Good morning, I’m sitting in for Andrew Sparrow on the politics live blog today, bringing you all the latest developments as they happen. Philip Hammond has put the cat among the pigeons by saying that leaving the EU without a deal would be a betrayal of the referendum result. He is leading a group of 20 Conservative MPs who are making clear their opposition to crashing out on 31 October. Seven former cabinet ministers, including Greg Clark, David Gauke and Rory Stewart, have signed a letter to the prime minister in which they accuse the prime minister of setting the bar too high in negotiations with the EU to have a hope of getting changes to a deal. Hammond, writing for the Times, also took an apparent swipe at Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s senior adviser, saying: In other developments: John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, reportedly vowed at an Edinburgh festival fringe event to fight attempts to sideline parliament “with every breath in my body”. Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has said his party must team up with the Liberal Democrats in order to stop a no-deal Brexit, as the new Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson made clear she would work with him, despite having ruled out an alliance with Jeremy Corbyn. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps said the government has issued an “invitation to tender” for 300 million worth of freight in preparation for a no-deal Brexit. He said: “We may never need it, and that is… [Read full story]
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