Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Jeremy Corbyn dodges question on his Brexit stance nine times as Boris Johnson skewers the ‘absurd’ Labour plan in TV debate Boris Johnson tore into Jeremy Corbyn over his “absurd dither and delay” Brexit policy last night in a furious live television clash that ignited the General Election campaign. In their first head-to-head debate in the contest for the December 12 poll, the Prime Minister asked the Labour leader nine times to spell out whether he would support remaining in the EU or leaving the bloc if a second referendum is triggered – but failed to get an answer. The Prime Minister said: “We don’t know on which side Mr Corbyn will campaign. Will he campaign for Leave or Remain? Mr Corbyn is trying to conceal the void at the heart of their Brexit policy.” The Labour chief repeatedly said he would give voters “the final say” without specifying his own position. Their row over Brexit dominated barbed exchanges in front of a studio audience in Salford on the ITV Johnson v Corbyn programme. A snap YouGov poll judged Mr Johnson the winner of the debate by a wafer-thin margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. – Express ITV election debate host Julie Etchingham interrupted Boris Johnson 30 times but Jeremy Corbyn just 14, Tory claims – The Sun Voters say Boris Johnson edged live ITV debate with Jeremy Corbyn by 51% to 49% – The Sun > WATCH: Laughter from the ITV audience as Corbyn claims his Brexit stance is clear Boris Johnson says there is ‘absolutely zero’ chance of the UK leaving the EU without a deal Boris Johnson has insisted that the chances of Britain breaking away from the EU at the end of 2020 without a trade deal in place are “absolutely zero”. The PM said a re-elected Tory government would negotiate a free trade agreement within 11 months of Britain leaving the EU. The comments come ahead of his first televised debate of the General Election campaign with Jeremy Corbyn. Under Conservative plans, Mr Johnson would re-introduce his Withdrawal Agreement in the Commons with a view to delivering Brexit by the current deadline of January 31. That would mark the start of a transition period – set to run to the end of 2020 – in which the UK would continue to follow EU rules while negotiations on a trade deal take place. However, many observers believe it is not enough time to get an agreement, opening up the prospect of Britain leaving without a deal unless Mr Johnson seeks an extension to the transition period – something he has vowed not to do. But speaking during an election campaign visit to a boxing gym near Manchester, the Prime Minister was adamant there was no prospect of breaking with the EU at the end of 2020 without a trade agreement in place. Asked in an interview with BBC local radio about the risk, he said: “I think they’re absolutely zero.” – Evening Standard Nigel Farage denies that the Brexit Party will split the Leave vote… Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has denied his party will split the leave vote at the upcoming general election. Farage made the comments during a rally at the Northern Hotel in Peterborough on Tuesday morning. The party recently announced they will not contest the 317 seats won by the Conservatives at the last general election and will instead focus all their efforts on seats currently held by Labour. Some critics fear the move could split the pro-Brexit vote, but Farage reassured voters in Peterborough that this wouldn’t be the case. “Peterborough disproves much of what is being said and written. In 2015, when I led UKIP here in Peterborough, UKIP got a big, solid, 16% of the vote and the Conservative, Stewart Jackson, won the seat,” he said “When it came to 2017, UKIP decided not to stand against Stewart Jackson because we might split the leave vote and guess what? Stewart Jackson lost to the Labour party! A large number of Labour voters will vote for the Brexit party, but they will never vote Conservative. They wouldn’t vote Conservative if you paid them! So, the idea that a vote for the Brexit Party puts Corbyn in Downing Street is wrong and is utterly disproved by history here.” – ITV News …as he claims Tory candidates are going behind Johnson’s back to agree electoral pacts with the Brexit Party… Conservative party candidates are going behind the back of Boris Johnson and agreeing pacts with the Brexit Party to soft pedal their election campaigns and maximise the Brexit vote, Nigel Farage has claimed. The Brexit Party leader disclosed that local candidates were taking matters into their own hands after the Conservative party refused to do any deals in joining forces to fight Labour-held seats. Mr Farage was speaking during a campaign visit to Peterborough, as one of his MEPs in Scotland Louis Stedman Bryce quit saying his “personal values” are “in direct conflict with those of the party”. The Telegraph disclosed last week how the Tories had rejected an offer from Mr Farage to stand aside in dozens of seats where they had no chance of winning. The Conservatives instead offered to put up “paper candidates” in safe Labour-held constituencies, meaning the Tories would carry out only minimal campaigning to give an advantage to Brexit Party rivals. stand down all his 317 candidates in seats won by the Tories at the 2017 general election. The Brexit Party is now standing candidates in just 274 seats at the December 12 poll, he confirmed yesterday. Mr Farage said it was “not particularly surprising” that unofficial local electoral pacts – when the parties stand ‘paper candidates’ who will soft pedal to help a rival – are being agreed now.” – Telegraph (£) …but he suffers a fresh blow as Scotland’s only Brexit Party MEP quits the party Louis Stedman-Bryce’s resignation comes a week after he quit as a general election candidate in protest at Nigel Farage’s decision not to contest Tory-held seats. The party’s only MEP in Scotland, who was elected just six months ago, said he was “saddened” to be quitting but had been left with no choice. “This is because I find myself in a situation where my personal values are in direct conflict with those of the party and this for me is an area where I cannot and will not compromise,” he added in a video statement posted on Twitter. “Almost a quarter of a million people in Scotland voted for the Brexit Party to represent them here in the European Parliament and to ensure Scotland had a voice in the Brexit debate. Unfortunately I feel the party has repeatedly failed to deliver on either of those promises.” – PoliticsHome Latest YouGov poll shows a narrowing of the Tory lead… Boris Johnson went into last night’s election television debate as the country’s preferred choice to be prime minister, but the Tory lead over Labour is narrowing. A new YouGov poll for The Times puts the Conservatives at 42 per cent, down three points since the weekend, with Labour up two points. It means that the Tory lead has narrowed from 17 points to 12. A week ago their lead stood at 14 points, suggesting a degree of volatility in the polls, but putting the Tories well ahead. The new poll has the Lib Dems on 15 per cent and the Brexit Party on 4 per cent, both unchanged since the weekend. The polling suggests that Labour has won back more of their 2017 base. When the election was called, only 57 per cent of those who voted Labour in the last election said that they were sticking with the party this time. The new poll shows this has risen to 67 per cent. However, the Tories still have 87 per cent of their voters from two years ago, while also attracting 7 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2017 and 13 per cent who voted Lib Dem. Mr Johnson maintains a comfortable lead over Jeremy Corbyn, with 41 per cent saying the Tory leader would make the best prime minister, while 22 per cent favour the Labour leader, and 31 per cent are not sure. – The Times (£) …while a Kantar poll has the Tories surging into an 18-point lead at the expense of the Brexit Party Boris Johnson has been handed a massive boost after the Conservative Party surged into a huge 18-point lead over Labour in a new poll ahead of the general election on December 12 at the expense of plummeting support for the Brexit Party. The opinion poll from Kantar of 1,176 people online between November 14-18 revealed support for the Conservative Party has ballooned over recent days as the battle lines to be in possession of the keys to 10 Downing Street are drawn. Support for the Tories has jumped eight percent to nearly half (45 percent) from the last Kantar poll published six days ago. The Labour Party remains unchanged on 27 percent but is now a massive 18-points behind the ruling party just three weeks before the general election. The Liberal Democrats are on 16 percent – down a percentage point from the previous Kantar poll.But the huge burst for the Tories has come at the expense of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which has seen its support plunge from seven percent to just two percent. – Express Boris Johnson attacked by French MEP Nathalie Loiseau over refusal to name EU commissioner There is “no way” the new European Commission will wait for Britain to get started, French MEP Nathalie Loiseau warned following London’s refusal to name a representative to the bloc’s powerful executive body. Mme Loiseau told Public Sénat television: “There is no way we will wait [for the UK] – wait because [Prime Minister] Boris Johnson has found yet another excuse to not do what he will eventually end up doing. We have seen since the very beginning that Mr Johnson has a tendency to say one thing and do another.” Mme Loiseau added the Johnson government would have no choice but to “nominate a commissioner”. She continued: “I really hope we will not have to wait [for London].” The bloc launched a legal case against Britain last week after London, in the midst of a messy Brexit-focused election campaign, said it would not name a representative for the new Commission. – Express France says its citizens are ignoring Home Office Brexit registration scheme French citizens living in the UK are widely ignoring the Home Office’s EU citizens registration scheme, the country’s parliament has warned. A report by the French senate foreign affairs committee says that three quarters of French nationals in Britain hadn’t registered by the end of September, despite the elapsing of several Brexit extensions. “As of 30 September 2019, just over 70,000 French have registered, only a quarter of the French population living in the United Kingdom,” the senate committee report said. The senators say the 300,000 French people living in Britain are taking a “somewhat wait-and-see” attitude to the situation with the UK’s exit from the EU. The latest Home Office statistics that also cover applications in October show that just a further 21,100 French nationals registered in the final month before the planned 31 October Brexit date, despite the government claiming that the UK would leave by the end of that month. French citizens are lagging behind other nationalities in registering, with just over half of the 3.5 million from all 27 other EU countries signing up, according to official statistics. The deadline for the EU settlement scheme is 31 December 2020 in the case of a no-deal, or 30 June 2021 if a deal is passed, meaning there is still time for the national to sign up. – Independent John Longworth: Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the CBI were to embrace Brexit? The CBI didn’t spend a single moment trying to reverse Brexit claims its DG, Carolyn Fairbairn. Really?! Business is the life blood of the economy and everything else that we want as a people, as a nation: the NHS, law and order, transport, defence, education, depends on the generation of wealth, largely through the conduct of business. A disconnect between people as politicians, voters, citizens and consumers, and people as wealth creators, workers and investors is a very dangerous state of affairs and the CBI has done more than any other actor to create this disconnect as a consequence of its pursuit of the narrow vested interests of its members, in particular in respect of Brexit. These manifestations of people are often simply differing aspects of the very same person – a worker, quite possibly running their own small business, with a pension invested in company shares, who votes and volunteers for a political party and buys stuff, uses public services. It is the balance of these things that determines the realpolitik of life. But when an organisation with, historically, a great deal of influence is monotone in its pursuit of interests, then we have an imbalance in the body politic, undue impact on decision-making and a skewing of information such as to create permanent mistrust of it amongst people: project fear writ large, an organisation that embodies the very essence of what we call the establishment. Entitlement, undue access to policy-making, representation and clubbability is what we see. During the next phase, that is the negotiations regarding the political declaration, we will need to guard further against a never ending “damage limitation” approach from vested interests. There will be a need to maximise the available opportunities of Brexit: creative disruption at the margins will produce the most growth. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the CBI were to embrace this? Don’t hold your breath. – John Longworth MEP for the Telegraph (£) Guy Corbet: Sun Tsu’s lessons for the Brexit Party Sun Tsu, the ancient Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher, once said: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”. That perfectly sums up the Brexit Party’s predicament. Its strategy was to form a Leave alliance with the Conservatives. Despite the initially “unilateral” gesture to stand aside in 317 seats, it did not have the tactical nous to see that through. Instead, it is being tactical and only contesting the seats that the Conservative party does not currently hold. The logic of this position is inconsistent with the fact that a Conservative government is the surest way to secure Brexit. It is muddying the waters for the Conservatives, while once again crying betrayal, but without any apparent strategy to get what it actually wants — Brexit. Meanwhile, the Brexit Party is missing the opportunity to take the initiative in directing Britain’s future relations with the continent. It should be setting out the benefits to the UK of being able to write trade deals around the world. Once the UK shows how free trade increases prosperity it will (likely) encourage others to consider following us out. In the election, the Brexit Party should focus their efforts in two areas. First, focus: diluting the Labour or Lib Dem votes in seats that could see the Conservatives come through, and actively campaigning in seats where they have a realistic chance of winning. This is consistent with Farage’s concession that a Conservative government is the only way for Brexit to get through. Second, they should set out to win hearts and minds to the cause of a clean Brexit and take a strong negotiating position in the upcoming talks with the EU. The party needs to deploy both strategy and tactics at the same time. – Guy Corbet for The Article Alex Massie: Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘two referendums’ ploy is nonsense Nicola Sturgeon has not hitherto often been considered a humorist but she is busy revealing a new side to her character in this general election. This is pleasing for many reasons but not least because this election already needs some levity. Consider the article written by – or, rather, for – Sturgeon and published at the weekend in the pro-independence rag The National. In it, the first minister does her best to extricate herself from a predicament entirely of her own making. The SNP, you see, are running an election campaign predicated on the suggestion there should be two new referendums next year. Not only should there be another Brexit referendum – the terms and conditions of which are still to be decided – but there must also be a second referendum on Scottish independence. Indyref2 is justified because Brexit has changed everything. It is just the kind of “material change in circumstance”, as the SNP’s manifesto for the 2016 Holyrood elections put it, that merits revisiting and reconsidering the national question. This, it requires saying, is a perfectly respectable position even if its counter, that a once in a generation referendum really must be that regardless of subsequent events or changes in circumstance, is also both plausible and respectable. But, as you will gather, it all hinges on Brexit. So the sequencing of the SNP’s Two Referendum demands matters. And here logic is not on the nationalists’ side. It is inconceivable that even if Jeremy Corbyn made it into Downing Street while depending on SNP support that Labour could agree to organising Indyref2 before it tackled Brexit2. So Brexit must come first. – Alex Massie for The Spectator Charlotte Gill: The rise of flatshares where Tories are not welcome… so why is the rental market hostile to Brexiteers? When Olivia Lever, a young Conservative, went looking for student accommodation, she couldn’t have imagined the reception that she would receive from one household. Arriving at the flat, there was a sign reading “F— THE TORIES” and, once inside, she found similar literature insulting Boris Johnson and Brexit, and a poster of Che Guevara. Only one of the housemates made the effort to meet her, and later on she received a text from another reading: “I saw you are the leader of the young Conservative party in uni and you support Brexit. We are a very Left-wing house and I think there could be potential clash”. When Olivia posted it on Twitter, she received mixed responses, some sympathetic and others not. Maybe the incident could have been put down as a one-off, but it is in fact part of a sinister trend in the rental market, student and otherwise, where some households have been vetting potential tenants for their political views. Living solo in London, I was oblivious to this phenomenon until August this year, when I’d written for this newspaper about dating apps. I’d complained they’d become too Left-wing, with prejudice rife against Conservatives and Brexiteers. Commenting on my findings, SpareRoom said: “Recently we have seen more mentions of political preferences in adverts, which unfortunately is a sign of the times we live in. Choosing who you live with based on how they vote isn’t counted as discrimination however we’d always encourage people to say who they do want to live with, rather than who they don’t.” Of course, it’s perfectly normal to have preferences in housemates – that they’re tidy and friendly to live with, for starters – but this trend seems a step too far. – Charlotte Gill for the Telegraph (£) Brexit in Brief Labour are mad – Can you trust Corbyn with Brexit? – Ann Widdecombe MEP for the Express No border poll before Brexit resolved says Coveney as Sinn Fein urge vote within five years – Belfast Telegraph Laura Kuenssberg to front ‘frank and insightful’ BBC Brexit documentary – Belfast Telegraph Green Party manifesto pledges second Brexit referendum – The Sun Hacker leaks Brexiteer Arron Banks’s private Twitter messages – The Times (£) Brexit party investigated over data on voters – Guardian