“European Union leaders have agreed to tighten border controls and send £730 million to help refugees at camps near their home countries following marathon talks on the migrant crisis. The leaders also said task forces of European experts sent to help register and screen migrants in so-called hotspots must be fully operational in Greece and Italy, and perhaps also Bulgaria, by November” – Daily Mail
>Today:
“The atmosphere over breakfast was strained as the Queen noted the headline splashed across a newspaper: ‘Yes vote leads in Scots poll.’ For the first time in his political career, David Cameron’s equilibrium deserted him. It was Sunday morning, just 11 days before the Scottish referendum on independence, and he was staying at Balmoral for his annual late summer weekend with the Queen” – Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott, Daily Mail
Other lines from the Ashcroft and Oakeshott book:
“Jonathan Mirsky has known the Dalai Lama for 35 years, and asked him what he’d have said to David Cameron if No10 had not forced him into the wilderness. His reply was astonishing. ‘Money, money, money. That’s what this is about. Where is morality?’ As ever, his remarks were brief – but incredibly forceful” – Fraser Nelson, Spectator
“George Osborne will open the bidding on Thursday for £11.8bn of contracts to build the HS2 high-speed rail line. The chancellor will also reveal that he hopes soon to get a ‘green light’ to restart electrification of the Manchester–Leeds line. Mr Osborne wants to win Chinese investment in HS2 and regeneration projects in northern England, as he concludes a five-day tour of China with a visit to the south-western city of Chengdu” – Financial Times
>Yesterday:
Tory Diary: Nixon – sorry, Osborne – goes to China
“A high-flying Conservative nicknamed the Tatler Tory has been suspended from the party after being accused of bullying a young activist who subsequently killed himself. Police are investigating the death of Elliott Johnson, 21, an activist with the rightwing campaign group Conservative Way Forward, whom his father said yesterday had left a suicide note making various allegations. Sources have revealed that Mark Clarke, a former chairman of the youth wing of the Conservative party and a parliamentary candidate, had been suspended” – The Times (£)
“Corbyn has long spoken of his desire to re-establish Labour’s annual conference as the party’s pre-eminent decision-making body… Corbyn has spoken out against mandatory reselection, the mechanism that some on the left of Labour hope to deploy to unseat right-leaning MPs, but he concedes that it would ‘absolutely’ become ‘party rules’ if activists voted in favour of the process at conference” – interview with Jeremy Corbyn, New Statesman
>Yesterday:
“For all the rows and rifts in prospect, Eagle welcomes upheaval. ‘We’ve had top-down control, which came from Tony and throttled debate. There’s been a yearning for discussion. I admit this is a rather dramatic way to bring it about.’ Might Corbyn end up as a more successful leader than Blair, Brown or Miliband? ‘He may well’” – Mary Riddell, Daily Telegraph
“Appointing a vegan as Labour’s farming spokesman was always going to ruffle feathers. But even Kerry McCarthy’s critics must have been surprised by her pronouncement that meat should be treated like tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it… Last night, her ideas were attacked as ‘bordering on the cranky’ by the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance” – Daily Mail
“Beeb boss Alan Yentob said the journalists who exposed the cover-up of the Jimmy Savile scandal were ‘traitors to the BBC’, one of them has sensationally claimed. Respected former producer Meirion Jones claims the remark about him was made to another employee after he contributed to Panorama’s exposé ‘Savile — What The BBC Knew’. Mr Yentob, 68, strongly denies making the comment” – The Sun (£)
“Angela Merkel became embroiled in the Volkswagen scandal yesterday as opposition politicians in Germany said her government knew in advance about the firm fiddling its emissions results. The German Green Party said ministers knew in summer about Volkswagen rigging emissions tests but that ‘tricks and deceits’ were ‘accepted with a wink’. The scandal claimed its first major scalp yesterday as the car-maker’s chief executive Professor Martin Winterkorn resigned to allow a ‘fresh start’ – but denied any ‘wrongdoing’ or culpability” – Daily Mail
“Peter Robinson, former first minister of Northern Ireland, has rejected ‘scurrilous’ claims made by a loyalist blogger that he was to receive a payment upon completion of a £1.2bn property portfolio sale which is being probed by US and UK criminal investigators. The explosive allegation by Jamie Bryson came as he gave evidence under privilege to the Northern Ireland Assembly’s committee for finance and personnel in Stormont” – Financial Times
“The Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, has accused David Cameron of trying to get maximum headlines out of the story of the three-year-old Syrian refugee who was pictured drowned on a beach, as he called for the UK to opt into the EU-wide quota system. In his first speech as leader to his party’s conference on Wednesday, Farron attacked Cameron by saying he initially ignored the humanity of refugees and was ‘stuck in media management mode, following not leading’” – Guardian
>Yesterday: