Sign up here to receive the daily news briefing in your inbox every morning with exclusive insight from the BrexitCentral team May flies back from US with Johnson to discuss Brexit… Boris Johnson has changed his schedule to fly back from New York on the prime minister’s plane, before a specially convened cabinet meeting on Thursday morning to discuss Brexit. “Programmes permitting, the foreign secretary is flying back with us tonight,” May’s spokesman said, briefing journalists in New York. Johnson had been due to host an event on Somalia on Friday, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly.- Guardian Boris Johnson is out of the loop, says EU commissioner – The Times (£) Theresa and Boris’s big New York adventure – Annabelle Dickson for Politico Boris Johnson’s chance encounter in a lift full of press – Sam Coates for The Times (£) Boris uses sound and fury to hide two important concessions – Tom McTague for Politico ‘Tory grassroots wouldn’t have been happy with Boris Johnson’s resignation’, says BrexitCentral editor – talkRADIO …amidst speculation the PM will appeal directly to national leaders tomorrow… Theresa May will make her Brexit pitch over the heads of the European Union’s negotiating team and seek to influence national leaders directly in her speech in Florence tomorrow. The prime minister, who spoke at the UN yesterday, has insisted that any decisions about deals with Britain will be taken by heads of member states in the European Council rather than Michel Barnier and his negotiating team in the European Commission. Sources said that tomorrow’s speech will focus on transition arrangements for when Britain officially withdraws from the bloc.- The Times (£) May’s direct pitch to EU leaders – Guardian This is May’s last chance to reassure business – Iain Martin for The Times (£) ‘Make or break’ as May enters crucial 48 hours – Jon Craig for SkyNews Making the UK suffer will EU policy until May shows she’s serious about walking away – The Sun editorial …but EU diplomats claim €20bn transition offer won’t break Brexit deadlock An offer by Theresa May to pay €20bn to Brussels during a two-year transition period will not break the deadlock in the Brexit talks, senior EU diplomats have warned. Ahead of a keynote Brexit speech in Florence on Friday, Mrs May has signalled her willingness to make the continued budget payments after Brexit, according to senior EU sources who were briefed on the UK proposal by the UK’s top Brexit official. Under the proposal, Britain would continue to pay €10bn a year to Brussels in 2019 and 2020 as part of a two-year transition deal that would give businesses on both sides of the Channel more time to adapt to the future UK-EU relationship when it emerges. – Telegraph (£) Starmer claims EU think May ‘will not be able to uphold Brexit pledges’ – Guardian The EU is prepared to bend the rules – when it’s in Germany’s interests – Diane James for City A.M. Philip Hammond’s ‘Brexit manoeuvres’ risk a bad deal, warns Nick Timothy The Treasury’s reluctance to even “mention the positives” of leaving the European Union risks Britain getting a bad Brexit deal, Theresa May’s former chief of staff has warned. Writing in The Telegraph, Nick Timothy says that Philip Hammond’s department has failed to emphasise the “opportunities of Brexit” and accuses the Chancellor of being on “manoeuvres”. Ahead of Mrs May’s key speech in Florence on Friday, Mr Timothy says that the Prime Minister “deserves the full support of her ministers, Leavers and Remainers alike”. – Telegraph (£) What Theresa May should tell the EU in her Florence Brexit speech – Nick Timothy for the Telegraph (£) Hammond and Treasury ‘on manoeuvres’ against Brexit – Guido Fawkes Is this cabinet big enough for both Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson? Michel Barnier will put that to the test – Asa Bennett for the Telegraph (£) Liam Fox hails EU’s trade deal with Canada as a blueprint for Britain… Trade minister Liam Fox has hailed Canada’s deal with the EU as a blueprint for a wide-ranging agreement that Britain can strike with Brussels. The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, which comes into force today, removes 98 per cent of tariffs.The biggest winners from the deal are producers of beef, cheese, marmalade and spirits such as gin, vodka and whiskies. And nearly all tariffs on manufactured products such as cars will be eliminated. Canadian international trade minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Ceta showed just the minimum of what a post-Brexit trade deal could achieve. He said: “Ceta sets new and progressive standards for all trading nations. – The Sun …as he says Brexit is a huge opportunity to boost overseas investment Brexit will provide a huge opportunity to boost overseas investment by British companies and help the UK secure its place as a “world beater”, Dr Liam Fox said. The Secretary of State for International Trade claimed the benefits of investing abroad had been massively underplayed in discussions about leaving the EU. In an article for the website BrexitCentral, Dr Fox said Britain consistently “punches above its weight” on outward investment, ranking third in the world behind the US and Germany. – Express OECD’s UK growth prediction unchanged since June – The Times (£) Brexit ‘crunch time’ for City of London, says group – BBC City urges May to hurry up on Brexit transition deal – Telegraph MPs launch wide-ranging inquiry looking at impact of Brexit on business – City A.M. > Liam Fox on BrexitCentrral yesterday: Supporting overseas investment by British companies can bring vast benefits to the UK Labour leadership under pressure to support free movement after Brexit… Labour’s leadership will face renewed pressure at the party conference to support the continued free movement of people post-Brexit, after a report backed by MPs and unions warned that to do otherwise risked letting workers face exploitation. The report, put together by the remain group Another Europe is Possible, argues for what it calls “free movement-plus”, which would see the existing system augmented by better protections for workers’ rights. It has an introduction by Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA transport union, who is a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn.- Guardian …as former Cabinet Minister urges Labour to reclaim England flag and woo ‘patriotic’ voters Labour must stop associating the England flag with far-right extremism if it is to have a chance of winning back Brexit and Tory voters needed to win an election, a former Cabinet minister has warned. John Denham, co-founder of a new English Labour Network group, said that too often the St George’s flag was linked by some in the party to the English Defence League and hate crime. Ahead of the launch of the campaign at the annual conference in Brighton, Denham told HuffPost UK that Labour needed to reclaim a sense of “patriotism” for its progressive policies. – Huffington Post Boris Johnson’s lawyer wife wants to take power back from European judges BoJo’s wife Marina Wheeler QC has now waded in as Theresa May is set for a showdown with him ahead of her Brexit speech in Italy next week. Writing in The Spectator, the human rights lawyer blasted European judges for poking their noses into issues of national security. She slammed a European Court of Justice bid to force Britain into the bulk collection of communications data. Ms Wheeler wrote: “Reclaiming sovereignty allows the nation to decide for itself how to balance the needs of security with the requirements of privacy and keep its citizens (and visitors) safe. – The Sun EU’s chief negotiator tells audiences bespoke customs deal will take longer than divorce talks In meetings with public officials, private citizen groups and business executives, Barnier has warned in recent days that the U.K. will not achieve the “special” bespoke trade deal it has demanded without lengthy negotiations after its official departure. He said the U.K. was rejecting existing models for a future relationship such as those with Norway and Switzerland and advocating a path of divergence from EU standards. The risk for the EU, he said, is that Britain would, in future, try to gain a competitive trade advantage by adopting lower social or environmental standards. – Politico Verhofstadt says UK ‘must find Irish border solution’ The European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, has said it is up to the UK to find a way to avoid new controls on the Irish border. This echoes the position already laid out by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. Mr Verhofstadt is in Northern Ireland to meet political leaders at Stormont ahead of a visit to the Irish border. He will also meet business and community leaders in the Armagh-Monaghan border area. Although he is not directly involved in the Brexit negotiations, any deal between the EU and UK will need to be approved by the European Parliament. The former Belgian prime minister is on a two-day visit to Ireland: He is set to meet Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and address a joint committee of the Irish Parliament on Thursday. – BBC Northern Ireland could stay in customs union after Brexit – Verhofstadt – Guardian Will the Government really accept ‘No Deal’ with the EU? One slightly baffling element of the government’s Brexit strategy is that it insists it is working on preparing for a “No Deal” scenario. But I am not sure that they really are. A lot of memos are being circulated, but not a lot beyond that. Britain does not seem to be taking the idea of No Deal very seriously. The government is not currently behaving like it is plausible.There is good sense to the objective of being ready for a collapse in the talks: there is inherent risk in a negotiation of this type with 27 partners. Furthermore, in a negotiation, one of the simplest ways to improve one’s position would be to improve what is known as “the outside option”. That is, in layman’s terms, “what we get if we cannot cut a deal”. – Chris Cook for the BBC Civil Service ‘not really preparing’ for no deal scenario – Guido Fawkes Heathrow calls on government to scrap air taxes in plan for Brexit Britain Heathrow has today called for the abolition of air passenger duty (APD) on domestic flights, and improved connections to the capital, in a letter to the chancellor on ways to boost Brexit Britain. The airport said abolishing the tax would level the playing field with Europe. MPs launch wide-ranging inquiry looking at impact of Brexit on business The London airport has compiled a nine point plan to include “practical, deliverable and binding” measures to connect more of the UK to global growth, and gear up for a future outside of the European Union when Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019. – City A.M. Nick Timothy: What Theresa May should tell the EU in her Florence Brexit speech Theresa May’s speech on Friday is about breaking the deadlock and allowing the Brexit negotiators to discuss not only Britain’s departure from the EU but our future relationship. Nobody should anticipate an immediate breakthrough. In public, the Europeans will be surly. Expect negative briefing from the Commission, sarcasm from Guy Verhofstadt, and a polite but not positive reply from Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker. The remaining member states will stay united. The speech was constructive, they will say, but did not constitute the “sufficient progress” they demand for the negotiations to proceed. – Nick Timothy for the Telegraph (£) Allister Heath: We need a completely new Brexit hit squad, and fast, to deliver the visionary deal we require Brexit is Britain’s moonshot moment, and yet we have no John F Kennedy at the helm, no visionary who can galvanise our nation and government to reach the seemingly unreachable. We can, at least, still find solace and motivation in his words, delivered at the height of the Cold War, imploring Americans to back his vision for space exploration: they should by now have been adopted as the Brexiteers’ unofficial motto. – Allister Heath for the Telegraph (£) Gisela Stuart: Theresa May must ignore Remainer mandarins and take back control of our laws, trade and borders Last year, Britain changed history. The vote to leave the EU was the expression of a conscious judgment by the public on how they wished to be governed. And yet, it still generates bemusement – if not downright sneering – in Westminster and parts of the media. Why, they ask, did the people do it? As the head of the official Vote Leave campaign, I spent much of the referendum on the “front line” and I have no doubt as to why. They voted Leave because, above all else, they wanted to restore genuine democratic government and take back control of the laws that govern them. – Gisela Stuart for the Telegraph (£) The Times: Theresa May made the most of her chance to rehearse our international role after Brexit For a prime minister derided at home as weak and ineffective, Theresa May did an impressive impersonation last night of a world leader whose country should be listened to. Her speech to the United Nations was a defiant bid to change the subject from Brexit for her domestic audience. More intriguingly, it was a sneak preview of the kind of role Mrs May hopes Britain will play on the world stage once Brexit is history. – The Times editorial (£) David Paton et al: How the UK can benefit from a free trade future after Brexit – even outside the single market The benefits of free trade have been familiar to economists since Adam Smith. Trade encourages specialisation and leads to lower costs, higher productivity and higher living standards. Yet for some economists, things are different when it comes to the UK leaving the EU’s customs union and single market. The customs union was built on the German Zollverein model of protecting domestic industries from foreign competition around the time of German unification 150 years ago. Today, free trade is promoted within the EU, which is good. But the customs union imposes barriers to trade with the rest of the world, which is not. – David Paton, David Blake and Kevin Dowd for The Conversation Matthew Elliott: Why has Germany resisted the populist uprising? In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Left Party are both considered as populist parties. Both have some support, mostly in regional pockets of the country, but neither party looks likely to win more than ten per cent of the votes on Sunday. Compared to all other EU countries, Germany has the smallest proportion of people that identify on either the extreme Right or Left (2 per cent in total) and the highest proportion of centrists (80 per cent). – Matthew Elliott for CapX Bob Lyddon: New EU bank supervisory system threatens to unravel over Banco Popular Espano sale to Santander In June Banco Popular Espanol was sold to Santander for €1, with Santander taking over all the assets and senior liabilities of BPE… The deal avoided a meltdown: the Eurosystem would have been selling off the collateral BPE had pledged, and other institutions would have been selling off BPE bonds, in large amounts and into a market where there is only big buyer: the Eurosystem itself… Now that the backslapping within the Eurosystem has died down along with the sycophantic articles in the financial press, the deal has begun to unravel.- Bob Lyddon for FinExtra Brexit in brief Have the Greeks lost their Marbles? – Tim Loughton MP for CommentCentral What we can learn from the Boeing-Bombardier feud – Andrew Lilico for City A.M. It is time to remind ourselves of why a majority voted to leave – John Redwood’s Diary We are paying a high price for the Brexit farce – Evening Standard editorial What a Tory Whatsapp group tells us about Brexit – Katy Balls for i News The political nature of statistics – Charles Moore for The Spectator Maggie’s Bruges speech should inspire Theresa May – Leo McKinstry for the Express Number of EU workers seeking UK employment has plummeted, says jobseeker website – Telegraph (£)