Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has told Sky News he is to call in police after claims that drug abuse is rife in the Houses of Parliament.

Sir Lindsay is demanding a drugs crackdown – including sniffer dogs prowling the corridors – amid growing evidence of cannabis and cocaine being used openly.

Allegations include a claim that a former MP put his drug dealer on the parliamentary payroll, claiming he was a member of staff, as a way of paying him for drugs.

And, according to a report in The Sunday Times, the same former MP is rumoured to have dealt drugs himself and at least one parliamentary aide has been sacked for taking cocaine.

Responding to the report, Sir Lindsay told Sky News: “The accounts of drug misuse in parliament given to The Sunday Times are deeply concerning, and I will be raising them as a priority with the Metropolitan Police next week.

“I expect to see full and effective enforcement of the law.

“While parliament provides extensive support services for any staff or members who may need help with drug misuse – and I would encourage anyone struggling with such issues to take up such help – for those who choose to flout the law and bring the institution into disrepute the sanctions are serious.”

Sir Lindsay, who is 64 and is diabetic, has spoken out against drug abuse in parliament since he became Speaker in November 2019.

Speaking during his campaign to succeed John Bercow, he said: “It’s not just drink we’ve got to catch out, there is a drug problem. I genuinely believe that counselling and real support should be available for all staff and members.”

In another move to crack down on drug abuse at Westminster, the House of Commons Commission, responsible for the running of the Commons, is to discuss the issue next week.

“The House of Commons has a long history of sniffer dogs being used to detect explosives,” Tory MP Charles Walker, who chairs the administration committee, told The Sunday Times.

“It may be that we now need to broaden the range of sniffer dogs to include those which can detect drugs.”

The Sunday Times reported that Commons officials received reports last month that cannabis could be smelt in an open space between Portcullis House and 1 Parliament Street.

This came after it was revealed that two drug dealers were arrested, and 13 people were detained for drugs possession in or near parliament in the space of a year.

The Sunday Times also reported that drug detection wipes found evidence of cocaine in 11 out of 12 lavatories tested in the building, including some restricted to parliamentary pass holders.

The locations were said to include lavatories near the offices of Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel and a disabled bathroom on the Shadow Cabinet corridor in the Norman Shaw North building.

Figures released by the Metropolitan Police under freedom of information laws show there were 17 drug crimes in or near parliament in the past year, and police investigated 38 offences between 2015 and 2018.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/commons-speaker-sir-lindsay-hoyle-to-call-in-police-over-claims-of-drug-abuse-in-the-houses-of-parliament-12487771

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LONDON — Boris Johnson took a softly-softly approach to the second nationwide coronavirus lockdown in the U.K.

The prime minister on Wednesday unveiled a range of measures for England in a bid to stem the rising COVID-19 case rate, but held back from imposing sweeping restrictions to keep people at home, as was the case at the height of the first wave.

Johnson said pubs, bars, restaurants and other hospitality venues in England must close at 10 p.m. from Thursday, while venues will be forced by law to provide table service.

The government also ditched its attempts to encourage workers back to their offices, instead telling them to work from home if possible with immediate effect. The move marks a significant U-turn after ministers previously insisted staff should return to their desks.

Johnson told the House of Commons that Britain had reached a “perilous turning point” toward a second wave of the virus but said “we are acting on the principle that a stitch in time saves nine.”

There are fears in the food and drink industry that the new measures for hospitality could lead to hundreds of thousands of job losses.

He said that without a breakthrough in treatments or a vaccination, the new measures could be in place for around six months, but he warned that harsher measures could yet be imposed if the virus continues to spread quickly.

“I must emphasize, that if all our actions fail to bring the [reproduction] number below one, then we reserve the right to deploy greater firepower with significantly greater restrictions,” he told MPs. “I fervently want to avoid taking this step, as do the devolved administrations, but we will only be able to avoid it if our new measures work and our behavior changes.”

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-cautious-approach-second-uk-coronavirus-lockdown/

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UK prime minister’s aggressive tactics are undermining trust abroad and at home.

Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice and the author of POLITICO‘s Beyond the Bubble column.

There’s a reason Boris Johnson shows little respect for the traditional rules of the political game. After all, it’s the British prime minister’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach that got him where is today.

It’s an approach that served him well last year, when after six months spent battling parliament and the Supreme Court over Brexit, Johnson called an early election and swept back into power with an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons — his Conservative Party’s largest since Margaret Thatcher’s in 1987.

But while Johnson and his advisers seem to believe the prime minister’s governing style will continue to pay electoral dividends, the diminishing returns of repeatedly breaking with U.K. institutions and their long-established rules are now coming into sight.

Let’s start with Brexit. Johnson has had to beat a retreat from his government’s threat to break international law by overriding the Northern Ireland protocol in last year’s Withdrawal Agreement. He will now give the Commons the final say on using the controversial provisions in the Internal Market Bill.

Johnson’s style has provoked a series of rebellions by Tory backbenchers who feel he treats them, and parliament as a whole, with contempt.

But while hopes of a U.K.-EU trade deal are rising, the move has left a legacy of distrust in Brussels. EU leaders will want to nail down every last detail of an agreement to prevent any attempt by Johnson to wriggle out of it once the coronavirus pandemic has passed (a course favored by some hard-line Brexiteers on the Tory benches,  who admit the government is unlikely to risk a no-deal scenario in January while business is suffering an economic hit).

The mistrust might also make it harder to secure U.K.-EU cooperation in other areas, such as security, criminal justice and asylum, to London’s cost. The threat to break international law will also likely be bad for his key aim of establishing a Global Britain, with lucrative trade deals around the world.

Meanwhile, at home, Johnson’s style has provoked a series of rebellions by Tory backbenchers who feel he treats them, and parliament as a whole, with contempt. A serious cross-party revolt, backed by more than 50 Tories, threatens to defeat the government Wednesday, when MPs will demand the right to approve national restrictions in advance. Although Downing Street is belatedly trying to woo Tory MPs, the relationship has been badly damaged.

And yet, despite all this, Johnson will not change his spots. Team Boris is determined to hang on to former Labour supporters in the leftist party’s heartland who voted Tory last December. Their strategy to do that is to continue to redraw the Brexit dividing line whenever possible. Thus, they will continue to happily tack to the right, wage culture war against the BBC or over the toppling of statues, or adopt a hard line on asylum and immigration, believing all this plays to the patriotism of these voters.

Former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Third Way mantra was about doing “what works.” But Team Boris remains convinced its aggressive, no-nonsense approach works better than consensus and conciliation. They genuinely don’t care if other players in the political game don’t like it, as long as the voters are onside.

The jury is out on whether their gamble will pay off. In normal times, it might be needed to achieve Johnson’s “leveling up” agenda — to overcome blockages in Whitehall, another Johnson “enemy” and scapegoat for his government’s mistakes. One example is Treasury rules that previously favored infrastructure projects in the already rich London and southeast.

But permanent revolution must also be combined with competent government, and we’ve seen the opposite of competence since the election, notably on the coronavirus. Dividing the world into friend and foe doesn’t help the fight against the multiheaded monster of the pandemic or make easier the difficult judgments between prioritizing public health and the economy.

People no longer give the government the benefit of the doubt, as they did six months ago. And once you’ve lost the public trust, as Johnson may well have already done, reckless confrontation no longer looks like potency; it looks like an attempt to divert from a government’s woes.

The result: Labour has drawn level in the opinion polls, and more voters consider Labour leader Keir Starmer to be best suited for the job of prime minister. The bull in the china shop might soon discover he’s being handed a bill for everything he broke.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-has-run-out-of-rope-brexit-coronavirus-parliament/

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LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday defended his plan to unilaterally rewrite Britain’s divorce deal with the European Union as an insurance policy against the bloc’s unreasonable behavior — even as his former attorney general joined the ranks of once-loyal lawmakers condemning the contentious move.

Johnson said a planned law designed to override portions of the Brexit withdrawal agreement was needed because the EU might “go to extreme and unreasonable lengths” in its treatment of former member Britain.

“I have absolutely no desire to use these measures,” Johnson told lawmakers as he introduced the Internal Market Bill in the House of Commons. “They are an insurance policy.”

Johnson’s Conservative government has acknowledged that the bill breaches the legally binding withdrawal treaty that Britain and the EU have both ratified. The legislation threatens to sink the already-foundering negotiations between Britain and the EU on a post-Brexit trade deal.

The U.K. formally left the bloc on Jan. 31, but existing trade rules remain in effect until the end of this year under a transition designed to provide time to negotiate a long-term trade agreement.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks in the House of Commons in London, Sept. 14, 2020, in a video grab from footage broadcast by the UK Parliament’s Parliamentary Recording Unit.

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Ed Milliband, business spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, accused Johnson of “trashing the reputation of this country and trashing the reputation of his office.”

With an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons, Johnson is expected to have enough votes to push his legislation through Parliament despite opposition anger.

The bill easily cleared its first House of Commons vote by 340 to 263 on Monday. It will now face attempts to amend or overturn it during several days of detailed scrutiny by lawmakers before another vote.

Critics of move

There is wide unease within Johnson’s party about the law-breaking move.

Geoffrey Cox, who was the government’s top legal officer when Johnson negotiated the Brexit withdrawal agreement less than a year ago, said reneging on the deal would be an “unconscionable” breach of international law.

“I simply cannot approve or endorse a situation in which we go back on our word, given solemnly,” Cox, previously a strong supporter of Johnson on Brexit, told Times Radio. “The breaking of the law ultimately leads to very long-term and permanent damage to this country’s reputation.”

As part of the Brexit divorce deal, Britain and the EU agreed to keep Northern Ireland — the only part of the U.K. to share a border with the bloc — bound to some EU rules on trade, to avoid the need for border checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Both sides accepted the compromise to protect the open border, which helps underpin the peace process in Northern Ireland.

The Internal Market Bill would give the British government the power to override the EU’s agreed role in oversight of trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Johnson claims the EU has threatened to use “an extreme interpretation” of the withdrawal agreement to “blockade” food shipments from the rest of the U.K. to Northern Ireland unless Britain agrees to accept EU regulations.

The EU denies threatening a blockade and says it merely wants Britain to live up to the terms of the agreement. EU leaders are outraged at the prime minister’s proposal and have threatened the U.K. with legal action if it does not drop the proposal by the end of the month.

Two former Conservative U.K. prime ministers, John Major and Theresa May, have condemned the legislation. On Monday a third, David Cameron, said he had “misgivings.”

What mystifies some observers is that Johnson is repudiating a treaty that he himself negotiated and hailed as an “oven-ready” deal that would “get Brexit done.” That declaration of victory was key to Johnson’s successful December 2019 election campaign.

“There was a political imperative on the government to get an agreement and then to go to the electorate with the claim that they had, to coin a phrase, got Brexit done,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

“I think it possibly was the case in some senses that it was ‘make the agreement in haste and then repent at leisure.’ And what we’re seeing now is the repentance.”

What’s next 

Johnson’s move has dynamited the dwindling trust between Britain and the EU as they try to negotiate a new trading relationship.

Talks are due to continue this week in Brussels despite the chill in relations. Both sides say any deal must be agreed by next month so there is time for it to be ratified by Dec. 31.

If there is no deal, tariffs and other impediments to trade will be imposed by both sides at the start of 2021.

That would mean huge economic disruption for the U.K., which does half its trade with the bloc. A no-deal exit on Jan. 1 would also hit some EU nations, including Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, especially hard.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/europe/uks-johnson-defends-plan-rewrite-brexit-deal-says-eu-unreasonable

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Speaking at the House of Commons on Tuesday, Johnson accused lawmakers of being “caught in a deadlock of its own making” and warned that a vote against his timetable would delay Brexit for 3 months if the EU decided to grant an extension past the Oct. 31 deadline. He said it was something he would not allow.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking in the House of Commons, London during the debate for the European Union Withdrawal Agreement Bill: Second Reading. Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019.  (House of Commons via AP)

“I will in no way allow more of this,” he said. “If Parliament refuses to allow Brexit to happen and instead gets its way and decides to delay everything until January or possibly longer, in no circumstances can the government continue with this.”

He added: “And with great regret, I must say the bill will have to be pulled and we will have to go forward to a general election.”

BREXIT STUMBLES – AGAIN – AS BORIS JOHNSON’S BID FOR NEW VOTE REJECTED BY UK SPEAKER

The latest developments come just days after Johnson negotiated and agreed on his new plan with European leaders last week – despite repeatedly saying the United Kingdom would leave by the end of October, with or without a deal.

His government seeks to rush the legislation through the House of Commons in three days, but Johnson faces two crucial votes on Tuesday that could prevent him from delivering on his pledge.

An anti-Brexit demonstrators banner near Parliament in London, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019.  (AP)

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Firstly, the bill will be voted on by lawmakers at its second reading. The second – and probably most crucial vote – is on the program motion, the timetable for passing the bill.

Johnson said backing the bill would allow lawmakers to “turn the page and allow this Parliament and this country to begin to heal and unite.”

NIGEL FARAGE SAYS ANGER OVER BREXIT DEAL IS ‘UNLIKE ANYTHING I HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE’

Lawmakers may reject the three-day timetable because of concerns it doesn’t provide enough time for scrutiny of the 115-page document, which sets out the terms of Britain’s departure from the 28-nation bloc.

The bill turns the deal Johnson struck with the EU into law. It sets out the terms of Britain’s departure, including measures to maintain an open border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. It also enshrines the right of U.K. and EU citizens living in the other’s territory to continue with their lives, and sets out the multi-billion pound (dollar) payments Britain must make to meet its financial obligations to the EU.

It also confirms a transition period lasting until at least the end of 2020 — and possibly 2022 — in which relations will remain frozen as they are now while a permanent new relationship is worked out.

An anti-Brexit demonstrator wears a European Union patterned hat near Parliament in London, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019.  (AP)

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Opposition lawmakers called Johnson’s threat to pull the bill “childish blackmail,” with the Brexit spokesman for Liberty Democrats saying that members of parliament “shouldn’t be bullied into voting in favor of this ridiculously short timetable,” according to the BBC.

Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would not be supporting the bill at its second reading.

“They always say, Mr. Speaker, the devil is in the detail. And, having seen the detail, it confirms everything we thought about this rotten deal,” he said.

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Johnson’s Conservatives hold just 288 of the 650 House of Commons seats, so he will need support from the opposition and independent lawmakers to pass the bill — if, that is, Parliament approves the timetable on Tuesday.

European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday that EU leaders “will decide in coming days” whether to grant Britain another extension to the deadline for leaving the bloc, but said their decision depends on developments in London.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/boris-johnson-brexit-bill-christmas-election

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LONDON — He jabbed his finger in the air and shook his head theatrically. He dared the opposition to back his call for an election and sneered that the Labour Party’s leader was a “chlorinated chicken.”

By the time Prime Minister Boris Johnson finished taking questions in Parliament on Wednesday, he had ushered in a new season of political mayhem in Britain, one in which the voters are now as likely as their feuding leaders to resolve the questions over how and when Britain should leave the European Union.

The raucous spectacle in the House of Commons illustrated the obstacles Mr. Johnson will face as he tries to lead Britain out of the European Union next month. On Wednesday, Parliament handed the prime minister two stinging defeats.

It first blocked his plans to leave the union with or without an agreement. And it then stymied his bid, at least for the moment, to call an election for Oct. 15, out of fear he could secure a new majority in favor of breaking with Europe, deal or no deal.

The frenzied maneuvering showed how Brexit keeps propelling the country ever deeper into uncharted political territory, where centuries of unwritten rules and conventions are giving way to a brawl over the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies.

The upheaval in Parliament on Wednesday was the latest and perhaps the ultimate test of a political system that has been under unrelenting strain since the British voted narrowly to leave the European Union in June 2016.

Britain has since unwittingly become a laboratory for how a deeply rooted parliamentary democracy can be shaken to its core by populism, especially when wrapped in the democratic legitimacy of a public referendum.

Parliament has become a theater, beamed live around the world, in which democracy’s messy, self-interested and self-destructive tendencies are laid bare in real-time.

Despite the vote by lawmakers defying the prime minister’s call to go to the polls, Britain still appears headed for a general election in the coming weeks or months, with the opposition likely to agree to a vote once a law forbidding a no-deal Brexit is firmly in place.

An election could clarify a debate that has become hopelessly muddled. A clear victory would give Mr. Johnson’s Conservative government a mandate to withdraw, regardless of whether it strikes an agreement with officials in Brussels. A defeat would eject him from office and in all likelihood delay and reshape the terms of Britain’s exit.

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition, in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Mr. Corbyn complained that Mr. Johnson refused to answer questions about the economic costs of a no-deal Brexit.CreditJessica Taylor/UK Parliament

Yet an inconclusive result — equally plausible, given the splintered nature of British politics — could leave the nation even more paralyzed than it is now. With one of the last political mechanisms exhausted, an indecisive vote could deepen divisions and reinforce fears that Brexit is a problem that defies a democratic solution.

In many ways, Britain appears set on a course, not unlike that in the United States, where President Trump, an ally of Mr. Johnson’s, has galvanized his political base by vilifying his opponents. Like Mr. Trump, Brexit has not just dominated the nation’s political debate but changed the very nature of its politics.

“You have a complete fracturing of the British political system and a British government that has ground to a halt,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who advised the Conservative Party in past elections and knew Mr. Johnson as a student at Oxford.

“Everyone is seeking to be as dogmatic and punitive as they can,” he said. “This is doomsday politics at its worst.”

If Mr. Johnson can ultimately get Parliament to agree to an election, he hopes to mobilize those who voted to leave by tarring his opponents as lackeys of Europe. He is ruthlessly purging the ranks of the Conservative Party to make it more radically pro-Brexit and fend off threats from a new Brexit Party.

Mr. Johnson got an endorsement from Mr. Trump. “He’s in there fighting,” the president said. “Boris knows how to win.”

The parallels between Mr. Johnson’s campaign and Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party are obvious, but there are important differences as well. Lawmakers in Britain have pushed back vigorously on Mr. Johnson’s tactics, with even members of the prime minister’s party rebelling against his drive for a swift exit.

The proposed timing of a vote, before the Oct. 31 deadline to leave the European Union, has stoked suspicions that Mr. Johnson is acting in his own interests rather than the nation’s. Rather than embracing the call for an election, the Labour Party insisted that Parliament first prohibit Mr. Johnson from pursuing a no-deal Brexit before it would agree.

On Wednesday, Parliament moved closer to achieving that. By a vote of 327 to 299, lawmakers advanced a bill that would tie Mr. Johnson’s hands-on Brexit, barring any departure without a deal. The bill now goes to the House of Lords, which must give its assent.

Until it’s the law of the land, Parliament is determined to resist Mr. Johnson’s push for a new election. And late Wednesday night, Mr. Johnson failed to win in another vote the two-thirds majority he needed to call an election.

The expelled Conservative lawmaker Kenneth Clarke, left, and Theresa May, the former British prime minister, in the House of Commons on Wednesday.CreditJessica Taylor/UK Parliament

“Under normal circumstances, no opposition party would ever get in the way of a governing party calling it quits,” said Baroness Rosalind Scott, a member of the House of Lords and a former president of the Liberal Democrats. “But all the normal rules are gone, which makes it difficult to predict the outcome.”

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Britain is about to learn who its next prime minister will be later this morning.

The winner of the Tory leadership contest is expected to be announced at 11.40am.

Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt will take over as prime minister tomorrow after Theresa May’s final PMQs in the House of Commons.

Mrs. May will then head to Buckingham Palace to formally resign and recommend Johnson as her successor.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is running against Johnson in the race to Downing St (Picture: Getty)

The outgoing prime minister sparked a Tory leadership election in May when she emotionally announced her resignation outside 10 Downing Street, saying it had been ‘the honour of my life’ to ‘serve the country that I love.’

No less than 13 Tory MPs entered the race, with contenders such as Sajid Javid, Michael Gove and Rory Stewart knocked out during several rounds of votes by other Tory MPs.

Jeremy Corbyn called for a general election following Mrs. May’s resignation and will likely make a fresh demand for a public vote later today.

But so long as the next Tory leader has the support from most MPs, they do not have to hold a general election.

It’s not the first time a prime minister has been decided without a general election.

Labour did it in 2007 when Gordon Brown took over as prime minister from Tony Blair.

He waited three years until 2010 before holding an election.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/23/boris-johnson-expected-announced-britains-new-prime-minister-today-10443106/

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A poll of economists has found that the UK leaving the EU without a deal is now less likely than Brexit being cancelled.

The latest research by Reuters showed very few predicting a “disorderly” departure but that a free-trade deal would be agreed.

Only one of the 51 respondents said a ‘no deal’ outcome was more likely than not, the average probability being 15 per cent – the lowest chance since Reuters began asking the question in July 2017.

BNP Paribas economists said: “Apart from the fact that no-deal Brexit is now less likely, the path ahead is as unclear as ever. A deal (and likely a softer Brexit) still seems more likely than not but we are sceptical that this will happen any time soon.”

The poll also found most respondents expect a raise in interest rates by the Bank of England to be pushed back.

Now delayed until October, the UK is not due to leave the EU until October 31 – contingent on a withdrawal agreement being passed in parliament.

As yet, prime minister Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement has suffered two historic defeats and a series of indicative votes in the House of Commons have failed to accrue a single majority. The slimmest margins of defeat have been for membership of the EU’s customs union and a second referendum.

European elections at the end of May draw closer. The Brexit party led by Nigel Farage is leading in the polls.

Source: https://www.joe.co.uk/news/no-brexit-no-deal-poll-228430

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Theresa May will tell the EU it ‘has to make a choice too’

Theresa May will tell the EU it “has to make a choice” on Brexit as she continues a last-ditch effort to win concessions over her withdrawal agreement.

The prime minister will use a speech on Friday to insist she remains determined to secure legally-binding changes to the Brexit backstop.

In a message directed at Brussels, Mrs May will say it is in the interests of the EU to agree to alterations with just days left until the House of Commons votes again on her exit deal.

In a speech in Leave-supporting Grimsby, Lincolnshire, the prime minister is expected to say: “Just as MPs will face a big choice next week, the EU has to make a choice too.

“We are both participants in this process. It is in the European interest for the UK to leave with a deal.

“We are working with them but the decisions that the EU makes over the next few days will have a big impact on the outcome of the vote.”

In January, MPs overwhelming rejected the prime minister’s deal to force her to return to Brussels to seek changes.

Mrs May has focused on altering the Brexit backstop, which the vast majority of Conservative Brexiteers are opposed to in its current form.

The backstop is an insurance policy aimed at avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, should this not be averted by a future EU-UK trade relationship.

However, Leave-supporting MPs fear it could leave the UK left in a permanent customs union with the EU and have called for a time limit, an exit mechanism or a complete replacement of the backstop within Mrs May’s Brexit deal.

EU sources suggested to Sky News that Brussels would take a dim view of the prime minister’s speech on Friday, as they stressed their efforts to provide assurances to the UK that the backstop is not intended as a trap.

Despite frequent trips to Brussels by Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox – as well as diplomatic efforts with EU leaders by Mrs May – there have been signs that discussions have achieved little.

The European Commission described the talks this week as “difficult”, with a spokesman adding: “No solution has been identified at this point.”

Answering questions in the House of Commons on Thursday morning, Mr Cox told MPs the discussions would now “almost certainly” carry on over the weekend.

Mrs May has pledged to hold a second “meaningful” vote on her Brexit deal on Tuesday.

The attorney general also pushed back against suggestions the government has failed to present clear proposals to the EU.

He said: “We are discussing text with the EU.

“I am surprised to hear the comments that have emerged over the last 48 hours the proposals are not clear.

“They are as clear as day and we are continuing to discuss them.”

Mr Cox committed to publishing fresh legal advice on the Brexit deal, should changes be secured.

He joked: “It’s come to be called ‘Cox’s codpiece’ – what I am concerned to ensure is what’s inside the codpiece is in full working order.”

Ahead of the prime minister’s speech on Friday, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that Theresa May will not be able to deliver the changes she promised to her failed Brexit deal.

“This speech looks set to be an admission of failure.

“After two years of negotiation, the government is simply incapable of delivering a Brexit deal that protects jobs, the economy and people’s livelihoods.”

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/theresa-may-tells-eu-it-has-to-make-a-choice-in-few-days-before-mps-brexit-vote-11658157

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