Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team DUP rejects Brexit deal ‘as things stand’ as PM heads to EU summit… Boris Johnson has suffered a blow to his proposed Brexit deal as the Democratic Unionist Party said it cannot support plans “as things stand”. The support of the DUP is seen as crucial if the prime minister is to win Parliament’s approval for the deal in time for his 31 October deadline. The DUP said it would continue to work with the government to try to get a “sensible” deal. It comes as Mr Johnson heads to a crunch summit to get the EU’s approval. On the EU’s side, the legal text of a draft Brexit deal is seen as being “pretty much ready”, the BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler said. But the UK government has yet to approve the documents and the DUP remains unhappy about elements of the prime minister’s revised plan for Northern Ireland. In a joint statement released on Thursday, the DUP’s leader and deputy said discussions with the government were “ongoing” but “as things stand, we could not support what is being suggested on customs and consent issues and there is a lack of clarity on VAT”. – BBC News Boris Johnson’s Brexit blow as DUP refuses to support deal as PM dashes to Brussels – The Sun …after Donald Tusk said a deal was ready, but there are ‘certain doubts on the British side’… Donald Tusk has said a deal is ready, but cautioned there are “certain doubts on the British side”. The President of the European Council said that while yesterday evening he “was ready to bet that it’s all set and agreed, today there are certain doubts on the British side. The basic foundations of an agreement are ready and theoretically tomorrow we could accept this deal with Great Britain,” he said. It comes as Boris Johnson said he will write a letter to Brussels asking for a delay if no deal is approved by Saturday, the Brexit Secretary has appeared to confirm, on the final day of negotiations before the key EU leaders’ summit. If Mr Johnson fails to get a deal by the weekend, he will face a showdown with Remainer MPs who will demand he complies with the Benn Act and ask for an extension. – Telegraph (£) …but DUP reject claims party they are seeking cash to support a deal The DUP has rejected claims that the party would accept a cash influx for Northern Ireland in exchange for supporting Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. DUP Brexit spokesperson Sammy Wilson said there was no amount of money the party would accept if it meant weakening the union. “This is an issue of whether or not the Union is weakened. If the Union is weakened no amount of money will get us to accept the deal,” the East Antrim MP said. His comments came after speculation more money could be headed in the direction of Northern Ireland as the PM tries to get them on board with any concessions. The DUP has helped prop up the Conservative Government through a confidence and supply agreement which has brought £1bn in additional investment to Northern Ireland. – Belfast Telegraph Tory Eurosceptics rally round Boris Johnson… The hardest Eurosceptics in the Conservative party are largely rallying round Boris Johnson after he promised them that the UK would leave the customs union and secure a quick free-trade deal with the EU. However, they cautioned that the DUP would probably need to be on board for them to support any agreement and promised to examine every “tedious detail” of the legal texts to ensure the prime minister was keeping to his word on leaving the customs union… Baker, a leader of the 28 Tory “Spartans” who voted down Theresa May’s Brexit deal, said Johnson had given a “brilliant speech” to the 1922 Committee, another Conservative grouping, and an agreement “sounds like it could well be tolerable”. – Guardian …but the PM is yet to win Brexit support of suspended Tories including Philip Hammond Boris Johnson is yet to win over some of those he expelled from the Conservative party to vote for his EU exit deal, including the former chancellor Philip Hammond, who fears doing so could lead to a much harder Brexit than expected. Johnson will need the backing almost all of the 21 who had the whip removed, plus Eurosceptics and either the Democratic Unionist party or a bloc of Labour MPs, if he is to have a chance of passing any Brexit deal he achieves. However, No 10 has yet to secure promises from many of the anti-no deal rebels that they will vote for an agreement. Senior government figures have been asking the former Tories what they would need to vote for a deal and prevent an extension, but many have worries about being pressed into voting for an agreement with insufficient scrutiny. – Guardian Brexit Secretary says Boris Johnson will send a letter to the EU asking for a delay if there’s no deal by Saturday when MPs are due to sit… Boris Johnson will send a letter to Brussels asking for a third Brexit delay if there’s not a deal in place by Saturday, the Brexit Secretary said today. Stephen Barclay promised that the Government would comply with documents given to a Scottish court that the PM would write to EU bosses to request an extension to Article 50. That will only have to happen if the PM doesn’t get an agreement by the end of the day on Saturday. Today it was confirmed that Boris would call MPs back to parliament for a ‘super Saturday’ sitting where they could be asked to approve a deal. Mr Barclay told MPs this morning: “I can confirm, as the prime minister has repeatedly set out, that firstly the government will comply with the law and secondly will comply with the undertakings given to the court in respect of the law.” – The Sun …although some are urging him to use EU law to dodge a Brexit delay if a deal is not agreed Boris Johnson is being urged by Cabinet allies to use EU law to try to dodge a new Brexit delay if no deal is agreed today. A law passed by MPs last month, dubbed the Benn Act, forces the PM to extend Britain’s membership by another three months if there is no formal agreement with Brussels by Saturday. But European law takes precedent over British law. And Mr Johnson has been told it’s possible he could get out of having to trigger the extension demand if he can persuade the EU’s leaders to help him at their crunch summit today. The allies argue that a formal declaration from all 28 national bosses today that there is no need for an extension yet as talks are still ongoing would be legally binding. – The Sun Remainer MPs plead with Brussels to push Britain into another extension and sabotage Johnson’s deal Remainer MPs have pleaded with Brussels to push Britain into another extension – to sabotage Boris Johnson’s deal and force a second referendum. A group led by arch-europhile Tory rebel Dominic Grieve held talks with senior French, Dutch and Irish diplomats plus EU Parliament negotiators. They begged eurocrats not to help the PM speed a deal through the Commons before the 31st – claiming to do so would be “very dangerous”. Instead they said a technical extension should be provided so that Parliament can vote for a second referendum on staying in the bloc. Mr Grieve said the agreement being thrashed out “bears no resemblance to what was being promoted in the 2016 referendum at all.” – The Sun Biggest poll since 2016 shows most Brits want to honour the Brexit referendum result A majority of people want the UK to respect the Brexit referendum result, according to a new poll. The Comres survey revealed today that 54 per cent of people wanted to respect the Brexit referendum result and leave the European Union, with 32 per cent preferring to remain. The question posed by polling company was: “Regardless of the way you voted in the 2016 referendum, do you support or oppose the UK abiding by the referendum result and leaving the EU?” The largest age group to support the motion was those aged over 55, with 69 per cent in support. Just 31 per cent of 18-24 year-olds were in favour of leaving the EU. Sixty per cent of males and 48 per cent of females surveyed said they supported the UK leaving the EU. Meanwhile, 31 per cent of males polled and 33 per cent of females polled said they wanted to remain despite the referendum result. Geographically, the motion was supported in every English region except for London. The results were gathered from a survey of 26,000 adults polled between 2 October and 14 October. – City A.M. Jeremy Corbyn set to back second referendum on new Brexit deal… Jeremy Corbyn is preparing to whip Labour MPs to put a Boris Johnson deal to a second referendum. The Labour leader is understood to support backing an amendment to a new vote on a withdrawal agreement that the prime minister hopes to put before parliament on Saturday. Yesterday the government confirmed that it intended to call MPs back for a special Commons sitting on Saturday in the hope of getting a deal approved, in principle, by MPs. Even if that vote passes, the prime minister will still need to pass legislation to implement the agreement through both houses of parliament by the October 31 deadline. Labour sources suggested Mr Corbyn was minded to back an amendment that would make the Johnson deal subject to a second referendum. – The Times (£) Labour would support referendum attached to deal, says shadow Brexit minister – Guardian Labour ready to vote for Final Say referendum on Boris Johnson deal – Independent …while Labour-SNP closeness has opened a rift in the alliance against a no-deal Brexit Bitter splits are emerging between political parties trying to fight a no-deal Brexit, over the new-found unity between Labour and the SNP, with claims they are speaking from the “same script”. An opposition party source involved in the regular opposition alliance talks said they believed the two parties were meeting up before official meetings to agree a joint stance that Jeremy Corbyn should be interim prime minister and on whether there should be a second Scottish referendum. Opposition party leaders, including Corbyn, the SNP’s Ian Blackford, the Liberal Democrats’ Jo Swinson, Caroline Lucas from the Green party and Liz Saville Roberts from Plaid Cymru meet regularly in Westminster to consider ways of countering Boris Johnson over no deal and a hard Brexit. – Guardian UK can’t afford to ‘play Santa’ after no-deal Brexit, say researchers The UK government cannot “play Santa” in the wake of a no-deal Brexit and plow cash into hard-hit companies that should be left to fail, according to research by the Institute for Government. The report argues that ministers will be faced with “impossible choices about which businesses and industries to save” and will have to keep the public finances in mind. It lists soaring export tariffs, queues at the border with the EU and doubling business costs as just some of the issues that could hit firms and put them in jeopardy. Some companies could find common practices become suddenly illegal, contracts could be lost or multinationals may suddenly withdraw from the supply chain, the IFG added. – Politico Sajid Javid: We must get Brexit done and deliver growth as the world enters a new, uncertain era This is a vital moment in our politics. A decade after the financial crisis, the warning lights are once again flashing on the global economy. Some of the causes of this are international – mounting trade wars are raising costs and undermining certainty. Britain is – and will always be – an open economy, so we are not immune to that. But the continued indecision surrounding Brexit is further undermining certainty in our economy and is undoubtedly a further dampener on confidence. We must get it done and put that confidence – and the investment that has been held up during the delays over the past year – into delivering growth and opportunity. We want to leave with a good deal that lays a path to a world-class free trade agreement between Britain and the EU. – Sajid Javid MP for the Telegraph (£) John Longworth: Two Irish borders may be the necessary sacrifice for the Brexit we Leavers need We all know that the border issue in Ireland has been weaponised by Remainers in Britain, by the EU and its Irish cheerleaders in order to make it as difficult as possible for the UK to leave the EU. Martin Selmayr famously said that the price of leaving for Britain would be the cessation of Northern Ireland. Naturally, the DUP have been somewhat resistant to this concept. So intransigent has been the Irish government, bleating that it would suffer economic damage if the UK becomes independent from the EU, while doing precious little to prepare for the scenario, that I have encouraged a boycott of Irish goods, not least so that they can more easily get used to the impending change in trade relations. In particular, the claim that the border for goods would undermine the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement seems particularly spurious. – John Longworth MEP for the Telegraph (£) Allister Heath: This may be Leavers’ last, realistic chance to achieve a proper Brexit We are about to find out whether the Brexiteers’ great gamble is going to pay off. They were told that Theresa May’s abysmal half-in, half-out deal was their last chance, the final hope of clinching some sort of Brexit, albeit fatally adulterated. It was either that, or watch powerlessly as a hostile, all-powerful Remain establishment slowly extinguished their dream. A hard-core of Brexiteers – the Spartans – didn’t accept this counsel of despair. They chose instead to roll the dice one last time: the fact that Mrs May, a rudderless, ideologically bereft PM, had decided to rat on them was not a good enough reason to hoist the white flag. The public had saved the day once; it would do so again, or so the Brexiteers convinced themselves. – Allister Heath for the Telegraph (£) Rod Liddle: Spain and the EU cannot bear political freedom and that proves voting for Brexit was the right choice Fascism is back in Spain, more than 40 years after dictator General Franco mercifully popped his clogs. There are riots on the streets of Barcelona and the police are arresting everyone they see. Catalonia wants independence from Spain’s basket-case economy. Its people voted for independence. The Spanish government — with the support of the European Union — decided that vote was “illegal”. They arrested the leaders of the Catalan independence movement. They have now sentenced nine of them to prison terms of between ten and 13 years. Simply for organising a referendum on their country’s freedom. But the Spanish, and the EU, cannot bear political freedom. The former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is holed up in Brussels. – Rod Liddle for The Sun Fraser Myers: Yet again, Remainer MPs are sneaking off to Brussels to undermine the will of the people Remainers should not be left to negotiate Brexit. That was surely the biggest lesson to draw from Theresa May’s short-lived premiership. For all the hollow soundbites of ‘Brexit means Brexit’, her instincts were to preserve as many of the conditions of EU membership as possible. As we all now know the result was a deal detested by Leavers and Remainers alike. Depending on where you look, Boris Johnson’s talks are either on the cusp of a breakthrough or are on the verge of disintegrating. But although the country’s leadership and the people officially leading the negotiations are a bit more Brexity, Remainers are still attempting to negotiate with the EU — albeit unofficially. – Fraser Myers for the Telegraph (£) Douglas Carswell: The world is changing fast – and Brexit Britain must adapt quickly Do you know much about Dar es Salaam? Perhaps you might only be vaguely aware of this remote coastal city in Tanzania. But by the time your grandchildren are your age, more people will live there than in all of France. Population growth in Africa means that a whole load of places we currently consider unimportant are going to be big. Really, really big. Within 70 years, there are likely to be twice as many Nigerians as there will be Americans. Countries like Congo or Uganda will each have populations larger than the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia combined. When you think of a great military power, I doubt Pakistan is the first country that springs to mind? And it’s not. Yet a country that could scarcely feed itself a generation ago now has submarines capable of firing cruise missiles. India and Pakistan together now have a greater nuclear capability than the UK. – Douglas Carswell for CapX Stephen Bush: Labour MPs are not going to give Boris Johnson his Brexit triumph One of the mistakes that people like me made was to write off Boris Johnson’s chances of becoming Prime Minister. Why did we do it? Because we didn’t listen carefully enough to Conservative MPs. The average Tory MP, when asked about Johnson, would say that they were unconvinced that he had the makings of a great PM, and that the Conservative Party’s future lay with Jeremy Hunt or Sajid Javid. But then their eyes would light up like hubcaps and they would tell you about how, when Johnson visited their association, passers-by, not even members, would stop him and ask for selfies. In the end, faced with a tough election, they opted for the party’s one genuine out-and-out star. – Stephen Bush for the Telegraph (£) Maggie Pagano: Brussels and Boris making heavy weather of getting a deal Lord, what a difference a day makes, sang Dinah Washington. And how right she was: the last 24 hours look as though they have indeed brought the sun and the flowers, where there used to be rain. In the case of Brexit, it’s been three and a half years of tempests. But the frenzied diplomacy of the last 24 hours, with DUP and ERG MPs in and out of the revolving doors of No10, suggests that they might – might – have finally broken the weather cycle. As of a few minutes ago, there were high hopes that a legal text for the new Withdrawal Agreement will be ready ahead of tomorrow’s crucial meeting of European Council leaders. But there are still some clouds. As Boris Johnson put it when speaking to a 1922 meeting of Tory MPs this afternoon: “We are at the Hillary Step. The summit is not far. But at the moment there is still cloud around the summit.” – Maggie Pagano for Reaction Toby Young: If victory comes, Brexiteers must resist the temptation to play furious Remainers at their own game It remains to be seen whether Boris Johnson can persuade a majority of MPs to back his new deal on Saturday, but the mere possibility that he might succeed – and take us out with a deal on October 31 – is driving Remainers round the twist. If you thought Brexit Derangement Syndrome was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. A clue as to how the provisional wing of the Europhile Army is likely to react was provided by the historian Simon Schama in a tweet: “Should this non-government succeed in forcing our exit from the EU on Halloween let all of us who bitterly mourn ring funeral bells and light bonfires of rage and grief and resolution at 12pm – up and down the nation.” – Toby Young for the Telegraph (£) The Sun: Second Brexit referendum would inflict catastrophe on our divided country Just as Remainer MPs arrive in Brussels, shamefully hoping to sabotage knife-edge negotiations, a landmark poll destroys their case for a second referendum. The “People’s Vote” mob have repeatedly told the world that Britain has changed its mind and is itching to reverse Brexit. It is Grade A cobblers. The biggest, most definitive survey in three years shows 50 per cent back Leave (30 for a deal, 20 for No Deal) with 42 Remain and eight “don’t knows”. But by an even bigger margin, 54 to 32, the public wants the 2016 result enacted. Which might also explain why the Tories are 15 points ahead in another poll and Boris Johnson leads as “best PM” in every single region, class and age category including even the 18-24s. A second referendum would inflict catastrophe on our divided country. – The Sun says Brexit in Brief The PM’s ‘great Brexit gamble’ on sticky fudge over noble delay could be about to backfire – Sherelle Jacobs for the Telegraph (£) The Queen’s speech – John Redwood’s Diary Delaying Brexit would be the real nightmare scenario for our economy – Matthew Lynn for the Telegraph (£) Does the City deserve Chuka Umunna? – Giles Fraser for Unherd Theresa May takes swipe at Boris Johnson in first major intervention since quitting as PM – Express And finally… ‘If we leave, this idiot will shut up’: Mark Francois left exasperated after TV interview interrupted by ‘Stop Brexit’ man Tory Brexiteer Mark Francois was left exasperated on Wednesday morning after an anti-Brexit protester derailed more than one of his broadcast interviews in Westminster, causing the MP to exclaim: “If we leave, it will be delightful that this idiot will shut up.” The MP and member of the European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative MPs gave a series of interviews to journalists keen to know if the grouping would lend its support to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. Mr Johnson is trying to get a deal finalised with the bloc so it can be approved by EU leaders at a summit on Thursday and Friday before being voted on in the Commons on Saturday. But as Mr Francois was being asked by the BBC about what information he was privy to in regards to the Brexit agreement being thrashed out between the UK and EU, he fell victim to anti-Brexit protestor Steve Bray. – iNews > WATCH: Mark Francois MP gives the ERG’s stance on the current Brexit talks