Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Numerous Tory leadership rivals embrace a no-deal Brexit… Conservative leadership contenders have embraced a no-deal Brexit to see off the threat of Nigel Farage as the European election results pushed both main parties further away from a compromise. Dominic Raab said that the Tories’ disastrous performance meant that the party needed to show “unflinching resolve” to “get on and leave the EU” even without a deal. Esther McVey, the former work and pensions secretary, warned that a cross-party Brexit agreement was now “not possible”. They were joined by other leading Brexiteer candidates, including Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom, who said that Sunday night’s results made leaving the EU “decisively” more important than avoiding a no-deal departure in October. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, has warned that the Conservatives will face extinction if they have not delivered Brexit before the next election. – The Times (£) > Priti Patel MP on BrexitCentral today: The Conservative Party needs a new direction and a fresh start which will deliver Brexit …but Jeremy Hunt warns pursuing a no-deal Brexit would be ‘suicide’ for the Tories The Conservatives will be committing “political suicide” if they attempt to push through a no-deal Brexit in the wake of their disastrous showing in the European elections, Jeremy Hunt has warned. Writing for The Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary said that any Prime Minister who tries to take Britain out of the EU without a deal will trigger a general election which risks the “extinction” of the Conservative Party. He warned that Brexiteer leadership candidates risk putting Britain’s “first Marxist prime minister” in Downing Street by Christmas because parliament would bring down the Government to stop no-deal Brexit. Mr Hunt said: “The results contain a simple message which we ignore at our peril: if we attempt a general election before we have delivered Brexit we will be annihilated. Attacked by the Brexit Party on the Right and the Liberal Democrats on the Left, we will face extinction.” – Telegraph (£) Michael Gove ‘to offer free British passports’ to 3 million EU nationals living in the UK at the time of the Brexit vote… Environment secretary Michael Gove will pledge next week to offer free British passports to the 3m EU nationals who were living in the UK at the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016. The pledge underlines Gove’s entry into the race to replace Prime Minister Theresa May later this summer after she steps down next month, and is being framed as an attempt to heal wide social divisions which have opened up in the wake of the vote. Gove made clear over the weekend that he intends to challenge for the top job, saying: “I believe that I’m ready to unite the Conservative and Unionist Party, ready to deliver Brexit, and ready to lead this great country.” The £1,330 fee which will apply to EU nationals seeking UK passports after Britain leaves the bloc would be waived under the policy, according to Sky News, which cited Gove’s aides. The Home Office’s settled status scheme, which stipulates EU citizens must prove they have lived in the UK for five years to retain their rights after Brexit, will also be changed to a registration scheme if Gove emerges victorious, according to reports. – City A.M. …as Sajid Javid launches bid for Tory leadership with pledge to ‘rebuild trust and find unity’… Sajid Javid has entered the race to be Conservative Party leader as he tries to convince Tory MPs he is better placed than Boris Johnson to win the next general election. The Home Secretary became the ninth person to declare their candidacy, as he promised to be a Prime Minister who is “always straight” with voters if he gets the job.With a nod to his Pakistani heritage, Mr Javid also said he wanted to “do my best for…the country which has done so much for me”. It came as an analysis of the European election result by polling experts suggested Britain would be left with a hung Parliament in which even a deal between the Tories, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and the DUP could not command a majority if a general election was held tomorrow. – Telegraph (£) Britain needs fresh ideas — that’s why I’m entering the Tory leadership race – Kit Malthouse MP for The Sun …while Boris Johnson is under pressure over TV debates as eight leadership rivals commit to taking part Boris Johnson is under mounting pressure to take part in live broadcast debates after all eight of his rivals for the Tory leadership said they were willing to do so. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, on Monday wrote to broadcasters and news organisations asking them to commit to hosting debates between leadership candidates. It came after Dominic Raab, the former Brexit Secretary, said that live debates could “revitalise” support for the Conservative Party and that the country “deserves to see us set out our stall”. Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart and Esther McVey all told The Telegraph that they would be happy to participate. However a source close to Mr Johnson refused to commit to him taking part, instead saying only that they were prepared to “discuss details of a debate with different candidates”. – Telegraph (£) Jubilant Nigel Farage warns he will obliterate the Tories unless they deliver Brexit Nigel Farage warned he will obliterate the Tories in the next General Election unless they deliver Brexit by Halloween. He said his Brexit Party’s Euro election victory was a huge “wake-up call” to politicians who have failed to honour their promise to voters. Farage said: “This clearly will put pressure on the Tories and pressure on the leadership candidates. Are they going to respond? If we don’t leave on the 31 October then I believe we can produce a result in the next General Election that will stun them.” He threw down the gauntlet after his six-week old party won 29 MEP seats as voters abandoned both Tories and Labour to register fury at the stalled Brexit process. His challenge triggered a swift reaction among the Tory leadership hopefuls — with the rivals scrambling to pledge Brexit by Halloween and in some cases edge towards No Deal. Bookies’ favourite Boris Johnson said the public had delivered “a crushing rebuke” for the abject failure to deliver Brexit. – The Sun Nigel Farage delivers Brexit ultimatum – The Times (£) > Kate Hoey MP on BrexitCentral today: We should acknowledge the Brexit Party’s success and include them in the negotiations > Patrick O’Flynn on BrexitCentral today: If the Brexit Party wants further triumphs, Nigel Farage should drop its ‘shrink the state’ philosophy Jeremy Corbyn’s allies back second Brexit vote after EU election meltdown as Labour leader ‘may be facing coup’ Jeremy Corbyn suffered open mutiny as his closest Labour allies backed a 2nd referendum after the party’s Euro Election drubbing. In a huge intervention, Marxist Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said it was time for the party to back a People’s Vote “in any circumstances” after 39 per cent of Labour voters switched to the anti-Brexit Lib Dems and Greens. And Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said Labour now had to “take a clearer line on a public vote”. Results showed Labour came fifth in Scotland – its historic powerbase – after polling third in Wales and second in London. Overall, the party came third behind the Brexit Party and the Lib Dems with just 14 per cent of the vote. – The Sun Corbyn under pressure to make Final Say referendum condition of Labour support for a deal – Independent Northern Ireland’s Alliance party wins first European seat Northern Ireland’s cross-community Alliance party has won a European seat for the first time, boosting centrist politics in the region and anti-Brexit campaigners. Naomi Long, Alliance leader, defied the odds to take the second of the region’s three seats behind Diane Dodds of the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionists. The anti-Brexit Martina Anderson of the Sinn Féin Irish republican party took the third seat, despite receiving the most first preference votes. Ms Long came third in the initial count with 18.5 per cent of the regional vote – a huge surge since local elections only three weeks ago in which her party almost doubled its support to take 11.5 per cent of the vote. A vocal campaigner for the UK to stay in the EU, she had cast the European poll as an opportunity to elect two Remain MEPs from Northern Ireland. The region voted to stay in the bloc by 56 per cent to 44 per cent and the European election result on Monday largely mirrored that outcome. – FT (£) > On BrexitCentral: European election results: Who’s in, who’s out and how the parties fared region by region Collapse of Brussels’ old order gives leaders plenty to chew on EU leaders, including the almost ex-prime minister Theresa May, gather tonight in Brussels to discuss what happens next for Brexit amid the fallout from the European elections. Europe’s top table will want to know how Mrs May believes both Brexit and the Conservative leadership contest will play out over the summer. They are well aware that there will be little time for a new Conservative prime minister to assume office, form a government and agree a cabinet strategy to salvage or drop the Brexit withdrawal deal stuck in the Commons. In the event of Britain going for no-deal Brexit, most would expect a “technical” three-month extension from the current October 31 date to allow business to prepare. Whatever happens, another Brexit delay is likely. – The Times (£) Jean-Claude Juncker could stay as top EU chief after his term expires this year Jean-Claude Juncker could stay on as EU chief well into next year after the European election result sparked a bitter battle over who will replace him. Brussels’ top civil servant Martin Selmayr suggested the Commission boss may need to have his mandate extended – with big implications for Britain. EU diplomats told The Sun such a move would make another Brexit delay easier to seal. But fierce national infighting over who gets the bloc’s top jobs next will leave leaders with less time and energy to negotiate with a new British PM. Mr Juncker, 64, is due to retire on November 1 after four years in the job that have been dogged by persistent questions over his health. – The Sun Jeremy Hunt: The only way to prove Nigel Farage wrong is to deliver Brexit It is tempting to dismiss headlines about a disastrous European election as “tomorrow’s fish and chip paper”. This time that would be a fatal mistake. Just one month after disastrous local elections the Conservative Party has suffered its worst performance in any election since 1832. The results contain a simple message which we ignore at our peril: if we attempt a general election before we have delivered Brexit we will be annihilated. Attacked by the Brexit Party on the Right and the Liberal Democrats on the Left, we will face extinction. Any candidate for prime minister whose strategy leads to a general election is offering a prospectus for disaster. Neither should we draw comfort from Labour’s performance. Labour paid the price for its lack of clarity with a very bad night, but we are in government and Brexit is our responsibility. In a national election, we would pay a much heavier price than the opposition for a promise undelivered. The most likely outcome would be a damaged Labour sneaking through the middle, supported by the SNP. So not just a Marxist in Downing Street but a severe threat to the Union as well. The stakes are that high. – Jeremy Hunt MP for the Telegraph (£) Nigel Farage: The Brexit Party’s stunning victory is just the beginning. Prepare for a revolution in British politics The Brexit Party has made history. We have won the elections to the European parliament within six weeks of being launched. British politics has never seen anything like it. It took the Labour Party 45 years to win the popular vote in a national election. The Brexit Party has achieved it within 45 days, despite the major parties massively outspending us. The Remainers want to spin the results to claim they “really” won. Few people will be fooled by these democracy deniers. The clear message of the European elections is that the main political parties have failed to deliver the Brexit that 17.4m voted for three years ago. These results should be a big wake-up call to the Conservatives and Labour. This is what happens when you keep breaking your promises to the people and destroy trust in democracy. But will Westminster listen? – Nigel Farage MEP for the Telegraph (£) Daniel Hannan: Theresa May has gifted the next Tory leader a Brexit Catch 22 that could destroy the party At around one o’clock on Monday morning, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg put it to me that my party had suffered its worst performance since 1832. Oh, no, I replied, it was far worse than that. In the 1832 election, which had until then stood as a Tory low point, we won 29 per cent of the vote. Last week, we sank to nine per cent. Conservatives need to understand the depth of the crisis. Even now, there are senior Tories who argue, in private, that we shouldn’t take too much notice of a European election, that it was a one-off protest vote, that things will get back to normal once we have a competent leader. It was precisely such complacency that brought us to this pass. Had the party woken up to the gravity of its predicament, it would have switched leaders months ago. Instead, with unbelievable self-indulgence, various factions gamed the timing of the leadership contest so as to favour this or that candidate. By leaving things as late as they did, those MPs have ensured that the next leader will inherit a radioactive crater. – Daniel Hannan MEP for the Telegraph (£) Mark Wallace: The next Prime Minister must swiftly deliver Brexit as the Conservative Party’s future rests on it There is only one word for the Conservative EU election performance: Disastrous. The party’s vote fell to the lowest level in its 185-year history. Tory MEPs were almost wiped out. It was expected, but that cannot hide the seriousness of the Conservatives’ crisis. Not only did most voters abandon them — even the majority of their own members voted for the Brexit Party. Many others, including me, refused to take part in a ballot that should never have taken place, for an organisation that we should not be part of. No party can last for long with its vote in freefall and its activists staying home or supporting a rival. The Tories must find a way to regain trust, inspire their troops and win back millions of lost voters. That means being completely honest and clear about why this happened. It is human nature to look for comforting excuses to explain away shocking news. But that would be no use. – Mark Wallace for The Sun Christopher Hope: The inside story of how Nigel Farage won his historic election victory A solid ball of around 30 reporters, photographers and cameramen is slowly moving up Merthyr Tydfil high street in south Wales. In the middle of this melee is Nigel Farage, leader of the five-week-old Brexit Party. This is his sixth European Parliament election campaign – Farage represented the UK Independence Party at the first five – but this time he is leading the Brexit Party, a grouping which was only formally launched on April 12 and can now lay claim to be the fastest growing political party in modern British history. Three weeks into his campaign, Farage is targeting south Wales, Midlands and north of England because they are predominantly Labour seats which voted heavily for Leave in the 2016 EU referendum. He tells me as we walk along: “The message I am trying to put is that if you vote Labour here you are voting for a list of four candidates, all of whom support a second referendum.” – Christopher Hope for the Telegraph (£) Tim Stanley: Both parties face an existential threat, but Labour’s goes deeper than the Tories’ The Tories had a dreadful Euro election, but at least they know what to do. Elect a Leaver as leader, rethink the Withdrawal Agreement, win back the Brexit Party defectors. Easy-peasy-Farage-squeezy. For Labour, it’s much harder. They obviously lost a lot of votes to the Greens and Lib Dems, which pulls them in a Remain direction. But that wasn’t the whole picture. In the Welsh ex-mining seat of Blaenau Gwent, Labour’s share of the vote fell by 23 points, but the Lib Dems only rose by five: the bulk of the Labour exodus must have gone to the Brexit Party, which won an impressive 37 per cent (compared to Ukip’s 30 per cent in 2014). In Wigan, Greater Manchester, the Labour percentage fell by nearly 20 points and the Brexiteers hit 41 per cent. – Tim Stanley for the Telegraph (£) Allison Pearson: The European elections were a victory for ordinary Britons – and, boy, did we enjoy shaking things up Forgive me if I borrow from the great Frankie Valli, but, Oh, what a night! It was pure joy to watch the coverage of the European elections. For weeks, the BBC had been doing its best to avoid saying the dreaded name aloud, but on Sunday they really didn’t have a lot of choice. Try as they might to make the results about the success of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, one astounding fact strobed out in turquoise from the top of every single count in England and Wales. The Brexit Party had wellied the lot of them. How uplifting to see both main parties (and their dismal leaders) humbled. How unbelievably gratifying to see millions of decent Conservative and Labour voters – dismissed as “extremists” by the Condescendi – exact their revenge. It wasn’t just a punishment beating, although there was a great big smack of satisfaction in knowing that not a single politician in England and Wales has a safe seat any more. Be afraid, Yvette Cooper, be very afraid! – Allison Pearson for the Telegraph (£) Tom Harris: Jeremy Corbyn is being broken on the horns of Labour’s second Brexit referendum dilemma There is something ironic – as well as cruelly cynical and profoundly dishonest – about Labour MPs’ criticism of their own party’s platform at the European parliamentary elections. At the risk of intruding into a family feud, the party’s dilemma, as reported in much of today’s coverage, is this: the leadership of the party has tried to ride two horses at once, by claiming to respect the result of the 2016 EU referendum while remaining open to the possibility of supporting a rerun referendum on whether Britain should in fact remain or leave. This position, as can be seen by the weekend’s disastrous results, was viewed by Leave and Remain voters alike as unclear and confused, so now many of Corbyn’s MPs are insisting that he dismounts from the fence and campaigns unequivocally to give voters the right to revoke Brexit, however many votes are lost in Rotherham or Bolsover. – Tom Harris for the Telegraph (£) William Hague: Tory contenders under pressure from Farage will regret making Brexit promises they cannot keep Seasoned politicians have always been able to put a positive gloss on any election result, however grim. Over the past 30 years, I have appeared on countless news programmes the morning after local or European elections to say it wasn’t as bad as expected, that the turnout was unusually low, that the weather was unfortunate or that everything would be fine when the economy improved. But if you are, like me, in the tiny minority who actually voted Conservative last week, there is no positive interpretation available for the result now in. It is by far the party’s worst-ever electoral performance. It shows that the country is deeply and perhaps evenly polarised. And it serves a final written notice on the current party system, which is now in imminent danger of collapse. – Lord Hague for the Telegraph (£) The Sun: Remainers have lost the plot over Brexit and EU vote should be a wake-up call for Westminster The Remainers have lost the plot. Laughably, they claim that they somehow “won” the European elections. All you need to do is combine the votes of a bunch of different parties, pretend the Tories don’t back Brexit and, hey presto, you’ve got a crushing victory. It’s time for a reality check. The public have just made the Brexit Party the biggest party not just in Britain but in the entirety of the European Parliament. The message from the electorate was frustration with the dog’s dinner that Britain’s two biggest parliamentary parties have made of Brexit. Nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t a demand to revoke Article 50 or for a second referendum. It wasn’t a sign people have changed their mind. It was simply a damning verdict on the collective incompetence of Britain’s two establishment parties, and one that will almost certainly be repeated at a General Election if it happens soon. Nigel Farage managed to build a brand new party out of the ashes of Ukip and turn it into a juggernaut, with one clear policy: to leave the EU. – The Sun says Brexit in Brief Even if there had been a shift against Brexit, shambolic Remainers would fail to capitalise on it – Rob Wilson for the Telegraph (£) It may not happen – but we should prepare for a constitutional crisis this autumn – Jonathan Clark for Conservative Home A second referendum is a bad option for Labour. But it may be the only one left – Owen Jones for the Guardian Life on the Brexit Party campaign trail – Annuziata Rees-Mogg for the Telegraph (£) Euro elections confirm Brexit view – John Redwood’s Diary