendum result this summer. While JCB and the CBI confirmed the move, both declined to comment on the reasons behind the manufacturer’s decision…Sources told Sky News that the CBI’s warnings of the economic cost of Brexit had triggered its decision.’ – Daily Telegraph
‘Nigel Farage almost cost the Leave side victory in the EU referendum, the leader of the ‘Out’ campaign claimed yesterday. Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave, said that without the Ukip leader’s intervention, the Brexit side would have won by 60 per cent to 40. In the end, Leave won a narrow victory of less than 52 per cent to 48. Mr Cummings wrote on Twitter: ‘Farage and the idiots around him came within a whisker of losing us the Referendum.’ He said if Mr Farage had been in charge of the Leave campaign, up to 70 per cent of people would have voted to Remain. Ukip’s interim leader praised Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump yesterday, saying he had dominated the latest TV debate like a ‘silverback gorilla’.’ – Daily Mail
‘It would be “a really good result” if Britain ends up taking only 300 lone child refugees from the camp in Calais, the home secretary has said…Rudd, who is meeting the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, on Monday to discuss dismantling the camp, told the Daily Mail: “We have about 100 in train who we hope to bring over in the next few weeks but on top of that I’ve made it clear that we will take children from the Dubs agreement.” The government committed to relocate a number of lone child migrants to the UK “as soon as possible” under the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act, which gave support to unaccompanied children across Europe. No figure was specified in the legislation, but it was understood that homes would be found for thousands.’ – The Guardian
‘Britain must stop “fetishising” the NHS budget and give more taxpayers’ money to councils, one of the health service’s leaders has said. The political mantra of protecting the NHS is damaging the health service because hospitals are used as an expensive way to look after the elderly, Stephen Dorrell, chairman of the NHS Confederation and a former Conservative health secretary, said. He said that Theresa May could not claim to support the NHS while starving councils of money for social care for the elderly, which he branded “insane economics and bad social policy”.’ – The Times (£)
‘The Tories raced into a 17-point poll lead over Labour today in a post-conference boost for Theresa May. Experts calculated that the remarkable lead for the Conservatives – the second largest ever recorded – would increase the Government’s slim majority to a massive 114 seats in the Commons if the result was repeated at a general election. It will increase the pressure on Mrs May to call an early election as she faces tough challenges ahead to get controversial measures through Parliament. The poll compounded Labour’s misery with just 26 per cent of respondents saying they would back the party in a general election and tonight Labour MPs turned on Jeremy Corbyn as he addressed the parliamentary party for the first time since his re-election as leader. ‘ – Daily Mail
‘Jeremy Corbyn is incapable of proper leadership, unable to win over new voters and could condemn Labour to catastrophic defeat, according to MPs returning to the party’s front bench. Some Labour MPs who resigned from Mr Corbyn’s team over the summer have agreed to return after his second decisive leadership victory. The number of MPs returning is a sign that many have concluded that Mr Corbyn will lead the party into the next election. So far 25 MPs who quit have taken up frontbench jobs in the reshuffle. Many of those who have accepted jobs have returned only months after condemning Mr Corbyn’s leadership as well as writing off his chances of securing anything other than electoral defeat.’ – The Times (£)
‘Senior British MPs have distanced themselves from Donald Trump following the publication of his highly controversial comments about women. Senior Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith previously said they would never vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, with the former saying last month that he would ‘almost certainly vote for Trump if I was American’. But following Friday’s release of a video from 2005 of Mr Trump boasting that stars like him can ‘do anything’ to women, including grabbing them ‘by the p***y’, Mr Rees-Mogg made clear he ‘could not personally vote for either candidate’. And Mr Duncan Smith’s office made clear today that he is not endorsing Mr Trump.’ – Daily Mail
>Yesterday: Luke Tryl on Comment: A presidential debate that scraped the bottom of the gutter – which suited Trump nicely
‘The report said Scotland was judged to be more socially progressive than England, enjoying a better quality of life. These measures included tolerance, education, environment and personal freedom. Tolerance was defined by a wide range of indicators including tolerance towards minorities and homosexuals, attitudes towards people with disabilities and the extent of the gender gap. The education the rating was given after assessing factors including the attainment of degree-level (or equivalent) qualifications, the extent of lifelong learning (beyond formal education) and school enrolment rates. In these both the Scotland and Northern Ireland outperform the English.’ – The Scotsman
‘British troops are being hounded over historic incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan because the Establishment thinks soldiers are ‘bad’ and terrorists are ‘freedom fighters’, a former head of the Armed Forces claimed yesterday. General Sir David Richards, ex-chief of the defence staff, said there was an ‘instinct’ in Whitehall that British soldiers ‘aren’t good’. In an excoriating attack on the Government, he said nobody has ‘the guts’ to say that view was ‘rubbish’.’ – Daily Mail