‘Theresa May and Francois Hollande have reached a “very clear” agreement to keep Britain’s border controls in Calais in a move that dispelled “Project fear” warnings that they could move to Dover after a Brexit. The two leaders met for the first time in Paris and had what Mrs May described as “excellent” and “open” discussions about the future of the UK outside the union. Speaking after their meeting, the first of many as the UK seeks to negotiate an exit from the EU, Mr Hollande also struck a positive note as the leaders agreed that border controls in Calais will continue despite Brexit … However the French President also signaled that the UK faces a stark choice over access to the single market. He said the UK currently has access because it respects the full freedoms of the EU but if it wants to remain it will have to abide by the full freedoms, they can’t be separated.’ – Daily Telegraph
Comment:
‘Brexit is Britain’s great gift to the world: a giant pre-cooked excuse for absolutely everything. The French have an alibi if their economy falters; the Italians can blame the UK when their disastrously undercapitalised banking system goes under; the Germans can point the finger when Deutsche Bank loses its battle with financial gravity. And when the single currency finally implodes or the broader European project disintegrates, you can be sure that as the ship goes down, one curse will be audible above the gurgling: Brexit. Little matter that the vast majority of these problems existed long before David Cameron cooked up the idea of an in-out vote. Britain’s commercial property market already looked bubbly; the open-ended property investment funds that were frozen after the vote were silly products in the first place. As covered in this column recently, Europe’s banking system has been brittle if not broken for even longer, and the euro looked ill-fated from the very beginning.’ – The Times (£)
Process
Positions
Costs
Trade
>Today: Mark Menzies on Comment: Let’s choose this new chance to boost our trade abroad
Devolution
>Today: Local Government: Local government needs to think small
Comment:
>Today:
>Yesterday: ToryDiary: May must not lose control to the lobbyists
‘At the launch of his re-election campaign, Mr Corbyn said: “At the moment, selection takes place when there is a trigger ballot system, where a constituency party decides whether or not it wishes to have a full selection process.” Constituency boundary changes to take effect in 2020 will give many local Labour parties the chance to ditch their MP without changing Labour rules to bring in mandatory reselection – a change that some left-wing activists and the Unite union want to see. Mr Corbyn said: “The sitting MP for any substantial part of the new boundary would have an opportunity to put their name forward. So there would be a full and open selection process for every constituency Labour party throughout the whole of the UK.’- The Independent
More Labour:
Comment:
>Yesterday: Left Watch: How many of Labour’s 183,000 new membership applicants are entryists?
‘Donald John Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night with an unusually vehement appeal to Americans who feel that their country is spiraling out of control and yearn for a leader who will take aggressive, even extreme, actions to protect them … With dark imagery and an almost angry tone, Mr. Trump portrayed the United States as a diminished and even humiliated nation, and offered himself as an all-powerful savior who could resurrect the country’s standing in the eyes of both enemies and law-abiding Americans.’ – The New York Times
Editorial:
Comment:
>Today: Lord Ashcroft on Comment Lord Ashcroft’s Republican Convention Diary. Day Four: “This is not the weirdest election in history, just in our lifetimes.”
>Yesterday:
Elsewhere in the world
>Yesterday: Bob Stewart on Comment: What does the Philippines legal victory over China mean for the region?