Brexit news – live: Corbyn called ‘preening narcissist’ by defeated Labour MP as Boris Johnson warned over ‘strange’ statement
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Boris Johnson has been accused of “reckless and irresponsible behaviour” after he amended his Brexit bill to prevent MPs extending the Brexit transition period beyond the end of 2020 – sending the pound plunging as it puts the possibility of no-deal back on the table.
Mr Johnson is also accused of showing “two fingers to democracy” after announcing Nicky Morgan has been handed a peerage and will carry on as culture secretary, despite standing down as an MP. Baroness Morgan ruled out taking a job in any Johnson cabinet last year.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told MPs during a Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting that he was "very sorry" for Friday's election defeat. However defeated Labour MP Mary Creagh said Mr Corbyn was guilty of "preening narcissism", after revealing no one from his team had been in touch after she lost her seat.
Earlier in the day, the PM made his ministers chant false campaign claims about nurse and hospital numbers as he assembled his cabinet for the first time since the election. It comes as Angela Rayner is reportedly ready to step aside and support Rebecca Long-Bailey’s bid to become the next Labour leader.
Some more details on what Jeremy Corbyn is believed to have told Labour MPs tonight:
"Despite our best efforts, I believe this election was ultimately about Brexit.
"The Tory campaign amplified by most of the media managed to persuade many that only Boris Johnson could 'get Brexit done'. That will soon be exposed for the falsehood it is.
"We must now listen to those lifelong Labour voters who we've lost. I believe that Brexit was a major - although not the only - reason for their loss of trust in us.
"We need to go to places where we lost and genuinely listen to what people want and what they believe is possible."
More from our correspondent Jon Stone:
Leaving the meeting, Labour MP Jess Phillips tells reporters that she read out a text message from defeated Grimsby MP Melanie Onn about “how she was let down by the leadership and nobody bothered about Grimsby. There’s lots of complaints about how nobody called anyone who lost”.
Labour MP Rachel Reeves, leaving the meeting, tells journalists: “I told Jeremy that you can make all the excuses in the world about the mainstream media, about Brexit, about people not voting but the biggest drag in this election was him ... we need radical change, we need a party and a leader that the country can trust”.
Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips said the meeting was largely critical of Jeremy Corbyn
"It was no worse than it always is. It's just people saying what they think. There are a couple of people being supportive."
Mary Creagh, who lost her Wakefield seat last Thursday, told Channel 4 News she confronted Jeremy Corbyn in Westminster on Tuesday because he "enabled a hard Brexit" and "five years of austerity".
She blamed the Labour leader for the party's losses, adding: "This was Jeremy's manifesto [...] Jeremy's NEC."
She continued: "I can tell you on the doorsteps there were two words" used to describe his policies, but that she could not repeat them "pre-watershed".
She added: "In Jeremy we have a man without honour and without shame."
Dame Margaret Hodge, the veteran Labour MP said Mr Corbyn faced a largely hostile reaction from what remained of the parliamentary Labour Party.
She told reporters that "on the whole it was fury, despair, miserable and I just felt that the top table had corporate amnesia".
"They talked about vetting new members and everybody laughed," she added. "There's fury that he didn't go to visit the right constituencies ... there was fury over the level of organisation."
Labour MPs did not insist that Jeremy Corbyn stand down immediately at tonight's meeting of the parliamentary party, one member has said.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who represents Brighton Kemptown, said: "People were emotional - very emotional.'
"Not one person said go right now. They all recognise that he has apologised and that he wants to go as soon as possible, and that the duty was to save the party and do it in an orderly way."
But criticism of the outgoing leader centred on his leadership, his Brexit stance and his manifesto for lacking an "overarching narrative', he added.
In Rome, an Italian cartoonist has sparked outrage after depicting the European Union as Auschwitz and Boris Johnson as an escaping prisoner.
Mario Improta's image features the prime minister waving a union flag as he flees a concentration camp with the inscription “European Union” occupying the same position as the words “Arbeit macht frei” do at the entrance to a Nazi death camp.
The artist modified the cartoon to replace Auschwitz with a toilet after the angry backlash, admitting it was "not correct to identify the EU with a concentration camp."
More here:
In other news, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, has called for the American woman accused of killing British teenager Harry Dunn in a car crash to return to the UK if she is charged.
Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer, fled back to the States after claiming intelligence immunity in the wake of the crash in August.
More from our home affairs correspondent Lizzie Dearden:
The launch of an independent inquiry into the handling of Islamophobia and other discrimination in the Conservative Party ran into immediate trouble as prominent Muslim peer Sayeeda Warsi questioned the suitability of the academic chosen to lead the probe, writes Andrew Woodcock...
Baroness Warsi highlighted an article by Professor Sarwan Singh in which he accused Muslims of driving other communities out of Indian Kashmir.
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