Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team Former Tory minister plans EU customs union rebellion A new Commons rebellion to keep Britain in the EU’s customs union for years after Brexit is being prepared by a former Tory minister. Nick Boles, a former business minister, said he wanted Britain to remain in the customs union until early 2022, allowing more time to come up with a viable long-term plan. He said that, if the government did not formally adopt the idea of extending Britain’s membership, he was prepared to force a vote on the issue by attempting to add his plan to the EU withdrawal bill, currently working its way through parliament. His comments come soon after Theresa May made a major breakthrough by convincing her cabinet to back a plan under which Britain could stay inside elements of the EU’s customs union and single market. – Observer Government’s Brexit “incompetence” is May’s “strategy” to keep Britain tied to EU, claims Tory donor Government “incompetence” over the Brexit talks is part of Theresa May’s “strategy” to keep Britain tied to the European Union, a top Conservative donor claims today. Jeremy Hosking, a City financier, alleges that one of Mrs May’s aides frustrated his attempt at last year’s general election to donate hundreds of thousands of pounds to Brexit-supporting Tory candidates. Mr Hosking writes in today’s Sunday Telegraph: “Those who think the Government is vacillating or making a mess of Brexit due to incompetence are wrong. “It is part of a strategy, it’s going to plan and the inference from experience of Brexit Express is that the Prime Minister herself is probably implicated.” – Telegraph (£) Support for a second referendum has remained unchanged since a year ago with 37% backing the idea and 49% opposing it On Brexit, both leaders are struggling to impress, but May again comes out ahead. Some 32% approve of the way the prime minister is handling Brexit against 44% who disapprove. Just 19% approve of Corbyn’s performance on Brexit compared with 48% who disapprove. Strikingly, May appears to be impressing far more leave voters than Corbyn is enthusing remainers – 40% of leavers back May over Brexit, while only 26% of remainers think Corbyn is doing well on the issue. The polling suggests opinion is shifting in favour of the UK staying in the single market, a position strongly opposed by most Tories. Corbyn has also refused to back staying in the single market, saying its membership could threaten many of the economic policies Labour wishes to implement if and when it comes to power. In January 2017, only 32% of voters said staying in the single market should be prioritised over ending freedom of movement. Now 40% take that view. Support for a second referendum has remained unchanged since a year ago with 37% backing the idea and 49% opposing it. – Observer Tory MPs prepare for possibility of snap autumn election as Theresa May is hit by Brexit deadlock Conservative MPs are preparing for another snap general election as they fear the Brexit deadlock will become insurmountable for the prime minister. Some have spoken to their local party associations asking to be readopted as prospective parliamentary candidates in readiness for an autumn election. The back-bench MPs acted after meeting Theresa May last week for a private Brexit briefing as she tried to stop a row over Britain’s future customs relationship with the European Union tearing the party apart. But far from being reassured by meeting the prime minister, they left Downing Street convinced that another election could be around the corner. One Tory Brexiteer said he could not see how the government could “square the circle” and come up with a solution on Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU that would appease both sides of the warring party. – Sunday Times (£) Brexit realists take control as May slaps down Rees-Mogg Five groups of about 30 Tory MPs at a time had been asked into the chief whip’s office in No 9 Downing Street last Monday. May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, had been told to brief them on the two options for solving the seemingly intractable Irish border problem that threatens the Brexit process. After Barwell had done his bit, May made herself available for questions. By chance, Rees-Mogg’s batch of MPs included leading names from the parliamentary party’s voluble Europhile wing. Kenneth Clarke, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve were there representing Remainers. When Rees-Mogg got his chance he was quick to ask the prime minister why she could not do what seemed the obvious thing for a hard Brexiter like him – forget any deal and just keep open the border after Brexit. “He was basically calling for a no-deal,” said another who attended. – Observer Royals are the glue for Brexit Britain Britons believe the monarchy will be a unifying force for the country after Brexit, according to a new poll. Across the UK, 52% see the royals as a way of keeping the Union together as Brexit strains relations between England and Scotland as well as leading to complicated negotiations to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic. The belief that the monarchy binds the countries of the UK is strongest in England, where 57% agree and just 13% disagree, but it is shared by 52% in Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland 46% agree, but that is more than double the 21% who disagree. – Sunday Times (£) Champion British business instead of talking us down, CBI president tells UK politicians The president of the CBI has hit out at politicians for talking down business and failing to champion the causes of British companies. The negativity is harming the UK’s reputation at a vital time for its overseas image, Paul Drechsler has warned. Political leaders too often preferred to project an unfair picture of gloom and bad behaviour, he said. “The leaders of [the countries I visit] are enthusiastic champions for businesses,” said Mr Drechsler, who is stepping down after three years at the top of the CBI. “They talk publicly about how they want more business investment at home, about the value business plays in their economies. – Telegraph Boris Johnson to make first visit by a British foreign secretary to Argentina for 25 years Boris Johnson is to make the first visit to Argentina by a British foreign secretary for 25 years. He will lay a wreath commemorating the Falklands war during a five-day tour of Latin America, also taking in Peru and Chile, as a part of a drive to drum up post-Brexit trade. The UK is looking to repair a relationship with Buenos Aires that was thrust into deep freeze by Argentine presidents Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner between 2003 and 2015. – Independent Brexit could wreck green agenda, claims UN The United Nations has warned the government that Britain’s reputation is at risk over plans that would significantly weaken protections for the environment after Brexit. In a stern intervention, Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN’s environment programme, called on the environment secretary Michael Gove to honour his promise to deliver a “green Brexit”, ensuring the environment would not suffer from Britain’s EU departure. The warning comes after proposals to protect the climate after Brexit were dismissed as “toothless” by green campaigners. Under the plans, the new post-Brexit watchdog would not have the power to take the government to court over breaches of environmental standards. At the moment, the government is answerable at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which often forces ministers to act. – Observer Italian vow to eject migrants and break budget rules rattles EU Italy is about to throw down the starkest challenge to the European Union since the Brexit vote by vowing to break its budget rules and deport half a million illegal migrants. The pledges — the most radical by any government in western Europe — have been agreed by leaders of the two anti-establishment parties that aim to form a new coalition in Rome. They amount to an earthquake under the foundations of EU policy since the financial crisis of 2008 and the migrant surge of 2015. On Friday night the promises were approved by 94% of the 44,700 members of the Five Star Movement who voted in an online poll. Over the weekend, the right-wing League is pitching the policies at public meetings in piazzas across northern Italy. – Sunday Times (£) Now Europe will have to pull off the Italian job – Sunday Times editorial (£) Will Italy’s new government blow the bloody doors off? Don’t get your hopes up. (Or your fears either.) – Paul Goodman for ConservativeHome Daniel Hannan: Tribal MPs are doing the EU’s dirty work There was nothing inevitable about this continuing acrimony. After the 2014 Scottish referendum, separatists and unionists, recognising that it had been a close result, agreed readily enough on further devolution. Why was there no similar compromise after the 2016 Brexit referendum? Both sides are to blame. Some Leavers – and a few overcompensating former Remainers – were slow to reach out to the 48 per cent, ungenerous in their language. Some Europhiles were determined from the start to subvert the result. Two years on, a nasty tribalism persists. Reasonable ideas are shot down simply because they emanate from the other side. Instead of agreeing on a moderate form of Brexit that reflects a 52-48 vote, we have continued to squabble, making more likely an outcome that neither side wants. To the dumfounded delight of the Commission, we are now edging towards a position where we leave the EU institutions and give up our veto rights, but invite Brussels to continue to regulate our economy and commerce. No other neighbouring country would countenance such a deal. Yet our MPs, locked in their domestic quarrels, are on the verge of asking for it. My masters, are you mad? – Daniel Hannan MEP for the Telegraph (£) Robert Hardman: Proof the Remainer row over EU Customs Union is claptrap: There’s barely a customs officer in sight at Felixstowe which handles £80bn of goods a year… so why all the hysteria about the Irish border with its £3bn trade? Ten months from now, according to the doom-mongers, we could be back on rations for the first time since the Fifties. With lines of lorries backing up more than 30 miles from the Channel ports, Britain will face gridlock and food shortages. For a hellish mess of endless paperwork and bureaucracy lies in wait if we leave the European customs union and the frictionless trade which comes with it. Things will be even worse on the island of Ireland as the terrorists disinter their hidden stashes of Kalashnikovs and Semtex to wage war on any British attempts to reimpose a post Brexit border between North and South. This, then, is the Project Fear vision of Britain in March 2019. There is only one way to avert this catastrophe, according to the more hysterical members of the House of Lords: we must cave in on all this Brexit nonsense, forget about silly free-trade agreements and remain locked into the customs union. Otherwise our entire haulage industry will seize up while the bullets fly in Crossmaglen. – Robert Hardman for the Daily Mail Jeremy Warner: Brexit has become a farce, risking an outcome that will satisfy no one By far the best summary so far ventured of the Brexit negotiations came from the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel. “They were in with a load of opt-outs,” he said. “Now they are out, and want a load of opt-ins.” Indeed so; we seem to be steadily opting back into virtually everything, the customs union being just the latest example. The situation is becoming almost laughable. It is as if Britain is attempting to negotiate what it already has, only worse, because as things stand we at least have some say over whatever nonsense comes out of Brussels, and are in a position to veto the worst of it. In Theresa May’s efforts to reconcile the conflicting wants of the Leave and Remain camps, she is taking us into a kind of no-man’s land that is as manifestly unsatisfactory to Remainers as it is the Brexiteers. Normally, I am all in favour of compromise, but this is ridiculous. – Jeremy Warner for the Telegraph (£) James Forsyth: Why the Tory Brexiteers are swallowing May’s compromises This week, Theresa May got her Brexit inner Cabinet to agree that, in the event of no trade deal being in place by December 2020, the UK would continue to apply the EU’s common external tariff. In The Sun this morning, I try and explain why Brexiteers aren’t kicking off about this and the other concessions May is making, or preparing to make. One influential figure puts it to me like this, ‘it is all very unsatisfactory, but it is what it is’. In other words, given the mistakes that have been made—with the lack of proper no deal planning and the backstop–there isn’t really an alternative. – James Forsyth for The Spectator John Redwood: Why do the “liberal” establishment so hate democracy? On both sides of the Atlantic in relatively free societies with open and fair elections and referenda there is a nasty anger at the results from some who claim the moral high ground of being the “liberal” establishment. I too have no time for racism or undemocratic attitudes, but think many voters for so called populist parties and causes are decent people making good points about the change they wish to see. – John Redwood MP for John Redwood’s Diary Charles Moore: Morgan, Clegg and Miliband just don’t get the message Watching Nick Clegg, Nicky Morgan and David Miliband sort of launching what might one day become a sort of new centre party amid a granary-full of Tilda rice in Essex, I realised why we still need the Labour party. Despite their equation of themselves with rationality — Sir Nick’s office advertises itself online under the name of Open Reason — the moderates are a bit crazy. They are centrist Bourbons, who have forgotten nothing about how they all, in their different ways, fell from power, yet have learnt nothing about why. How could they possibly think that the key to the future of our country is to be found in membership of the European Economic Area? I think I can see the chain of reasoning that got them there, but the conclusion is irrational nevertheless. – Charles Moore for The Spectator John Rentoul: The prime minister is boiling the Brexiteer frogs: the water is getting hotter and none of them has jumped out of the pan The frog-boiling is going well. Theresa May has turned up the temperature another notch and Boris Johnson has still not jumped out of the pan. Nor has Liam Fox, Michael Gove or David Davis. At the meeting of the Brexit committee of cabinet on Tuesday, the prime minister came up with a plan so cunning no one could work out what it meant. She asked them to agree what would happen if there was no agreement about trade by the end of the transition period after Brexit. The foreign secretary grumbled a bit, but agreed with the prime minister that the UK would then continue to apply the EU’s common external tariff until a new arrangement was ready. – John Rentoul for the Independent Brexit in brief Keep dragons at bay by settling Brexit statuses – Mark Stone for Sky News For the UK to survive, it needs to be less London-centric – Ruth Davidson for the FT (£) Big banks boost Brexit budgets – FT (£) Government promises to protect NHS in US trade talks – PoliticsHome