Brexit - as it happened: Tories turn on 'insolent' Rees-Mogg after Brexiteer threatens open revolt against May
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Theresa May has been mocked for failing to secure unity within her own cabinet on Brexit as Tory infighting spilled out into the open ahead of a crunch meeting on Friday.
Jeremy Corbyn questioned how Ms May could get a Brexit deal if she could not get her ministers in line, and warned that cabinet infighting was having a "debilitating effect" on jobs and business.
It comes as senior Tories piled in to criticise Jacob Rees-Mogg for "insolence" after the leading Eurosceptic fired off a warning over Ms May's Brexit strategy.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group of pro-Brexit backbench Tories, said she must deliver the Brexit she promised or risk collapsing the government, ahead of crunch cabinet talks at her Chequers retreat on Friday.
Foreign office minister Alan Duncan accused him of "insolence" towards the prime minister, while Alistair Burt, another FCO minister, tweeted: "Enough. Just tired of this endless threat and counter threat. Why don’t we want the best for the U.K. than for our own ideological cliques?"
His comments also attracted criticism from respected backbenchers, such as health committee chair Sarah Wollaston and Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames, who told his Tory colleague to "shut up".
Business minister Richard Harrington said on Twitter: "I do wish people would stop putting their own dogma above the good of the country and the party.
"We should all support the prime minister and the businesses that employ so many people in good jobs and export so much."
Barack Obama was asked by David Cameron to issue his famous warning that the UK would be at "the back of the queue" for a trade deal with the US if it left the EU, a former adviser has said.
Downing Street insisted at the time that the then-US president was using his own words when he made the comment during a press conference with Mr Cameron in the run-up to the EU referendum in 2016.
But there was intense speculation at the time that the remark may have been scripted by Number 10, because the word "queue" is rarely used by Americans, who tend to prefer the phrase "back of the line".
Mr Obama's then-foreign policy speechwriter Ben Rhodes has now revealed that the comment came up during a discussion between the US and UK sides about the implications of Brexit, and said that it was Mr Cameron who suggested the president should repeat it in public.
He told Today: "We had come here to try to help the Remain campaign and we had a meeting with David Cameron and his team and we were all kind of in violent agreement about the negative consequences of Brexit.
"And in talking about the press conference they were going to hold together - Cameron and Obama - we were discussing the arguments for the Brexit campaign.
"And some of the arguments were based on the notion that the United States could just negotiate its own free trade agreement with the UK quickly and we were all agreeing that that was unlikely to happen.
"And as Obama was saying that, somebody on the British side said: 'We'd end up being at the back of the queue,' and everybody laughed and Obama said 'That is exactly right'.
"Then he was asked: 'It would be good if you could repeat that point in the press conference', and of course he did."
Prime ministers want to be associated with football when it’s going well for England, but it's more significant for politics when it's going badly, writes Independent political commentator John Rentoul.
Read his column here:
The UK’s manufacturers remained “stuck in the doldrums” in June, meaning the sector is unlikely to contribute to overall growth in the second quarter.
The Purchasing Managers’ Index survey came in at 54.4 in the month, up slightly on May’s figure but well down from the recent peak of 58 at the end of 2017.
More here:
EU students enrolling at universities in England in the first academic year after Brexit will pay the same tuition fees as British students, the government has announced.
Damian Hinds, the education secretary, has said EU students starting in autumn 2019 will access the same financial support and will be charged the same for fees during the duration of their degrees.
Story here from our education correspondent, Eleanor Busby:
"If anything should demonstrate the impossibility of Theresa May's task ahead, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s deranged dance around the maypole of Conservative history might just be it," writes Indy sketchwriter Tom Peck.
Read his column here:
The World Transformed, a fringe festival which grew out of Momentum, will take place alongside Labour's autumn conference for the third year.
Organisers say they have double the capacity to 10,000 people, to cope with demand, and it will be the "largest political festival for decades".
Speakers will include John McDonnell, political scientist Leo Panitch, theorist Chantal Mouffe, Syriza minister Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, author Hilary Wainwright, Liverpool MP Dan Carden, think tank director Faiza Shaheen and journalist Ash Sarkar.
Fergal O'Dwyer, one of the organisers, said: “The last two years have shown there is a hunger in Britain for a different kind of politics and a new society; one that takes power from the establishment and puts it into the hands of the many.
"With twice the capacity and hundreds more speakers and sessions, The World Transformed 2018 will the largest political festival in the UK for decades and will debate the new socialist policies that could end up in the next manifesto.”
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