Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Britain could ignore some new EU rules and regulations during Brexit transition phase, May says… Britain could ignore some new EU rules and regulations during the Brexit transition phase, Theresa May has said in a boost to Eurosceptics. The Prime Minister told The Sunday Telegraph that the UK could “diverge” from Brussels between March 2019 and March 2021 in some areas. The comments go further than Mrs May’s Florence speech where she promised to stick with the “existing structure of EU rules and regulations”. – Sunday Telegraph (£) …but also indicates that Britain would not be able to sign free trade deals during the two-year transition phase Britain is not demanding the right to sign trade deals during the period. Mrs May wants to be able negotiate them, but when asked repeatedly about signing before 2021 says only: “That is an aspect of the agreement that we still have to discuss.” Secondly, she indicates there will be no limits on the number of EU migrants coming to Britain during the transition. They will have to register before entering – a change from now – but asked whether migration numbers will fall before 2021, Mrs May says: “People will be free to come to the UK.” If that disappoints some Tory Eurosceptics, they will be cheered by another comment – that Britain could ignore some EU rules and regulations during the transition. – Sunday Telegraph (£) Brexit tensions threaten to overshadow Conservative Party conference… Prime Minister Theresa May has arrived in Manchester for a crunch Tory party conference as tensions over Brexit broke into the open again. Britain’s EU divorce deal and the scope of any post-withdrawal transition period looks set to dominate the Conservative gathering. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson caused waves on the eve of the conference as he insisted that any transition period must not last “a second more” than two years, while some senior Conservatives have said Britain should walk away from Brexit negotiations by Christmas if no serious progress is being made. – Sunday Herald …as Boris Johnson is attacked by Tory Remainers amid fears he could be ‘undoing’ the Tories Former Secretary of State Nicky Morgan accused Boris Johnson of a “dereliction” of duty and his increased pressure on May with fresh Brexit intervention is “undoing” the Conservative Party and leading Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street. Former Secretary of State Nicky Morgan accused Boris Johnson of a “dereliction” of duty and his increased pressure on May with fresh Brexit intervention is “undoing” the Conservative Party and leading Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street. The ex-cabinet minister lashed out at the Foreign Secretary for setting out his own Brexit “red lines”, which opposed May’s agenda and showed no regard for the financial security of millions of Brexit supporters. – Sunday Express Boris Johnson reportedly believes Theresa May ‘will be gone in a year’ – Sunday Times (£) Sajid Javid: We shouldn’t have ‘banged on about Brexit’ during the election Javid does not seek to defend the national campaign at all, nor the prime minister. It was too focused on Brexit, he says, and not enough on more immediate issues that mattered to people. “In the local elections, for example, we left many of our local councillors and campaigners to come up with their local manifestos and focus on the core message of what you could expect from a Conservative council – costing you less, giving you more, backing their community and businesses. That worked well. – Observer Keir Starmer says the price of good Brexit deal is shared institutions Keir Starmer has warned that Britain must be braced for shared institutions such as supranational courts if it wants a “comprehensive” relationship with the EU. Criticising Theresa May’s Florence speech at a Scottish Fabians event, the shadow Brexit secretary said the Prime Minister’s approach was inconsistent. He also repeated his call for the customs union to be “on the table” in a final deal. Starmer warned that the alternative to a court would be the kind of much-maligned investor courts proposed in the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal. – New Statesman UK must be prepared for no deal on Brexit, says new UKIP leader Britain must be fully prepared to walk away from the EU without a Brexit deal, new UKIP leader Henry Bolton has said. He said he would like Brexit to be a smooth transition, but stressed negotiations cannot be endless. Mr Bolton said any transitional period for leaving the EU must be brief and the two years proposed by the prime minister was “extremely unwelcome”. He accused the government of wasting time and said a plan needs to be in place to leave without a deal. – BBC News Battle intensifies to host London-based EU agencies after Brexit… The contest among more than 20 European Union cities to host the bloc’s drugs regulator and banking authority, which are being forced from London by Brexit, heated up on Saturday with an official assessment of the bids. The evaluation of applications by 19 cities ranging from Stockholm to Bucharest seeking to lure the European Medicines Agency and of eight offers — including from Dublin, Paris and Frankfurt — for the European Banking Authority sets the stage for deliberations by EU governments in October and a final decision in November. – Bloomberg …as EU agency staff refuse to relocate to Dublin A survey of staff at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has found that 45% of them would be unlikely to want to relocate to Ireland if the London agency moved to Dublin after Brexit. Confidential details of the survey, reported by news agencies Politico and Reuters last week, indicate that Dublin was not among the top five locations favoured by EMA staff. According to reports, the top five locations were Amsterdam, Barcelona, Vienna, Milan and Copenhagen, with Dublin ranking seventh, behind Brussels. Nineteen cities have offered to host the agency, which employs 900 people. Sofia and Bucharest were ranked lowest by EMA staff. – Sunday Times (£) Backing Brexit Britain: The businesses ploughing ahead with expansion plans despite doom-laden forecasts Brioche Pasquier, still run by the Pasquier family that once ran a typical local bakery, has spent £40m on the site since buying the land in 2014. And in post-Brexit Britain, it has plans to spend more. This bucks expectations in terms of UK investment. – Telegraph (£) Sir Jeremy Heywood urged to investigate Boris Johnson and Liam Fox Britain’s top civil servant has been urged to investigate Boris Johnson and Liam Fox for a potential breach of Cabinet rules. Labour MPs have written to Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood asking him to examine the launch of the new Institute for Free Trade (IFT) think tank earlier this week. Hosted by the Foreign Secretary, Wednesday night’s event was held in the Foreign Office’s Map Room. – Sky News Daniel Hannan MEP: The future rests with the nation state, not the EU empire. Britain should get ready to walk away Britain has to get ready for a no-deal scenario now. By “get ready”, I don’t mean circulate contingency plans among civil servants. I mean make the actual preparations. We need to train new immigration and customs officers; to produce international driver licences; to make our patenting regime independent under international rules; to put lorry parks along the M20 in case there are go-slows at Calais (though, come to think of it, this is a common enough experience even while we are EU members)… the biggest threat to the current negotiations is the lingering belief in Brussels that, if Britain is offered punitive terms, it will either accept them out of desperation or change its mind about leaving – a belief deliberately encouraged by Tony Blair and Vince Cable. – Daniel Hannan MEP for the Sunday Telegraph (£) Tim Martin: Boris Johnson is more sinned against than sinning The main advocates of the euro 15 years ago were Oxbridge males of a certain age – Heseltine, Howe, Hattersley, Blair, Mandelson, the bosses at the Financial Times and the CBI, City and boardroom bigwigs galore. Plus ça change. Economic and political commentary in the main financial newspapers, albeit with notable exceptions, is dominated by a pro-EU Oxbridge orthodoxy. When Boris Johnson, a rare Oxbridge nonconformist, repeated the claim that Brexit would save £350m a week, the old-boy network in the Times, Financial Times, London Evening Standard et al, was aghast. In fact, £350m per week is the gross UK contribution to the EU, but after various rebates and grants, the net figure, according to pro-leave ‘Economists for Free Trade’ is about £11bn a year or £211m per week. – Tim Martin for IBTimes Charles Moore: Greater European integration will do great harm to all Europeans You can see why Theresa May said in Florence that the British wished the European Union well in its plans for greater integration, while choosing a different path ourselves. There is no point in causing antagonism over what we cannot prevent. But in fact greater European integration will do great harm to all Europeans, including us. The rise of AfD in the German elections was caused almost entirely by Mrs Merkel’s extraordinary decision to admit a million Middle Eastern migrants in a year. The spread of the Schengen area — proposed by Jean-Claude Juncker — combined with recrudescent migrant pressure can only confirm freedom of movement as the impossible issue of our time. The attempt to support the euro with banking union and pan-eurozone economic government will continue to penalise the poorer members, while ultimately enraging German voters who have to take on everyone else’s debts. Yes, we have an interest in EU stability. But no, it will not be achieved by the Merkel/Macron/Juncker visions. – Charles Moore for the Spectator Damien Phillips: The PM’s dangerous faith in the European Arrest Warrant is undermining our legal standards The problems with the EAW are well documented. A system that was originally intended for use with serious crime and terrorism has instead involved extradition for the theft of everything from piglets to radiators, cases of mistaken identity, miscarriages of justice, and extradition for trials that collapsed due to a lack of evidence only to be swiftly followed by another EAW for a re-trial. Breaches of basic human rights in EAW cases are commonplace. Several member states do not have prisons that meet adequate standards. Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Lithuania have all been found to be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights… The Conservative Party once stood for liberty under the rule of law. Its members must remind the Prime Minister of that in Manchester next week and stop the erosion of our security. – Damien Phillips for Reaction Lee Rotherham: The EU would still rather hush up fraud than punish it Many of our politicians are absurdly eager to remain signed up to all manner of expensive EU toyshops. In this they are encouraged by a range of academics and lobbyists who are unhappy at the prospect of their purse-strings being cut. Yet it rather behoves the rest of us to reflect beforehand on problems associated with these common budgets and latterday Five-Year Plans. A rather fundamental one is the inherent double risk of fraud and waste. – Lee Rotheram for Conservative Woman Brexit in brief Mr Macron’s EU vision – John Redwood for John Redwood’s Diary Life will go on after Brexit, Scot JCB boss declares – Sunday Herald The picture that perfectly sums up Britain’s distant relationship with the EU – Telegraph