Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Boris Johnson says ‘every Tory election candidate has pledged to back my Brexit deal’ Boris Johnson today reveals that every Conservative parliamentary candidate has personally pledged to vote his Brexit deal through the House of Commons if he wins a majority. In his first newspaper interview of the election campaign, the Prime Minister told The Telegraph that the promises would allow voters to be “100 per cent sure” that a Tory government would “unblock” Parliament.The highly unusual decision is designed to help convince Leave voters that the Tories will deliver Brexit if they return to government. A series of MPs who stood as Tories at the last election helped to thwart the Prime Minister’s plans last month, despite their 2017 manifesto pledging to take the UK out of the EU. It came as Mr Johnson used his interview to declare that EU and non-EU migrants would be treated according to the same rules after Brexit. EU citizens coming to the UK to work will require a job offer before they arrive and lose their ability to claim benefits after just three months here, putting them on a par with migrants from the rest of the world. The Telegraph understands that all 635 Conservative candidates, a figure that excludes the seats it is not contesting in Northern Ireland, were contacted by senior party officials last week and asked to pledge that they would support Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal if they were elected. Officials also sought confirmation that they supported the Prime Minister’s domestic agenda. – Sunday Telegraph (£) Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay accuses Donald Tusk of siding with Labour The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, has accused Donald Tusk of interfering in the general election campaign and siding with Labour. In an article for The Sunday Times website, Barclay takes the outgoing president of the European Council to task after he warned in a speech last week that Britain would be a “second-rate player” after leaving the European Union. Barclay claims the “interference in our domestic election campaign shows where the EU elites’ real sympathies lie: with a Corbyn government which would renegotiate a deal and then campaign against it in another referendum, propped up by the SNP or the Liberal Democrats who would simply revoke article 50 without even letting the British people have a say.” He adds: “Eurocrats like Donald Tusk want these people to govern our country. They care not an ounce for the democratic decision this country made 3½ years ago.” Barclay goes on to assert that the comments made by Tusk, who once said leave campaigners such as Boris Johnson merited “a special place in hell”, show a “total disregard for democracy from some of those at the very top of the EU machine”. – Sunday Times (£) Tories outline post-Brexit migration rules The Conservatives have pledged to cut immigration “overall”, with the “vast majority” of migrants to be required to have a job offer to come to the UK – regardless of where they are from. High-skilled scientists and those who want to start a business will be among a small number of exceptions. Access to benefits will be equalised between EU nationals and those from elsewhere, meaning a typical wait of five years for non-UK citizens, and benefits will no longer be sent abroad to support children outside the UK. Ministers have already made clear they are finally abandoning the party’s long-standing commitment to get net migration down below 100,000 a year – a target they have never met. The party said the new measures would save around £800m a year by 2024-2025. – Sky News Corbyn shelves conference vow to extend freedom of movement Labour has shelved its party conference promise to maintain and extend freedom of movement, instead saying it will renegotiate migration policy with the EU if Britain votes to leave in a second referendum. The position was finalised at yesterday’s crunch “Clause V” summit, where Jeremy Corbyn, senior Labour officials and union representatives met for six hours to debate and sign off the party’s manifesto. Immigration was one of the most contentious topics ahead of the meeting, pitting Corbyn allies who want to increase migration against pro-Brexit union barons who have long argued that freedom of movement must end. At this year’s party conference, Labour members approved a radical motion to “maintain and extend” free movement, close all detention centres and award equal voting rights to all UK residents. Yesterday, however, Labour committed itself to what one source at the meeting described as a “fudge”. If Britain voted in a second referendum to remain, it would maintain freedom of movement, which allows citizens to live, work and travel across EU member states. If it voted to leave, Labour would “renegotiate” migration policy with a focus on citizens’ rights and ending the exploitation of EU migrant workers in Britain. – Sunday Times (£) Brexit Party MEP claims Tories are being ‘economical with the truth’ over denial they offered roles to his colleagues in return for standing down Senior Tory figures are “being economical with the truth” by denying they offered election candidates jobs in exchange for not standing, a Brexit Party MEP has told Sky News. Ben Habib claimed “it has been going on without a shadow of a doubt” in an interview with Sophy Ridge On Saturday. He said Ann Widdecombe had been “offered some sort of negotiating position with the Tory Party – from Number 10”, but denied receiving any approaches himself. Mr Habib also said remaining in the EU was better than Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s divorce deal that would leave Northern “bereft”, but added that “may or may not be” the Brexit Party’s position. The Metropolitan Police said they were assessing two allegations of electoral fraud, after Labour peer and former justice secretary Lord Falconer urged them to investigate. – Sky News Tom Watson urged to lead an anti-Brexit tactical voting group Tom Watson, who is standing down as Labour’s deputy leader, has been approached to lead a breakaway group of the People’s Vote campaign after weeks of rancour in the pro-remain organisation. Watson, an ardent remainer who will not run as a candidate for parliament in next month’s election, is understood to have been in talks about leading a new operation to mobilise young people to vote tactically in marginal seats. The aim is to boost the chances of a second referendum. The approach comes as two youth organisations involved in the troubled second-referendum campaign — For our Future’s Sake (FFS) and the staff at Our Future Our Choice (OFOC) — severed links with People’s Vote. They will join forces as part of the splinter group. The rupture emerged after the corporate public relations expert Roland Rudd quit People’s Vote on Friday, leaving two allies in charge. His exit is said to have scuppered efforts to restore harmony to the pro-remain organisation. – Sunday Times (£) Voters have the choice of a Tory no-deal Brexit or a second referendum, claims David Gauke Voters are facing a stark choice between a Tory no-deal Brexit at the end of next year if the Conservatives win a majority at the general election and a second referendum with the option to Remain if they fail to do so, the former Tory cabinet minister David Gauke has said. Gauke, who resigned from the Conservative party last week and will fight the South West Hertfordshire seat he has represented since 2005 as an independent, told the Observer it would be “impossible” for a Tory government to conclude a complex agreement with the EU within such a short time, meaning no-deal would be inevitable, as Boris Johnson would refuse to extend the transition period. The former justice secretary said he decided to leave the party because it had become “obsessed with leaving the EU at any cost while failing to take into account the many challenges and potential downsides”. He has come round to the idea of a second referendum, believing the British people should have the right to say whether they really want to crash out of the EU on terms far more damaging to the country and the economy than those suggested by Leavers during the 2016 referendum. – Observer UK to take back 60% of British fish by kicking out EU boats Britain’s fishing industry will take back sovereignty of its waters after the UK leaves the EU, preventing the bloc from taking 60% of our fish. The EU’s fisheries will lose out on catching 60 percent of the fish in British waters after Brexit, returning sovereignty to the British sea. Currently, Britain is government by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that gives all European fishing fleets equal access to EU waters. The policy aims to ensure that European fishing is balanced and sustainable, but when the UK leaves the EU, it will no longer be bound by its agreements. Fishing for Leave, a campaign group for the fishing industry, have said that once the EU are barred from Britain’s waters the “EU markets [will be] even more dependent on our exports”. They wrote on Twitter: “EU fleet losing catching 60 percent of the fish in our waters will make EU markets even more dependent on our exports. Just as EU buys huge volumes of fish from Iceland without being allowed to pillage their waters. You built an industry on decimating our communities. Free lunch is over.” – Sunday Express One opinion poll sees Labour cut the Conservatives’ lead to eight points… Labour has cut the Conservatives’ lead to just eight points in the second week of the general election campaign, according to a poll for The Independent. Jeremy Corbyn’s party has gained ground and is now on 29 per cent, with the Tories on 37 per cent, the BMG survey found. Other polls in recent days have given the Conservatives a lead of between 10 and 15 points but the BMG survey suggests this has been cut significantly after a week that was widely seen as positive for Labour. A series of big policy announcements, including a promise of free high-speed broadband for every home and business, helped Mr Corbyn’s party to dominate the agenda, while the Tories were forced onto the defensive over new figures revealing that A&E waiting times are the worst in almost a decade. The BMG survey puts the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent – down from 20 per cent last month – and the Brexit Party on 9 per cent, a drop of two points. Despite their lead narrowing when compared to other polls in recent days, the Tories are still in a stronger position than a month ago, the survey suggests, before Mr Johnson secured his new Brexit deal. A similar BMG survey at the time gave them only a 5-point lead. – Independent …while another has Boris Johnson surging ahead with a 15-point lead as the Tories tighten their grip on working-class voters Boris Johnson has extended his lead over Jeremy Corbyn as he strengthens the Tories’ grip on working-class voters. This week’s Deltapoll survey for The Mail on Sunday gives the Conservatives a 15-point lead, up from 12 points last week, with the governing party on 45 per cent and Labour on 30. Tory strategists will be encouraged by the slump in Liberal Democrat support – down five to 11 per cent – given the attempts by its leader Jo Swinson to form a pro-Remain tactical voting pact against the Conservatives. Mr Johnson will need to pick up a string of Labour-held seats in northern working-class areas if he is to return to Downing Street with a healthy majority. The poll suggests that his clear pro-Brexit policy – unlike Mr Corbyn’s contortions on the issue – are winning him support in Leave-backing areas. While the Conservatives hold a 13-point lead in the highest ABC1 social brackets, that stretches to 17 points among C2DE blue- collar workers. The complexity of the planned voting patterns in this Election leaves pollsters wary about making seat projections, but a uniform national swing in line with these figures could give Mr Johnson a majority of 108. – Mail on Sunday Stephen Barclay: EU elite show disregard for democracy During my year as Brexit secretary I have travelled to many European capitals. In all of them I found that my counterparts recognised the importance of our shared bonds – whether as partners on security and defence, or in ensuring the free flow of goods and services. In the end it was this spirit of shared purpose that enabled us to reach the Brexit deal that Boris Johnson secured last month. I was dismayed, then, to see the comments of Donald Tusk — the outgoing president of the European Council — in his farewell speech on Wednesday evening. His disdain for Brexit is a badly kept secret. But at least no one can now be left in any doubt of his true motivations. He unequivocally revealed a desire to stop Brexit. He admitted “I did everything in my power to extend the time for reflection and a possible British change of heart”, and added that he hoped that the “extra time” of the repeated delays to Brexit might yet change the result. He claimed that when the UK leaves the EU it will become “an outsider, a second-rate player”. Fortunately I don’t think these views are widely held among member states, which are all democracies and know the importance of staying in step with public opinion. But what this speech does show is a total disregard for democracy from some of those at the top of the EU machine. Indeed it insults the intelligence of 17.4m leave voters to say that they did not know what they were voting for. – Stephen Barclay for the Sunday Times (£) Douglas Carswell: Europe would never have flourished had it adopted the EU’s imperial mindset Don’t give up on stopping Brexit, Donald Tusk urged British voters during a speech at the College of Europe in Bruges this week. The outgoing President of the European Council then went on to make a fatuous football analogy, suggesting that the Brexit debate was like a match that had run into extra time. Far from having been settled in the referendum, he implied, it could be settled in a penalty shoot-out. But what was really telling was Tusk’s follow up remark that leaving the EU would mark the ‘real end of the British empire’. Senior Eurocrats still seem to imagine that we Leavers are animated by nostalgia and a yearning for empire. Having spent my entire adult life campaigning to get Britain out of the EU, I have literally never once heard a Eurosceptic cite the British empire as being any sort of reason to step aside from the process of political integration across the Channel. But Tusk and co choosing to believe that we do perhaps helps explain why they have so comprehensively mishandled their relations with Britain. By choosing to see British Eurosceptics as backward-looking nostalgics, determined to recreate some Victorian notion of national greatness, they perhaps assumed the Eurosceptic cause would fade away with the passing of time. On the contrary, the case for leaving the EU has gained momentum. – Douglas Carswell for the Sunday Telegraph (£) Matthew Goodwin: Blinded by rage, the Joker may yet blow up his Brexit Next year the film Braveheart is 25 years old. In Mel Gibson’s magnum opus, the lead character, William Wallace, bursts into a meeting of Scotland’s noblemen and pleads with a wily Robert the Bruce to unify the clans. “Help me. In the name of Christ help yourselves! Now is our chance. Now! If we join, we can win. If we win then we’ll have what none of us have had before: a country of our own . . . Unite the clans!” I thought of that scene last week as I watched Nigel Farage give a speech that has livened up a very dull general election. “The Brexit Party,” he said, “will not contest the 317 seats the Conservatives won at the last election. What we will do is concentrate our total effort into all of the seats that are held by the Labour Party.” This is Farage’s attempt to unite the Brexit clans. And as Britain heads into what could be its final battle over Brexit, the move might turn out to be the most significant moment of the election. Leavers, as we know from the polls, are already more united than remainers. Last week, 71% lined up behind Boris Johnson, while remainers are divided among Labour (46%), the Lib Dems (25%), the Tories (17%) and the Greens (6%). This is a Brexit election but only one Brexit tribe is mobilising. Farage’s retreat matters because it sends a signal that he endorses Johnson, which will, in turn, magnify these differences. The Tory leader’s further consolidation of the leave vote should help fend off Labour in 50 Conservative-held marginals and push back the Lib Dems in 28 seats where Jo Swinson’s party is second. It will also further squeeze the Brexit Party. After Farage’s speech, a poll by YouGov indicated that the effect of removing the Brexit Party in nearly half of all seats is that its national support crashes from 9% to 4%, with the bulk switching to the Tories. So far, so good for Johnson. Only, this is not where the movie ends. To win a majority, he also needs to break new ground. Now he can do this by succeeding where Theresa May failed: invading Labour’s “red wall” and capturing some of the 30 Labour seats with majorities of less than five points. More than half are leave seats. Many are within grasp for the first time in a generation. The problem is that Farage is refusing to play ball. Farage has done more than most to bring about Brexit but he could now bring the entire project down. – Matthew Goodwin for the Sunday Times (£) The Sun: Labour’s uncontrolled free-for-all immigration policies should be consigned to the dustbin Britain must attract the best people from around the world so it can thrive after Brexit. That’s why Labour’s crazy uncontrolled free-for-all immigration policies should be consigned to the dustbin. They would open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands more migrants every year, stretching our creaking public services to breaking point. The next Government must set levels that bolster the economy without over-burdening the NHS, schools and housing. Home Secretary Priti Patel’s plans to admit foreigners only if they have a job offer will go a long way to striking this balance. And to stop Britain being a magnet for opportunists who cost more than they contribute, she will also make migrants wait five years before they can claim benefits. These sensible rules will apply to all who want to come here, including EU citizens. Border control was one of the reasons millions voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. The Tories estimate that Labour’s free movement plans would boost immigration by an eye-watering 840,000 a year. That’s the combined populations of Manchester and Newcastle. Apart from overloading public services, the influx could include jihadis and other criminals. – The Sun says Macer Hall: Corbyn team desperate to steer election debate onto anything but Brexit As the party battle buses plough into the rain and snow of this wintry General Election campaign, Jeremy Corbyn already looks like someone who would rather be snuggled up in his Islington home with a cup of vegan cocoa. The hard-Left Labour leader has cut a morose figure during his first full week on the stump. Tetchy with journalists and voters alike, hounded by hecklers, he has stumbled between walkabouts and news conferences in his Lenin cap and tartan scarf with his reputed enthusiasm for campaigning apparently blown away by the icy winter wind. So far, Labour’s push towards polling day on December 12 could not be more different from the party’s June 2017 election charge. Back then, the opposition leader bathed in a summer of love while being transformed from obscure politician on the far-Left fringe to a cult celebrity. His name was chanted by adoring fans at mass rallies around the country. Swing voters warmed to his seeming avuncular manner that belied his extremist vision for turning the country into a Soviet-style socialist state. Two-and-a-half years later, the Corbynite campaign for Downing Street has a gloomy and decrepit air with only the activists in the Left-wing Momentum faction showing any genuine hunger for the fight. Parliament’s long war of attrition over Brexit has left the Labour leader an exhausted figure. Mr Corbyn’s struggles to keep his party together and try to appeal to both Remain and Leave voters have destroyed his image as a conviction politician who unflinchingly sticks to his principles. Sir John Curtice, one of the country’s most respected polling experts, observed this week that the Labour leader has been vainly trying to find a non-existent centre ground on an issue that is a binary choice between remaining in or leaving the EU. “Jeremy Corbyn is considered to be this great radical but he’s the only compromiser left on the biggest issue in the election,” the professor of politics at Strathclyde University said at a briefing for Westminster journalists. “On Brexit, there isn’t a centre ground. “The one issue where the Labour Party leader shows Blairite moderation is the one issue where being a Blairite moderate doesn’t get you anywhere.” – Macer Hall for the Sunday Express Brexit in Brief Boris Johnson made ‘bold move’ with election bus – Sunday Express editorial