Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan resigns ahead of Boris Johnson’s likely election as next PM – live news
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This is from the Press Association.
Charlie Elphicke, the Conservative MP for Dover, has been charged with three counts of sexual assault against two women, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, has been speaking at an event this morning organised by the IPPR thinktank and Hope not Hate, which campaigns against fascism and the far-right. Here are the main points, based on the text of the speech sent out in advance.
Elected by a smaller electorate than voted for Ed Balls on Strictly Come Dancing, [Boris Johnson] will have to come face to face with a very hard truth [if he becomes PM on Wednesday]: Millions of Brexit voters do not support a no-deal Brexit.
According to the poll by Hope Not Hate, who are, to their credit, launching this community No To No-Deal campaign today, three million of those who voted leave in 2016 say that exiting the EU without a deal would be bad for Britain.
In the run-up to the referendum the official Vote Leave campaign ruled out a no-deal Brexit, one of their publications stating: ‘Taking back control is a careful change, not a sudden stop. We will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave’.
Another briefing paper stressed that if the country voted to leave, it would be on the basis of ‘a new UK-EU treaty based on free trade and friendly co-operation’.
When future historians look back, they will be shocked to discover how such an act of economic self-harm that runs wholly counter to the national interest could ever be portrayed by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson as the height of patriotism and criticism from any quarter be dismissed as a betrayal of Britain and all we stand for.
Even if some of the immediate chaos forecast by officials is averted on the day, the long-term economic impact of no-deal Brexit is where the calamity lies. British history includes self-inflicted wounds – military disasters such as the Charge of the Light Brigade and the fiasco of Gallipoli – but no peacetime act of self-harm can rival a no-deal Brexit for which we are so woefully unprepared and from which even now the new European Commission president is offering to deliver us – and we are refusing the help.
.@OfficeGSBrown: ‘I fear for the cohesion or our community and country.’ Gordon Brown on the impact #Brexit has had in Britian pic.twitter.com/tpIG8hyvMk