Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Brexit Bill ‘in limbo’ as MPs reject Government’s timetable for the legislation… Boris Johnson has hit the pause button on his Brexit legislation after MPs rejected his plan to get it through the Commons in three days. MPs backed his Withdrawal Agreement Bill – but minutes later voted against the timetable, leaving it “in limbo”. After the vote, EU Council President Donald Tusk said he would recommend EU leaders backed an extension to the 31 October Brexit deadline. But a No 10 source said if a delay was granted, the PM would seek an election. On Saturday, Mr Johnson complied with a law demanding he write to the EU to ask for a three-month extension, but did not sign the letter. Following the result in the Commons, he said it was Parliament and not the government that had requested an extension. Mr Johnson said he would reiterate his pledge to EU leaders, telling them it was still his policy to leave by the end of October. But Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs it was “very hard” to see how the necessary laws could be passed to leave with a deal by the deadline. – BBC News What are the four possible outcomes of tonight’s Brexit vote? – Telegraph (£) > WATCH: Boris Johnson reacts to the Programme Motion defeat and pauses the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill > WATCH: Jeremy Corbyn reacts to the defeat of the Government’s Programme Motion …after the Commons backed the Withdrawal Agreement by a majority of 30… MPs last night gave Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal a seal of approval by giving the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill a Second Reading by 329 votes to 299 – a majority of 30. 329 MPs voted for the Bill at Second Reading (331 if you include the two tellers) including 287 Conservative MPs, 25 Independent MPs and 19 Labour MPs. 299 voted against the Bill (301 if you include the two tellers) including 219 Labour MPs, all 35 Scottish National Party MPs, all 19 Liberal Democrat MPs, all 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs, 8 Independent MPs, all 5 MPs from The Independent Group for Change, all 4 Plaid Cymru MPs and the 1 Green Party MP. A further 7 did not vote in the division. – Jonathan Isaby for BrexitCentral …with 19 Labour MPs rebelling against Jeremy Corbyn to vote for Johnson’s Brexit deal Jeremy Corbyn was struck with a rebellion of 19 Labour MPs who on Tuesday night helped Boris Johnson get his Brexit deal over the line in a “historic” Commons vote. Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a way forward for Brexit for the first time, with the Prime Minister securing a sizeable majority for his plan. The 19 Labour MPs who voted for the European Union Withdrawal Agreement Bill at its second reading included Sarah Champion, Rosie Cooper, Gloria De Piero, Dan Jarvis, Lisa Nandy and Melanie Onn. The Prime Minister said it was “joyful” to see the House united in favour of a Brexit plan for the first time. Mr Johnson told MPs: “For the first time in this long saga this House has actually accepted its responsibilities together, come together, and embraced a deal.” He then congratulated MPs on the “scale of our collective achievement.” – Telegraph (£) DUP says Boris Johnson has lost their respect as they vote against his Brexit deal… Boris Johnson suffered a blow on Tuesday night as the DUP announced that the Prime Minister had lost their respect and voted against his Brexit deal. After a heated debate in the House of Commons, DUP MP Sammy Wilson said: “The Prime Minister has lost my respect. Instead of owning his decision to capitulate on Northern Ireland to get his deal through in a hurry, he is implying that none of us can read the details. “It creates a border in the Irish Sea and the [DUP] will not support it,” added the MP for East Antrim. The DUP’s 10 MPs voted against a second reading of Mr Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement, and also rejected the Government timetable that would have allowed the UK to leave the EU by October 31. After the vote, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds urged the Prime Minister to “talk to us again about what can be done at this late stage to ensure we join in this great quest together to get Brexit done,” in a hint that the party could eventually change tack. – Telegraph (£) > WATCH: Nigel Dodds MP welcomes the Government’s Programme Motion defeat …and the party’s chief whip says the PM needs DUP votes to pass the legislation The Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) chief whip has said he believes the “penny has dropped” with the government that it needs the party’s votes to pass Brexit legislation. On Tuesday evening, the DUP’s 10 votes dealt a blow to the PM’s plan to fast-track the bill through Parliament. It was another defeat for Boris Johnson and it led to another Brexit delay. The votes of the DUP MPs and the independent North Down MP Lady Hermon meant the government lost by 14 votes. As a result, it paused its efforts to get its deal through the House of Commons. Mr Johnson is awaiting the EU’s verdict on approving another extension. The DUP’s Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the prime minister should use the time to talk to the party. “I think he realises now that without the DUP on board getting his bill and his agreement through the House of Commons is going to be hugely challenging for him,” he said. “So I think the sensible thing for the government is to sit down with us and see if we can work this out.” – BBC News Defiant Johnson vows to force a snap election if EU delays Brexit for another three months… Boris Johnson last night told EU chiefs he will force a snap general election if a new Brexit delay stretches as long as three months. With next week’s October 31 Brexit deadline in disarray, the PM immediately hit the phones to Europe’s leaders. Defiant Mr Johnson insisted he would repeat his firm line that “our policy remains that we should not delay, that we should leave the EU on October 31st”. But No10 would not rule out the PM reluctantly accepting a far shorter delay of a few weeks to continue pushing his landmark Withdrawal Agreement Bill through Parliament. He said: “If Parliament refuses to allow Brexit to happen and instead gets its way and decides to delay everything until January, with great regret I must say the bill will have to be pulled and we will have to go forward to a general election.” He added: “We have chewed over this question again and again; our constituents will not be fooled by any further delay — they will not understand why that is necessary. At that election I will argue ‘Let’s get Brexit done’, and the Leader of the Opposition will make his case to spend 2020 having two referendums —one on Brexit and one on Scotland — and the people will decide.” – The Sun …and Labour are poised to back an election once the EU approves a Brexit delay… Labour is ready to vote for a general election as soon as EU27 leaders have signed off on a Brexit extension, despite the desire of some senior party figures to secure a referendum first, the Guardian understands. Labour has twice abstained when the prime minister asked for an election under the terms of the fixed-term parliaments act, which requires a two-thirds majority. But Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly said that once an extension was in place he would support a poll and a Labour spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday night that remained the party’s position. “Extension, then election,” he said. Boris Johnson has threatened to make a fresh bid to secure a general election if the EU27 leaders hand the UK a three-month Brexit delay, as requested in the letter he reluctantly sent on Saturday. After the government was defeated on Tuesday in its last-ditch bid to secure Brexit by 31 October, Johnson said he would consult EU leaders about what they planned to do next and report back to parliament. He could seek a general election immediately or wait to see whether his Brexit bill is amended in some way he is unable to accept, such as by forcing him to seek a customs union. – Guardian …with the EU expected to grant an extension in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, has told EU leaders to grant an extension to the Brexit deadline after Boris Johnson said he would stop the ratification process for the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons. Among the options under consideration is a three month extension until January 31, 2020, in line with the Benn Act. The extension would automatically end once the deal is ratified by Westminster and the European Parliament in a “flextension”. The House of Commons voted to pass the Brexit bill by a majority of 30 on Tuesday night but rejected the prime minister’s three day schedule to debate it by 14 votes, meaning the October 31 deadline will be missed. The prime minister insisted that Britain would still leave the EU by Halloween. After Mr Johnson said he would pause the ratification of the Brexit deal, Mr Tusk said he would immediately recommend the extension request be granted through written procedure, avoiding the need for an EU summit. – Telegraph (£) EU signals it is likely to give UK a Brexit delay up to 31 January – Guardian Tusk presses EU leaders to back three-month Brexit ‘flextension’ – The Times (£) Emergency Brexit summit could be held if Emmanuel Macron opposes extension EU leaders could be forced to hold the emergency Brexit summit none of them wanted, if reports that President Emmanuel Macron is opposing Donald Tusk’s recommendation that Brexit be delayed for three months are proved correct. The president of the European Council has said that the extension could be granted by written procedure, avoiding an EU summit in Brussels. But diplomatic sources told the Telegraph that would only be possible if all EU27 leaders agreed on the length of the extension. Among the options under consideration is a three month extension until January 31, 2020, in line with the Benn Act. The extension would automatically end once the deal is ratified by Westminster and the European Parliament in a “flextension”. French diplomatic sources suggested that Mr Macron would only support a very short extension “of a few days” last night. Mr Johnson has begun ringing EU leaders to tell them he would not accept a three-month delay, but left open the possibility that he would accept a short extension of around 10 days to get the Brexit deal through Parliament. – Telegraph (£) European Parliament will veto Brexit deal rather than risk another Windrush, vows Guy Verhofstadt The European Parliament will veto the new Brexit deal unless it gets assurances that EU citizens will not face deportation from Britain in a new Windrush scandal, Guy Verhofstadt warned on Tuesday. The leading MEP on Brexit, demanded promises that more than three million EU citizens would not be forced to leave the UK, even if they had not registered for settled status on time. “We don’t want that EU citizens become victims of another Windrush scandal in Britain,” he said in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The European Parliament has the final vote on any Brexit agreement and could theoretically veto it, even if its is eventually agreed by the House of Commons. MEPs said they would never vote on the deal, until MPs have backed it. “Before we give consent, all problems faced by EU27 nationals in the UK need to be solved, including the threat of deportations for those who haven’t registered in time,” he said in a debate on the agreement struck last week in Brussels. Mr Verhofstadt, an arch-federalist and former prime minister of Belgium, demanded all EU citizens granted pre-settled status be awarded settled status in Britain and an amnesty on those missing the deadline. The current deadline is 30 June 2021 or 31 December 2020, if Britain leaves without a deal. – Telegraph (£) Michel Barnier appointed to lead future negotiations with UK after Brexit Michel Barnier has been put in charge of future negotiations with the UK after Brexit, Brussels has announced. The EU’s chief negotiator will head up a new “Task Force for Relations with the UK” that will be responsible for talks on the future relationship. His team will also oversee the finishing the Article 50 process, and any required ‘no-deal’ preparation, a spokesperson for the European Commission said on Tuesday. Mr Barnier is widely seen in Brussels as having run a successful negotiation with the UK. As chief negotiator he kept member states on board with the EU’s strategy, despite British attempts to sow division, by consulting widely and regularly. – Independent Brexit has been a ‘waste of time and energy’, says Jean-Claude Juncker Brexit has been a “waste of time and energy” for the European Union, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Juncker said it has “pained” him to have spent “so much” of his time in his role dealing with Britain’s departure from the bloc. “A waste of time and a waste of energy,” he continued.”The commission has worked tirelessly to negotiate and renegotiate an agreement with the United Kingdom to respect the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.” Mr Juncker said the EU could only ratify the Brexit deal that was agreed last week once it has been approved by British MPs. – Sky News BBC apologises over Andrew Marr accusing Priti Patel of laughing at him during Brexit interview The BBC has apologised after Andrew Marr accused Priti Patel of laughing at him during a Brexit interview. Political presenter Marr was grilling the Home Secretary about the impact of Britain’s exit from the European Union on his Sunday morning politics programme when he scolded: “I can’t see why you’re laughing.” Ms Patel, who appeared via video link on the October 13 episode of The Andrew Marr Show, did not respond and continued answering questions. The corporation, which received 222 complaints, has now issued an apology, accepting that she was not smirking at his line of questioning and was just wearing her “natural expression”. A BBC spokesperson said today: “Guests who appear on the Andrew Marr show expect robust interviewing that includes back and forth between themselves and Mr Marr. “Andrew Marr commented on Priti Patel laughing after he glanced up while reading a list of business leaders concerned about the impact of Brexit on their industries. He thought he saw the Home Secretary smile but now accepts this was in fact her natural expression and wasn’t indicating amusement at his line of questioning. There was no intention to cause offence and we are sorry if viewers felt this to be the case.” – Telegraph (£) Robert Halfon: How Labour flicked two fingers at 17.4 million people As I was scootering out of the House of Commons (literally) on Saturday, and came across the huge crowd of remainer/second-referendumers, the first dulcet tones I heard came from, none other than, “Rochester woman”, Emily Thornberry. To rapturous roars from the rowdy bunch, she exclaimed, “Britain is a Remainer country!”, and expressed her strong support and that of the Labour Party for a second referendum. I thought to myself at the time, how incredible that, not only has Labour defied the wishes of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the European Union in 2016, but so too have they come out against their own 2017 manifesto commitment to respect the referendum result. Labour’s decision to support a second referendum – and by intent, remain – is extraordinary for another reason; whilst it may please some metropolitans, electorally, it makes no sense. On Sunday, when Keir Starmer got up on the Marr programme to confirm Labour will have a second referendum, his party, essentially, flashed two fingers up at working class constituencies like my own – Harlow. – Robert Halfon MP for ConservativeHome Owen Paterson: Remainers hope to crush our dream of independence by trapping us in the EU protectionist bloc Of all the many problems with the Brexit terms negotiated by Theresa May, among the most depressingly revealing was her commitment in the old Political Declaration to “build and improve on the single customs territory.” It showed that her ambition was, ultimately, to seek an agreement which still saw the UK – or part of it – inside the EU Customs Union and tied to vast swathes of its laws and regulations. It was a direct contradiction of Conservative Manifesto promises that “we will no longer be members of the single market or customs union” and would have been a failure to deliver the result of the referendum in anything but meaningless name. The UK’s continuing membership of the Customs Union has twice been rejected by MPs, but that will be unlikely to stop Remainers in Parliament from tabling it as an amendment to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. They continue to conflate “customs union” with “free trade”, but the reality is that Customs Union membership would be a disastrous outcome for the UK. While free trade is concerned with abolishing tariffs between trading partners, a central feature of any customs union is the imposition of a tariff wall around its members. In so doing, a common external tariff inherently deprives member states of an independent trade policy. This is bad enough. But for the UK, yoking ourselves to the EU’s trade policy without a say as a non-EU member would be particularly unwise. – Owen Paterson MP for the Telegraph (£) Janet Daley: Remainers should savour this tactical victory, because they have now lost the Brexit war The good news was better than expected. The bad news was predictable. The outcome was as promised. For the first time – and by a quite startling margin – the House supported a Withdrawal Agreement. Parliament has now officially accepted that we are leaving the European Union. Before we get hopelessly bogged down in the next tactical morass, let’s just savour this moment. It is a historic event of thunderous proportions. The Remain argument is lost. Three and a half years after the population, which was supposed to have the authority in this matter, expressed its view, its democratic representatives have finally assented. And then, with considerable dramatic impact, the prime minister did what he had promised (not “threatened” as the broadcasters kept saying) and “paused” the Withdrawal Agreement Bill that he had just succeeded, against the odds, in getting passed. There is, of course, real danger ahead. The Remainers live on and will now fight a more disingenuous battle to undermine the Agreement, using the delay that they have engineered to amend and weaken it. Remain will never truly accept this defeat. They will just have to use more subterfuge. But something serious has changed: the EU is no longer allied with them. It wants now to work with the Johnson government to get this very deal over the line. It is not prepared to discuss more demands and more compromises. Having re-opened the May Withdrawal Agreement (as it said it never would), it will not consider doing it again. This really is the end. – Janet Day for the Telegraph (£) Michael Deacon: A night of Commons chaos that left Brexit drifting in limbo Even after three and a half years, many questions about Brexit remain unanswered. The most puzzling of all, however, is this. How can something so dramatic be so boring? Seriously. How can it be so action-packed, and yet at the same time so uneventful? How can it be so unpredictable, and yet at the same time so monotonous? And how can it be so grindingly slow, and yet at the same time so madly rushed? We’ll probably never know. Tonight’s scenes in the Commons, however, were typical. A climax and an anticlimax, all at once. MPs had just concluded what was meant to be the first day of debate on the Withdrawal Agreement bill. It had begun with a speech from Boris Johnson. Throughout, the Prime Minister was assailed relentlessly by opposition MPs. At any one time there were rarely fewer than 10 trying furiously to intervene on him. It was almost unnerving to watch: a great lurching mass of them, rising and groaning and stretching out their arms in his direction, like a horde of indignant zombies. – Michael Deacon for the Telegraph (£) Asa Bennett: He could offer a Brexit delay, but why would Boris expect Corbyn to keep his word on an election? If everything had gone according to Boris Johnson’s plan, Parliament would have endorsed his invitation to hold an election, which would have seen him returned with a considerable Conservative majority to drive his deal through safely in time to see the country out of the EU by October 31. Instead, the last hope the Prime Minister has of keeping his Brexit deal on track rests on whether he can get the legislation to enact his deal through Parliament so fast that he can convince European leaders he does not need any extension to the Article 50 process to break the impasse. Mr Johnson is not blind to the risk of failure, warning MPs that a refusal to “allow Brexit to happen… and.. to delay everything until January or possibly longer” would force him to pull his bill in order to pursue an election again. But would he have any more luck than any of the other times he has tried to hold an election? One can only hope so, as this Parliament – which has shown itself to be happier with Brexit delay over any decision – is crying out for a refresh. – Asa Bennett for the Telegraph (£) Eilis O’Hanlon: By seeking to thwart the Brexit deal, the DUP risk becoming the authors of the Union’s destruction It’s not called the Conservative and Unionist Party for nothing. Tories have always had a soft spot for Ulster. Even the fact that the fondness was rarely reciprocated didn’t seem to dampen that sentiment. Unionists would be foolish to imagine, however, that this residual loyalty will survive all strains. The DUP’s apparent determination to force Boris Johnson to cripple his own Brexit deal could be the beginning of the end for that old alliance. Unionists have plenty of cause to feel aggrieved at a deal which they believe weakens the Union by potentially putting a border down the Irish Sea. When Nationalists felt similarly unsettled by the prospect of a hard border on the island, the Irish government rode in resolutely behind them even though it was the EU which was threatening to erect a border to protect its single market. The question they need to answer is whether making enemies in the Conservative Party will end up hastening the outcome they most fear? The Labour Party is now pretending to share Unionist pain in an effort to secure DUP backing for amendments to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, even though the calls are being led by people whose life long ambition has been to achieve a united Ireland. Unionists are too shrewd to fall for such a transparent ruse, but the determination to “leave as one nation” might still pull them towards backing amendments which bring about a UK wide customs union. If the DUP was to row in behind any of the proposed wrecking amendments, they would, in effect, be forcing the country to accept a Brexit in name only in order to avoid the possibility, and it’s only a possibility, that there might need to be a temporary customs border in the Irish Sea. A comprehensive free trade agreement would negate the need for such arrangements and only Boris Johnson is capable right now of delivering that. If the DUP ends up limiting the UK’s ability to have an independent trade policy, Leavers may never forgive the Unionists. And that ultimately will be a greater threat to the union than any amount of extra paperwork that Northern Irish businesses may have while a new trade deal is negotiated. – Eilis O’Hanlon for the Telegraph (£) Tom Harris: Remainers don’t want time to scrutinise the Withdrawal Bill. They want to humiliate the PM MPs do not read Bills – they rely on party briefings, their own researchers’ notes and the excellent summaries produced by the House of Commons library. Most of them don’t even do that; they simply wait until a vote arrives and then walk through whichever lobby their whips tell them to. No, there are precious few democratic or constitutional reasons for opposing the programme motion, but there is a political one, and it’s all about defeating Boris Johnson and reducing his electoral appeal by undermining his definitive promise on becoming prime minister in July. It’s conceivable that such cynicism will pay dividends for Labour. Heartland voters will enjoy watching Johnson’s humiliation (although this happens on the floor of the House so frequently these days that the law of diminishing returns surely applies). But there are a lot of Leave voters in those heartlands too, and many of them will see today’s defeat of the programme motion as yet another attempt to delay or block Brexit. And they will be right. – Tom Harris for the Telegraph (£) Quentin Letts: We’re sick of the grumps in Parliament – when will they realise all we want is Brexit hope? For the past three years our parliament has said no to Brexit. No, no, no, no, no to the voters who opted for Leave in the mighty referendum of 2016. At every turn of the Brexit melodramas since then, Westminster has become the Capital of Can’t, the Fount of Refusals, Schloss Verboten. Every time Brexit seemed to be gaining ground, immensely clever (and immensely arrogant) parliamentarians have wagged their fingers and found another way to create a roadblock. Every ruse has been played by the “Westminster bubble smartypants”, as Tory MP Andrew Percy so blisteringly put it this week. I do not intend to bore the knackers off you for the rest of this page by trotting through the old arguments for or against a clean/hard/soft Brexit. All that brain-numbing jargon about Norway options and backstops and withdrawal agreements and Letwin amendments we will park in the lay-by today. So much word soup does your head in after a while. Instead I want to talk about the drug of despondency and the damage it is causing to both our politics and our country. The only big figure who has resisted all this naysaying has been Boris Johnson. If he is as far ahead with the public as opinion polls suggest, there is a reason: Boris is optimistic. Boris believes in better times. – Quentin Letts for The Sun Brexit in Brief Post-Brexit Britain has a vital role to play in bringing Nato back together – Con Coughlin for the Telegraph (£) After the controversial reign of John Bercow, the next Commons Speaker will have to be different – Sir Bernard Jenkin MP for the Telegraph (£) Don’t believe rancid Remainers’ lies – they have no motives to ‘scrutinise’ Boris Johnson’s new deal – The Sun says Thuggish Remainers pick on a young child – that’s about their level – Ann Widdecombe MEP for the Express Push, Varadkar, push. How he can now get Johnson over the line – and make Brexit happen – Paul Goodman for ConservativeHome Jeremy Corbyn squirms as IDS confronts him on his attempt to get UK out of EU years ago – Express