Italy’s spat with France shows the EU is at threat not of disintegration but of hijack

Will fans of the EU establishment be quite so keen on unaccountable, centralised institutions when their opponents start appointing commissioners?

Stella Creasy & Debbie Abrahams: A referendum got us here. Now let a Citizens’ Assembly – and more direct democracy – take us forward.

We want to learn from what other Parliaments have done when faced with difficult choices. Such an assembly would report back within ten weeks.

Daniel Hannan: We still have time to switch course from disaster. Just. It’s up to Conservative MPs to act now.

The logic is clear enough. The EU’s choice would be between no backstop and nothing else either; or no backstop and agreement on everything else.

Interview. David Owen’s Brexit plan. Move from transition through the EEA into Canada Plus Plus Plus – before the next election.

The former Foreign Secretary says May’s team are inexperienced in EU negotiations and are “pushing out disinformation”.

Helen Thomas: The missing actor in the Brexit drama is set to move centre-stage – the markets.

The tap, tap, tap of wafer-thin government majorities, unravelling agreements, and shifting poll numbers will make their way into its calculations.

Daniel Hannan: On the Elgin Marbles, as on everything else, Corbyn’s assumption is that Britain Is Always In The Wrong

There are honourable arguments for and against shipping the Parthenon marbles to Greece. His instinctive knee-jerk is not one of them.

Mattarella has a point

If Italy really is to make a radical, momentous break with the Euro, sooner or later, voters should explicitly endorse the move.

Henry Newman: The EU isn’t a conspiracy against democracy, but it does a pretty good job of looking like one

Some Italians hoped Brexit would make Brussels realise it had gone too far. Instead, the EU elite has doubled down, regardless of troublesome voters.

Will Italy’s new government blow the bloody doors off? Don’t get your hopes up. (Or your fears either.)

One day the country’s voters may dig in against the long squeeze imposed on them from northern Europe. But don’t be too sure it will happen yet.

J Meirion Thomas: If we are to stop losing our best doctors, we must keep training and retraining them

Some specialist hospitals have made stellar consultant appointments from abroad. However, many doctors relocating here are economic migrants.

The withdrawal of public funds is the best thing that could happen to Oxfam

Taxpayers’ money has sapped the independence, and the moral responsibility, of our great charities.

Rebecca Lowe Coulson’s column: Why it’s right for Britain to lose its marbles over Brexit

We should prove our commitment to democracy and the individuated nature of nations by promising now to return what Lord Elgin looted.

Rebecca Lowe Coulson: Why Brexit, politics – and everything else – can’t just be about economics

A weakness in this book is that its support for nation states is predicated on disappointed economic necessity.

Rebecca Lowe Coulson: At what point would Remainers give up on the EU – if ever?

Unresolved questions about refugees, debt crises, security, and general financial instability will force these questions on more people, and not just Britons.

Tim Loughton: Brexit can make it safer and easier for refugee children to rejoin their families

I voted Leave because I felt it would present chances to do things better. This is just such a chance.