Adam Payne
@adampayne26
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Editor, @politicshome. Sometimes on our podcast The Rundown. Contact: [email protected] & DMs. Using this a bit less, but I’m on Bluesky.
Joined June 2012
The petition to make Margaret Thatcher the face of the £50 note has currently got 11,259 signatures. The petititon to get England and Leicester centre back Harry Maguire riding an inflatable unicorn on the £50 note has 15,807.
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It's gonna be mad when Marcus Rashford convinces the UK government to pursue close regulatory alignment with the EU.
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“I don’t know where he’s been for the past two years,” says the PM of Starmer . “Not at your parties” shouts a Labour MP.
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This piece from August, which accused Sunak of “desperate” warnings about what Truss policies could do to the £, is doing the rounds among Conservative MPs, I’m told. Tory source: "Those who only backed Liz for their career are quickly realising the consequences of their actions”
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New: More major UK supermarkets join Aldi and Waitrose in pledging to never stock chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef. M&S, Sainsbury's and The Co-op all tell me they will not sell these products, regardless of any UK-US free trade deal.
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Laughter from MPs as Michael Gove says: “Transparency drives everything this government does”.
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Jess Phillips to Diane Abbott just now:. "As much as we want an election, I want to be a size 10 but I keep eating cake. You don't just get what you want. An election is not what's in front of us. Brexit is the thing that is in front of us. We have to show courage & leadership."
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A senior Conservative MP who hadn’t submitted a letter to Sir Graham Brady despite their concerns with the PM, now has, they tell me.
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Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood says government should mitigate the cost of living by rejoining the single market (Norway model). Brexit isn't what "most people imagined" & "sector after sector" is "strangled by the red tape we were supposed to escape from".
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Tory MPs who want Johnson out have this weekend been circulating a briefing document setting out why. It warns the party is on course to lose the next election & concludes “the only way to end this misery, earn a hearing from the British public… is to remove Boris Johnson as PM”
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Rachel Reeves shouts "what have you done to this place?" at Tory MPs as the Lindsay Hoyle announces that Leadsom's announcement has passed.
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I'm told Wendy Morton walked into the corridor shouting "I'm no longer the chief whip" moments before the fracking vote took place, with Liz Truss just metres away.
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The PM is visibly fuming after Starmer, referencing his reported criticism of Justin Welby and the BBC, says he will “slander decent people in a private room, let the slander spread, without the backbone to repeat it in public” #PMQs.
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Tory MPs cheering as they defeat an amendment to end the cap to public sector pay is a pretty terrible look, really.
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Despite my best efforts I simply cannot stop thinking about Justin Welby - the Archbishop of Canterbury - being angrily branded a “virtue signaller”. Completely spectacular.
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Tory MP Mark Harper calls on Boris Johnson to resign, saying he’s “no longer worthy of the great office he holds”.
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Truly some of the finest paragraphs I’ve read in some time
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A furious Conservative party source points out that the deputy chief whip usually handles MP welfare. "It's particularly grim. "Why on earth Boris gave him [Pincher] that role, which in turn gave him access to potentially vulnerable MPs, beggars belief. It's neglect.".
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An incredible claim in Sir Anthony Seldon's biography of Liz Truss:. She, according to the book, considered "stopping cancer treatment on the NHS" as a way of filling the financial blackhole. An adviser is said to have replied, "is she being serious?”.
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Exclusive: A cross-party group of MPs writes to Boris Johnson urging him to publish the long-awaited Russia report. 8 months on from its completion, MPs warn it is "untenable" for the government keep it confidential any longer .
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Penny Mordaunt says the UK "could never have used" a veto to stop Turkey joining the EU. Sophie Raworth - correctly - says this is factually incorrect. Mordaunt argues that the politics of the time meant Cameron exercising it was unlikely, but that's completely different.
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Human rights barrister @AdamWagner1 tells Sky News it was Dominic Raab's media round this morning which made it clear to him that the May 15 Downing Street garden gathering breached Covid rules.
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John Humphrys at his scintillating best on #r4today . Humphrys: "You haven't mentioned a People's Vote in this interview so far".Starmer: "You haven't asked me about it".Humphrys: "Well I am now".Starmer: "What's the question?".
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The prime minister, who used to live in Islington and wrote an unpublished opinion piece backing Remain, takes aim at "Islington Remainers" #PMQs.
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Aldi UK CEO Giles Hurley says that the supermarket will never sell chlorinated chicken/hormone injected beef. "We will never compromise on the standards or specifications of our products. that includes a commitment to never selling chlorinated chicken or hormone injected beef".
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- Every PM since went to Oxford.- Brown was PM for nearly 3 years before this day.- He. didn't go to Oxford?
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Exclusive: I've seen a pretty explosive letter from Truss to Gove/Sunak which says she's worried that UK borders won't be ready for 2021. She says. — Ports might not be fully ready.— NI protocol unlikely to be either.— UK plans could be challenged at WTO.
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Like others I hear that the mood at tonight’s 1922 was very bad. I’m told MPs were “utterly shocked” by the PM’s performance. “From delusion to devastation — writ large on her face.” Feels like, if anything, her situation has worsened.
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look, we've all been there: it's been a long day in the office so you decide to have an impromptu *checks notes* catered buffet.
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A senior Tory says tonight’s revelations are “enormous” and leave Downing Street “in a real hole”.
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Going down about as well as you'd expect. Civil servant messages: "If only there were some Brexit opportunities to keep him occupied".
Jacob Rees-Mogg is leaving this note for civil servants who aren’t at their desks…
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Keir Starmer says a government U-turn on a windfall tax is "inevitable" and adds: "he's going to do it!". Plenty of Conservative MPs agree.
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To think there are so many young, brilliant journalists who’d give a limb to spend just a day working in Westminster but the industry still has space for prehistoric, garbage reporting like that risible MoS piece.
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I don't think we have even come close to fully absorbing how utterly insane what we witness in the early hours of July 5th could be.
Just fed the Sky News / YouGov poll into the FT's seat projection tool and er
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£1 billion for the DUP.But not the full £17 million for Manchester. Optics = terrible
NEW: I’m told the Prime Minister has written to Mayor Andy Burnham to say govt will only pay “reasonable” costs spent by Manchester in response to May’s terror attack, NOT the full £17m.
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In fairness to Boris, “fuck business” is a brilliantly succinct summary of the Conservative party’s Brexit policy.
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The @Foodanddrinkfed has published a snapshot of UK food & drink exports in January to accompany the ONS data. Stark stats galore: Salmon exports to the EU fell by 98% compared to Jan 2020, beef by 91.5%. Pork (-86.9%) & cheese (-85.1%) close behind. Exports to 🇮🇪 fell by 84.9%.
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Labour gets stuck in. @AngelaRayner: “Liz Truss is utterly out of touch with the British public. Her fantasy plan would hammer the north and slash the pay of nurses, teachers, and police officers facing the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation….
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You currently can’t move for Labour catastrophe takes but these two @JonnElledge paragraphs are really essential, is my take
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Exclusive: Sarah Wollaston becomes the 2nd Conservative MP to officially join the People's Vote campaign. She will lead a rally calling for a second Brexit referendum in Bristol on August 11th.
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Brexit committee chair Hilary Benn: how ready are Britain's borders for January 1?. Customs expert @AnnaJerzewska: "we're not ready and we're not entirely sure what we need to be ready for".
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Downing Street has just sent an email to journalists titled "PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY STATEMENT" but forgot to include the statement.
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The PM's spokesperson confirms that Johnson's recent phone call with Starmer, mentioned in PMQs, was with all opposition leaders, not a one-on-one.
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Respect to the Sky News employee who whispered "oh please" after the PM finished her statement.
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Chief Secretary to the Treasury Chris Philip is also on his way out, @politicshome understands.
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Barnier on accusations that the EU is being inflexible: "We havent changed our principles over 2 years — but why would we? Why would we change principles on which the EU is based? The UK is leaving the EU, not the other way around".
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Tory MP Harriet Baldwin to Sunak just now: "I feel I need to make it clear that I personally feel ashamed that the only manifesto pledge we are breaking today is our promise to the world's poorest".
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New: Labelling has emerged as another big headache for the UK ahead of the end of Brexit transition. Business groups say the deadline for producing packaging needed to legally export food has already passed. They're still waiting for government guidance
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Dominic Grieve totally scathing on "very embarrassing" Boris Johnson just now. "If he was to become leader of the [Tory] party, I won't be in it," he told #WATO. "It may make good journalism, but it doesn't make a good member of parliament or a good minister.".
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Boris Johnson in 2005 wrote that the poorest 20% of British society is made-up of "chavs," "losers," "burglars," "drug addicts," and "criminals," in a newspaper column unearthed by Business Insider. Story by @tpgcolson and @AdamBienkov
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Joy Morrissey's preferred scenario, now deleted, in which senior public health officials are not able to speak freely, or diverge whatsoever from the government line, would surely be incredibly. undemocratic?.
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Dominic Grieve says that if today's motion doesn't pass, bringing down the government will be the only remaining means of stopping a no-deal Brexit. "And I will not hesitate to do that".
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This was me, and it wasn’t very pleasant, but I very much appreciate journalist colleagues and others there who expressed support.
Lee Anderson groans when one journalist is picked to ask a question, then berates another journalist who he says is "making up" a claim that some Conservative MPs aren't happy with Suella Braverman. "Name them" he demands" followed by repeated shouts from the audience #CPC23.
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honestly lads just have a beer.
'I wish King Charles held different views. There's a sense of wokeness to the King.'. Dr Gavin Ashenden analyses the King speech, and explains how the mention of faiths in the speech were 'inadequate'. 🔓 Become a GB News Member:
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Conservative MPs very rarely own land.
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Quite the insult to the hundreds of British men and women who died supporting the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. As for random country, I could lob a stone and hit a pub that’s older than the US.
Bad news for Starmer and Macron. Vance confirms the only US security guarantee in Ukraine will be the mineral deal. He also plays down British & French peacekeeping troops as “20k troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”.
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It’s obviously not the most important point right now, but there’s simply no way Johnson is getting even a small handful of Labour MPs on board with a deal now. Nevermind dozens, as often reported.
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While the political reasons are clear, the fact that Brexit didn't get a single mention or allusion in Sunak's statement while businesses nationwide drop like flies is just mind-boggling.
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Priti Patel, who was forced to quit Cabinet after holding meetings with foreign governments without telling Theresa May, tells Sky: "We are seeing some rogue behaviour from ministers and I don't think that's acceptable".
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For what it's worth, I was told today by a reliable source that a US State Department official who visited London recently warned that the US was "ready to eat Britain alive" in trade talks. "They're frothing at the mouth," they told me.
NEW: Liam Fox expects Harry and Meghan's wedding will boost UK-US trade ties. He tells Sky News it will be “a very helpful adjunct to that relationship”.
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Pubs in areas put in the "very high" tier (or tier 3) will be allowed to stay open if they serve meals. However, alcohol can only be served with meals, and bar snacks do not count as meals. A national debate on a garlic bread side is imminent.
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Unboxed, the arts festival dubbed the "festival of Brexit", has seen just 238k visitors — the initial target was 66m. It cost over 4x more than the Platinum Jubilee, while some participants demanded in their contracts that Brexit wouldn’t be mentioned .
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An eye-watering stat to accompany HMG's border plans as Gove speaks. Government expects around 400 mill additional customs declarations a yr as of 2021 (imports & exports). Ex-HMRC head Jon Thompson in 2018 estimated that a single declaration would have an average cost of £32.50.
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.@Tobias_Ellwood says rejoining the single market would bolster the economy, abate the cost of living crisis, resolve the Northern Ireland Protocol "at a stroke" & promote the UK's "European credentials" amid the Ukraine war. "Would it not be churlish to not face this reality?".
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It doesn't seem like Cummings' explanation has had the desired effect . One Tory MP has had over 100 emails from constituents since yday's press conference, the vast majority angry. "The striking thing is they're non-partisan - just angry people who've not seen their own family".
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Pigs heads and other meat exports are rotting in Rotterdam as “eye-watering” post-Brexit paperwork stifles the UK meat industry . 120+ lorries are currently believed to be stuck at the Dutch port. One lorry carrying pork has been there for nearly 3 weeks
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Early morning drama in Streatham where some people dressed as bees are demonstrating by sticking themselves to Jo Swinson’s bus
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Labour MP Nadia Whittome is returning to the care agency she used to work for in Nottingham. She is doing shift work and will donate the salary she receives to a local Covid-19 support fund
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The Downing St line that HMG will go on strike if it doesn't get an election on Monday hasn't gone down massively well with Tory MPs. A former minister says it's "irresponsible rubbish and the electorate will punish for us for it.".
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That we voluntarily turned one of the world’s most splendid stations into the soulless hellscape that stands there today is a national crime
No one's ever had a good time at Euston. Kings X conceivably. Never Euston.
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Former PM John Major isn't pulling any punches in his Brexit speech today. "It is not my purpose to stir controversy, but the truth must be spoken. "The ultra Brexiteers have been mistaken – wrong – in nearly all they have said or promised to the British people.".
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Government is sticking with its plan to scrap / amend / change around 4k EU laws by the end of 2023. Legal experts have expressed incredulity & concern. Jonathan Jones, former head of the government legal department, said it's a "terrible way to make law".
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If national media outlets spent less time uncritically giving platforms to white supremacists and more on explaining the real-life implications of things like no deal Brexit, I suspect the country wouldn’t be such a mess.
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Imagine these absolute clowns thinking they should try their luck in Liverpool, home to some most fiercely decent people anywhere on planet Earth. What a city.
The far-right significantly outnumbered by the good people of Liverpool tonight. More coming. Half a dozen racists made to look like absolute fools. This is what solidarity looks like.
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I’d hand over a significant sum of money to have Roy Keane transported to that studio immediately.
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Suella Braverman’s fruit pickers speech hasn’t gone down hugely well with farmers. It “shows she doesn’t have an understanding at all of the industry she is talking about,” says the NFU. They say just 8% of people who did Pick for Britain were UK workers .
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Caroline Lucas speaking at a People’s Vote event: “The government hasn’t put 3,500 troops on standby to hand out Union Jack flags to no-deal Brexit supporters. They’re on standby to prepare for a collapse of law and order.”.
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My new favourite genre of tweet is pro-Brexit monarchists in genuine shock that the Queen isn’t getting involved to defeat Yvette Cooper.
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Huge day for returns: Braverman’s contentious Home Office comeback, Raab to Justice, Barclay to Health, Gove to Levelling Up. It doesn’t exactly scream fresh start, currently.
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Boris Johnson says "there'll be no checks between Northern Ireland and GB" under the terms of the Brexit deal, which simply isn't true.
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Michel Barnier speaking in Brussels: "I am the EU's negotiator and my responsibility is to tell the truth, to speak the truth. "This week there have been no significant areas of progress.".
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Damian Green MP, usually reluctant to publicly chastise Tory colleagues, goes in for Braverman. The Tory civil war is very much on
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A date for your diaries: Lord Frost will on Monday afternoon be questioned by the European Scrutiny Committee about the impact of the post-Brexit trade deal he negotiated.
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Awkward moment for DIT minister Graham Stuart at the Food & Drink Fed convention. Asks the audience - which includes many business leaders - how many have told MPs to back May’s deal. About 10 raise their hands. Asks how many support a referendum and 90% of the room raises hands.
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One would-be rebel Conservative MP says they are "immovable" and tells me: "I'm not taking lessons on loyalty from a prime minister who killed Brexit the deal himself so he could get the top job.".
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Boris Johnson calls Emily Thornberry "Baroness, whatever it is, of Nugee". John Bercow slaps down Johnson in a big way: "The shadow foreign secretary has a name and it's not lady something. We know what her name is. It is inappropriate and frankly sexist to speak in those terms".
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Exclusive: Correspondence leaked to @politicshome shows concern at the top of government over the legality of the Northern Ireland Protocol legislation. A senior figure advising government believes the UK case is not credible and "very difficult" to argue.
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One of the most depressing and unhelpful elements of immigration discourse in the UK - and there are many - is how "low paid" and "low skilled" are used interchangeably.
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A pretty stunning line from Eustice, delivered rather nonchalantly: “In a non-negotiated outcome. companies like Arla, which is a big Danish company, sells brands like Lurpak in the UK that are manufactured in Denmark, they would have to relocate their production to the UK”.
Dairy farmers won’t be affected by a possible 35% tariff if there is no trade deal with the EU because "we would be applying our own tariffs on imported EU goods," says Environment Secretary George Eustice. #Marr
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The National Theatre says it can no longer tour in Europe as post-Brexit cost & paperwork means it's "currently not financially viable". It's the latest body blow to UK creative industries as ministers face growing pressure to renegotiate with the EU .
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Who remembers when people said Brexit would give Westminster politicians a wake-up call? Make them more honest and forthcoming with the public. A proper shake up. Today the prime minister has been on national TV telling a complete lie. There’s unequivocally no Brexit dividend.
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In response to an FOI request, the Department for Exiting the EU said it hadn't approached a single external company to obtain ideas of how technology will help solve the Northern Irish border issue .
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