Boris Johnson backs Andrea Leadsom for Tory leadership - as it happened

Jeremy Corbyn is likely to face a leadership challenge within days from Angela Eagle or Owen Smith if a negotiated settlement cannot be reached following talks on Tuesday between unions and Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson.

The Guardian’s Rowena Mason and Jessica Elgot report that Eagle’s team are still understood to be considering their timing for a challenge, given the upcoming publication of the Chilcot report and the parallel Tory leadership contest, if Corbyn does not stand down.

There’s also more on the Labour PLP meeting from earlier this evening:

The deputy leader later told MPs at Labour’s weekly meeting of their parliamentary party it was their duty to exhaust every avenue in pursuit of a settlement before anyone resorts to a leadership challenge.

Also at the meeting, Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, moved some MPs to tears with a speech about the party being based in parliamentary socialism.

One backbencher said the peer received an emotional standing ovation for his comments – reminiscent of his famous anti-Militant tirade at the party’s conference in 1985.

Kinnock said the history of Labour was about winning parliamentary representation for working people, not revolutionary socialism – and pointed out that Corbyn had backed a challenge against him by Tony Benn in 1988, despite his strong mandate.

Read on here

Winning the support of Boris Johnson will be seen as a coup for Andrea Leadsom, as he is a popular figure among the grassroots and has earned considerable sympathy since his own campaign was thwarted by Michael Gove, says the Guardian’s Anushka Asthana.

The manner in which Gove let his friend down has caused the justice secretary’s campaign to have a slow start, with some MPs saying they feel that there is a question of trust.

The decision for Johnson to back Leadsom could be hugely significant given there are still almost 20 MPs who were going to back him but who haven’t yet declared for another candidate.

If they swing behind Leadsom, the battle will become a clear two-horse race.

One MP reacted to the news by declaring “revenge served cold” and said the move could give her an additional 25 MPs.

It’s worth noting that Johnson’s own campaign collapsed last week partly by failing to offer Leadsom a job.

Tim Montgomerie, the creator of ConservativeHome and a speechwriter for at least two Tory leaders, tweets that he has been shown the outlines of a campaign which is going to be unleashed against Theresa May “targeting her record on immigration, and her competence and courage.”

It’s not clear whose camp those attack lines are going to come from. While his twitter feed suggests some warmth towards Andrea Leadsom, I would guess that Montgomerie also shares much common ground with Steven Crabb.

Here’s the Guardian’s report on Andrea Leadsom’s leadership launch, which came before this evening’s dramatic endorsement from Boris Johnson.

The energy minister tried to differentiate herself from frontrunner Theresa May by promising a quick settlement and insisting that it was right for a supporter of Brexit to take the lead.

“Neither we nor our European friends need prolonged uncertainty and not everything needs to be negotiated before article 50 is triggered and the exit process is concluded,” she said.

Speaking to a room packed with reporters and photographers, and with a number of MPs who had argued vociferously for Brexit, Leadsom said she would convene a team to set out trade, border and security arrangements.

If she wins the race, the MP is planning to have a “dedicated cabinet colleague” leading negotiations.

“I emphasise ‘dedicated’. The team that I will assemble to lead Britain out of the EU will consult opposition politicians, business people, farmers, trades unions and trade negotiators,” said Leadsom, who also promised to work closely with administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

As expected, the Johnson intervention is being viewed as further payback to Michael Gove following the criticism of the justice minister by Johnson’s former campaign manager.

Boris Johnson says that Andrea Leadsom offers “the zap, the drive and the determination essential for the next leader of the country”.

The former London mayor also praises the energy minister as “level-headed, kind and trustworthy,” according to a statement put out by him. It says:

Andrea Leadsom offers the zap, the drive, and the determination essential for the next leader of this country.

She has long championed the needs of the most vulnerable in our society. She has a better understanding of finance than almost anyone else in Parliament. She has considerable experience of government.

She is level-headed, kind, trustworthy, approachable and the possessor of a good sense of humour.

She has specialised in the EU question and successfully campaigned for leave and will be therefore well-placed to help forge a great post-Brexit future for Britain and Europe.

Above all she possesses the qualities needed to bring together leavers and remainers in the weeks and months ahead. I will be voting for Andrea Leadsom tomorrow.

Seven Labour MPs who backed Jeremy Corbyn in last week’s confidence vote - which he lost - have now called for him to resign, according to George Eaton of the New Statesman.

While Andrea Leadsom has flown under the radar in terms of the Conservative leadership race, the same might be said about her financial career, writes the Guardian’s Simon Goodley.

The Guardian contacted several senior City sources who worked at BZW and Barclays at the same time as Leadsom, but could find none who could recall her spell at the bank, which concluded 19 years ago.

However, memories are fresher of Leadsom’s move in to fund management. One City source, who knew the energy minister when she was working in corporate governance – or policing company boardrooms – at Invesco Perpetual, said: “You don’t survive in the City as a woman without being very good at the details. Financial services is going to be a key area in Brexit negotiations and she is clearly the best qualified candidate in that regard.

“For some organisations, governance is a role that can be taken on as a flexible working role more easily than actual portfolio management. If I recall she was already getting involved in politics and so the job as head of governance would have given her more latitude.”

Andrea Leadsom did not come off very well in this evening’s Tory leadership hustings, according to freshly filed reports.

The Sun’s Harry Cole writes that she “crashed and burned with a rambling performance” and quotes one MP as saying: “She was rambling, ended up talking about the frontal cortex of a baby’s brain.”

Owen Bennett relays similarly scathing quotes in the Huffpost, quoting a senior cabinet minister as saying: “When you’re having to say that you’re not Ukip at a hustings to be leader of the Conservative Party, then you are in trouble - it was a car crash.”

Buzzfeed’s Emily Ashton tweets:

Members, on the other hand, would seem to beg to differ. A party leader at odds with their parliamentary party but backed by members? Sounds familiar.

There’s some confusion about whether that Tom Watson meeting with the unions is on tomorrow after all (or if it was ever on in the first place).

The FT’s Jim Pickard says that a union sources has told him that there is no meeting tomorrow.

The New Statesman’s George Eaton tweeted earlier meanwhile:

Brexit is “breathtakingly stupid,” according to a man best known of late as the face of a cross-national organisation with tentacles stretching across borders.

No, I’m not talking about Jean-Claude Juncker. The Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz, who appeared in the latest Bond film as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of the global criminal organisation Spectre told the Press Association:

If you put someone at the edge of an abyss the chances that he falls into it are fairly big. And if you get self-centred, let’s say, small spirits, to kick the person at the edge in the butt, he will fall, yes. I find it insanity and breathtakingly stupid.

Back at the Tory hustings, and Michael Gove has found a way of mentioning Ben Wallace, Boris Johnson’s former campaign manager, who had some choice things to say about justice secretary’s supposed propensity to gossip, ‘particularly when drink is taken’.

The Guardian’s Rowena Mason reports:

She also says that Iain Duncan Smith, who campaigned alongside Andrea Leadsom for a Brexit vote, has revealed that she asked him to work on cross-party EU negotiating positions.

Tom Watson will hold “last ditch talks” with trade unions tomorrow to try to reach a negotiated settlement on the future of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, according to Adam Bienkov of Politics.co.uk.

If that doesn’t happen a challenge could come within 24 hours, he says.

Jim Pickard of the FT has an update:

We reported earlier today on the chatter about what such a deal could look like. One politician close to the leader told the Guardian it is “50-50” whether Corbyn would win again, but said that if he did then one option could be a collective leadership with a “kitchen cabinet” representing different wings of the party.

The phrase has been used in American and British politics to refer to a leader, such as David Cameron, being supported by an inner-circle of advisers, although in this case it would not necessarily be allies of Corbyn at the top table.

Under such a plan being discussed by some left-leaning MPs, Corbyn could become chairman rather than “supreme leader”. It remains to be seen however if we have gone passed that point.

Away from Westminster now, and Investors in Standard Life’s property funds have been told that they cannot withdraw their money, after the firm acted to stop a rush of withdrawals following the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

The Guardian’s Hilary Osborne and Jill Treanor report:

The firm halted trading on its Standard Life Investments UK Real Estate Fund and associated funds at midday on Monday, citing “exceptional market circumstances” for the decision.

It said the suspension would remain in place until it is “practicable” to lift it, and that it would review the decision at least every 28 days.

The £2.9bn fund, which invests in commercial properties including shopping centres, warehouses and offices.

It is thought to be the first UK property fund to suspend trading since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when some of the biggest names in investment management stopped withdrawals because they did not have the money to repay investors.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, informed the PLP meeting that he told Corbyn this morning that he should step down, says Michael Crick of Channel 4 News, who adds that at least one MP left the meeting in tears.

A former leader, Neil Kinnock, got “huge cheers” as he echoed Watson’s call for Corbyn to go, Paul Waugh also reports.

Here’s how Kinnock’s involvement is viewed by at least one Corbyn supporter:

While Labour MPs at the PLP meeting have been continuing with their offensive against their leader, the organisation set up on the back of his election to head the party last year has been signalling that they are building up resources:

There’s more here in an article on LabourList, which says that ‘Keep Corbyn’ rallies organised by Momentum over the weekend drew thousands, with 3,000 and 2,000 attending the protests in Liverpool and Manchester respectively.

Penzance, Exeter, Plymouth and Glasgow were the locations of smaller events, while further rallies are to be held in London and smaller towns this week.

There’s a bit more incoming for Jeremy Corbyn from another direction. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a lobby group, has put out a statement describing his evidence earlier to the Commons home affairs committee as “inadequate.”

Jonathan Sacerdoti, the group’s director of communications, said: “Mr Corbyn insists that he is against antisemitism and all forms of racism, but his actions repeatedly leave Jewish people doubting his commitment and questioning his own actions. Mr Corbyn’s dire performance raised more questions than it answered.”

Four rooms away from the Tory hustings, it’s a predictably stormy parliamentary Labour party meeting in committee room 14.

It started with an address by the party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, according to Paul Waugh of the Huffpost, who adds that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were not there.

Some more from him, and the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman

It’s getting rowdy - in a Conservative way - at the Tory leadership hustings, where Theresa May was said to have arrived fashionably late. The Spectator’s political editor, James Forsyth, tweets:

Michael Crick of Channel 4 News has meanwhile totted up some of the estimates of where MPs’ support lies.

This is what the ConservativeHome editor Paul Goodman told me when I asked him about the accuracy of his Tory membership surveys.

That’s all from me for today. My colleague Ben Quinn is taking over now.

There are 3m non-British EU citizens living in the UK. According to the Office for National Statistics, this is where they are from:

1.46m (2.3% of the total UK population) were born in the EU14 group of countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Spain and Sweden

1.24m (1.9%) were born in the EU8 group of countries, which joined the EU in 2004: Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia

235,000 (0.4%) were born in Bulgaria or Romania - countries that joined the EU in 2007

92,000 (0.1%) were born in the remaining three countries of the EU - Malta, Cyprus and Croatia

The Tory leadership contender Stephen Crabb has released tax returns showing he earned just over £100,000 in the 12 months to April 2015, the Press Association reports. The work and pensions secretary had a combined income of £101,198 in the year to that date, a self certificate reveals. The document states he received benefits and expenses of £397 and, after allowable expenses of £633 were deducted, Crabb’s earnings are listed as £100,968.

According to ITV’s Robert Peston, the Labour leadership challenge may have been put off until Friday at the earliest.

Tory MPs are starting a hustings session with the five leadership candidates. It is taking place behind closed doors, but, in the age of Twitter and text messaging, that may not count for much.

Here is the Times columnist Tim Montgomerie on Theresa May’s stance on EU nationals.

Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, told MPs in response to the UQ on EU nationals that “no sane or fair government” would contemplate telling EU nationals living in the UK that they would have to leave. That meant threatening to remove them would be “incredible” as a negotiating position, he said. He said the government was “causing untold fear and misery” and that it should clarify the position and promise EU nationals they can stay.

Here is the Ukip MP Douglas Carswell explaining why he tweeted a smiley face emoticon after hearing that Nigel Farage had resigned.

The Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Tom Brake has called on Nigel Farage to resign as an MEP following his resignation as Ukip leader. Brake said:

Nigel Farage has spent years attacking the so-called Brussels gravy train while doing his best to cash in on EU taxpayer-funded expenses. This rank hypocrisy has to end. It’s high time he did the honourable thing and resigned as an MEP and stopped milking taxpayers to push his divisive agenda.

It is a bit surprising to say the least that Lord Trimble has come out to back Michael Gove in the Tory leadership election. (See 1.46pm.) In his remarks confirming support for Gove, the Nobel peace prize winner mentions that he knows a thing or two about negotiations. What Lord Trimble is referring to were the marathon discussions over Holy Week 1998 culminating in the Good Friday agreement peace settlement in his native Northern Ireland.

The irony regarding Gove is that at the time the future candidate to be prime minister was an ardent opponent of the Good Friday accord and urged unionists to reject it in the May referendum to endorse the deal. Trimble urged unionists to embrace the agreement but found no support on the rightwing end of what used to be known as Fleet Street.

Gove in his newspaper columns and Charles Moore, the then editor of the Daily Telegraph, were one of many thorns in Trimble’s side as he sought to maintain mainstream unionist support for the Good Friday agreement. Indeed Gove, Moore and others on the Conservative right were aligned with Trimble’s then nemesis, the Rev Ian Paisley on the no side.

Angela Eagle’s resignation as shadow business secretary last week meant she lost her place as one of the frontbench representatives on the party’s national executive committee. As the New Statesman’s George Eaton reports, she has been replaced by Jon Trickett, a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Trickett is shadow lord president of the council and the party’s campaigns and elections director.

Here’s a Guardian video with a clip from Liam Fox’s campaign launch.

Responding to Andrea Leadsom’s statement that she committed to giving EU citizens already living and working in the UK indefinite leave to remain, Theresa May’s team said that she wanted to make sure that EU nationals who were already in Britain could stay, arguing that the country was open and welcoming.

They suggested that May’s comments made clear that she expected that to happen. But they suggested that other candidates making promises were taking a risk with their negotiating position, and could jeopardise the rights of Britons living in countries such as Spain.

May thinks this will be a highly complex negotiation, and doesn’t want to make rash decisions, her team says.

Here is more from Douglas Carswell, the Ukip MP, on Nigel Farage. Carswell told the BBC’s Daily Politics that Farage’s rhetoric on immigration went too far. He told the programme:

We went too far, and I criticised it when we went too far. And it’s not just morally wrong, it’s electorally disastrous. This is a decent, generous country.

People have a legitimate right of feel a sense of anger with their politicians but the answer to that is not to play on people’s fears and anger but to promise the hope of something better. I never want to be in a party where the archbishop of Canterbury feels compelled to criticise some of the things that people say.

Here is how the singer Charlotte Church responded to the news that Nigel Farage is resigning as Ukip leader because he wants his life back.

There are two Brexit-related urgent questions in the Commons this afternoon.

Lord Trimble, the former Ulster Unionist leader and Northern Ireland first minister who is now a Conservative peer, is backing Michael Gove for the leadership. Trimble said:

This is a challenging period for the United Kingdom. The government’s most important task will be negotiating a new relationship with our European allies and seeking opportunities worldwide. I’ve been involved in critical negotiations in the past, I know what it takes and Michael Gove has it. He is without doubt the most qualified candidate to be our next prime minister.

Unionist objections appeared to have sunk the idea of an all-Ireland-wide forum to be established to negotiate with Brussels following the Brexit vote.

At a summit in Dublin Castle today, Irish premier Enda Kenny confirmed that the cross-border north-south ministerial council did not put forward the creation of the forum.

Acknowledging the Democratic Unionist Party’s misgivings over such a forum given its all Ireland dimension, Kenny said: “It wouldn’t work if it didn’t have buy in for everybody.”

The Taoiseach added: ‘My impression was that you could have an island conversation not as a statutory assembly or forum.”

Northern Ireland’s First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster said: “There was no proposal … there was nothing to be rejected.”

Foster said the plan for a forum, which was raised by the Irish government at the weekend, was not even discussed with her.

Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, said he still believed an all Ireland forum on the European issue was “still a good suggestion.”

McGuinness also denounced “Ukip fascists and the loony right of the Conservative Party” for being responsible for Brexit and the departure of David Cameron from Downing Street.

Here’s the verdict on Andrea Leadsom’s speech from the Guardian’s panel, featuring Jonathan Freedland, Simon Jenkins and Deborah Orr.

Jonathan thinks she could win. Here’s an extract from his article.

Leadsom staked out more terrain on the left. Workers’ rights previously guaranteed by the EU would be safe and even “enhanced”. Top boardroom pay was often undeserved and needed to be reined in. If there was money to give away, it would go on tax cuts for the lowest paid: “The richest people in Britain will not be my priority.”

Sure, some of that may raise a few eyebrows, given that Leadsom, a former banker, voted against a tax on bankers’ bonuses, the proceeds of which would have helped young people get into work and contributed towards the building of affordable homes. But it was canny positioning. Keen to avoid being branded the Ukip candidate to succeed David Cameron, she sought to be the One Nation candidate instead.

Will it work? It shouldn’t. Leadsom has a tenth of May’s experience and bears the mark of Cain formed by the words “former banker”. But in every contest since 1997, Tory members have chosen the candidate perceived as most hostile to the EU – regardless of electoral appeal or experience. If that pattern holds, Leadsom will be our next prime minister.

My colleague Marina Hyde has written about the resignation of Nigel Farage and she is on blistering form. Here’s an excerpt.

In his Telegraph column today, Boris Johnson declared that David Cameron needs a plan to stop this political Diana moment. That’s a bit like the drunk chauffeur and 15 French paparazzi demanding to know why the Queen is still at Balmoral. But Farage has got a plan, he wanted us to know, which amounts to: let’s get the hell on with it. Though he was needily coy as to a potential role for himself in the political negotiations. “We need a team of negotiators that includes figures from across the political spectrum,” he kept stressing, “which reflects where that Brexit vote came from.” Which was, in case you missed it, from “the Ukip people’s army”, and “Ukip’s messages”.

It is fair to say Nigel remains unaware of the difference in calibre between himself and a figure such as Theresa May (whatever your views on her). You sense he will be condemned to wonder furiously why the call to the top table doesn’t come, much as Liz Hurley may enquire furiously of her agent why she has been overlooked again for a role in favour of Meryl Streep.

Here is the article in full.

Suzanne Evans, the former Ukip deputy chairman, has just told Sky News that she can’t stand for Ukip leader because she is currently suspended from the party, but that she would like to stand if she could. This is from Sky’s Harry Carr.

Q: Were George Osborne and Theresa May right to abandon the goal of balancing the budget by the end of the parliament?

Fox says he thought it was going to be impossible to balance the budget by 2020 anyway. Brexit has been used as an excuse. But is it right for any country to spend at a level that increases debt for the next generation. We are spending too much, he says. The deficit has come down from 11% of GDP to 3%, he said.

If the government does not deal with this issue, it will create an imbalance between generations, he says.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

Q: Who will you support if you get knocked out?

Fox says he does not intend to get knocked out. And he does not answer hypothetical questions.

Q: Would you keep workers’ rights at the level they are now?

Fox says there are no plans to water down workers’ rights after Brexit.

Q: What is your reaction to what Philip Hammond said today about the need to compromise over single market access?

Fox says he would not compromise over restricting free movement in order to obtain single market access. But he thinks EU states would not want to restrict the UK’s access to the single market.

Q: Would you guarantee that EU nationals already living here can stay?

Fox says he wants them to stay. That would be sensible. He accuses remain supporters of scaremongering on this point.

Here is Iain Duncan Smith on why he is supporting Andrea Leadsom.

Here is Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, criticising the law firm Mishcon de Reya for going to court to try to stop the government using article 50 of the Lisbon treaty to start the two-year EU withdrawal process without a vote in parliament. (See 7.09am.)

Ministers from the Irish government and members of the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive are meeting in Dublin to discuss the implications of the Brexit vote on the island of Ireland. The Irish premier, Enda Kenny, has proposed creating an all-Ireland forum to respond to the challenges thrown up by the UK’s departure from the EU.

Such a proposal however is unlikely to win support from the main party in the coalition in Belfast, the Democratic Unionists.

It is the first time the North-South Ministerial Council has met since both the EU referendum and last May’s elections to the Northern Ireland assembly. The North-South body was established following the 1998 Good Friday agreement and meets every six months to discuss cross-border issues.

Here is Michael Crick’s latest tally of how many MPs the five Conservative leadership challengers have got supporting them.

Leadsom says she is completely open. She has no allegiances to Ukip, she says.

Leadsom says her EU withdrawal negotiating team would come from the government. But it would consult.

Leadsom says she does not agree with what Philip Hammond said about how hard it would be for the UK to have access to the single market without accepting free movement. It would not be in the interests of other EU countries to impose tariffs, she says.

Leadsom says she wants the government to take a decision on Heathrow very soon.

Q: You say the rights of EU nationals living here should be respected. Does that mean people here now? Or people who come at any point up to EU withdrawal?

Leadsom says the government needs to get control of the number of people coming to the UK as soon as it can.

Leadsom says she backs entrepreneurialism. But she does not approve of people becoming rich on the back of poor performance.

Leadsom says she does not want an early election.

Leadsom says that in her 2013 speech, in which she warned of the dangers of Brexit, she said the status quo was not an option.

She says that, as head of the Fresh Start group (a group of Tory Eurosceptics), she studied the EU in more detail than anyone else. Seeing Sir Bill Cash in the audience, she corrects herself; she did not study it more than him, she says.

Q: Should the other Brexit candidates stand aside to ensure there is one Brexit candidate on the shortlist?

Leadsom says she does not think there should be a coronation. She thinks the next leader should be someone who sees the advantages of being outside the EU.

Q: Philip Hammond says the government will have to make a trade off between cutting immigration and getting access to the single market? Who would get the best deal - Andrea Leadsom or Michael Gove?

Farage says the key thing is to got a Tory leader who is a Brexiteer.

But he says Hammond was “totally gutless” to suggest he would give in before the withdrawal negotiation with the EU even starts.

And that’s it. The Farage speech and Q&A are over.

I will post a summary soon.

Q: Will Suzanne Evans be able to stand, given she is currently suspended?

Farage says he does not know. He does not get involved in party disciplinary matters, he says.

Farage says a new leader will be in place by the autumn conference.

Q: What regrets do you have from your time as leader?

Farage says the only people who make mistakes are people who do things. And he does things. He has made mistakes. But Britain is leaving the EU, and so he has no regrets.

Q: Will you stand again for parliament?

Farage says that is not top of his bucket list.

• Farage plays down the prospect of standing again as an MP.

Q: If the party asks you to come back, will you come back?

Farage says he will part of the 2020 campaign. But he is not a career politician. He came into this because he wants his country back. He has got it back.

Q: What is your response to Douglas Carswell’s reaction to your news?

Farage says Carswell does not often smile, so it’s good to see him pleased.

Q: Are you putting yourself forward to be part of the Brexit negotiating team?

Farage says he is not putting himself forward. But he has expertise, and he is available if people want him.

Q: What do you think of the attacks on people like Poles since the referendum?

Farage says some appalling things have been said. But he says bad things have been done on both sides.

Farage says he would not put too much money on Douglas Carswell being the next Ukip leader.

Q: Will you serve out your remaining two years as an MEP?

Farage says he hopes the next prime minister will complete the job in less than two years. Then the Ukippers will have been the turkeys that voted for Christmas.

Q: Do you think the tone you took in the European parliament last week will help the negotiation process?

Farage says he was being shouted down. It was so bad that Martin Schulz, the president of the parliament, intervened to help him, which normally never happens. So he was only giving MEPs a taste of what they gave him.

And it is important not to be weak in the negotiations, he says.

He says the UK has a strong negotiating position. He says countries without trade deals with the EU sell goods worth £1.5 trillion into Europe.

Q: Some leave campaigners have been claiming you had nothing to do with leave winning? And they say it was not about immigration. What do you think about that?

Farage says that is what career politicians do.

There would not have been a referendum without Ukip, he says.

If it had not been for Ukip’s willingness to take on issues that people at Notting Hill dinner parties find tricky, leave would not have attracted all the support it did.

Q: Who should be the next Ukip leader? Douglas Carswell?

Farage jokes that he likes that idea. (He and Carswell are fierce opponents.)

He says he will not express a view. May the best man or woman win.

Q: Who do you want to see as Tory leader?

Farage says it has to be a Brexit leader. But he says just because the Ukip donor Arron Banks is backing Andrea Leadsom, that does not mean he is.

• Farage says new Tory leader must be a Brexiter - but he does not back any particular candidate.

Q: Will you form a new party with Banks, as he has suggested?

Farage says Banks does not speak for him.

He says he will continue supporting Ukip. And he will continue to lead the Ukip group in the European parliament.

• Farage rules out forming a new party.

If the government backtracks over withdrawal, Ukip’s best days could be ahead.

Q: Would you like to cooperate with other parties?

Farage says, if there were an election this autumn, he would not want Ukip to stand against Brexit MPs.

• Farage says, if there is an early election, Ukip should not stand against Brexit MPs.

But he says he thinks in the long term new parties could emerge.

Q: What role do you want Ukip to play in the withdrawal negotiation?

Farage says he wants this to be a cross-party effort. And he says Ukip has expertise that it can offer.

Farage says during the campaign he said he wanted his country back.

But now he is saying he wants his life back.

And that’s it.

Farage says leave would not have won without Ukip.

He says Ukip can expand.

And, given the crisis in the Labour party, its best chance lies in taking votes from Labour, he says.

He says if the withdrawal deal is a disappointment, and Labour remains in crisis, Ukip could do very well in 2020.

Farage says leave won the referendum. But leave campaigners now need to focus on getting the deal they want.

Farage says it is important to ensure that the prime minister does not take us into the single market.

Liz Truss, the environment secretary, is going to confirm for Theresa May. This is a blow for Michael Gove as Truss was originally lined up to support Boris Johnson (when Johnson and Gove were a joint ticket), partly because she worked with Gove at the Department for Education. Clearly Gove’s handling of all this has pushed her elsewhere

The BBC’s Norman Smith is reporting that Jeremy Corbyn’s critics are now prepared to wait until after the Chilcot report is published on Wednesday before triggering a leadership challenge. (See 9.18am.) But in his column in the Herald, Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, suggests the coup against Corbyn began last week precisely because his opponents wanted him out before Chilcot. Here’s an extract.

I have been puzzling as to exactly why the parliamentary Labour party chose this moment to launch their coup against Jeremy Corbyn and just what explains the desperation to get him out last week. It can hardly be because of a European referendum where Corbyn’s campaigning, although less than energetic, was arguably more visible than that of, say, the likely big political winner Teresa May?

Would it not have been more sensible and certainly less damaging simply to put up another candidate against Corbyn and argue the case to the country? It certainly would have made for less of a pantomime and, with both establishment parties holding simultaneous leadership elections, it would have minimised the damage. So what exactly was the urgency in getting the removal vans to visit the Corbyn’s office last week?

I had a conversation on exactly this point with veteran Labour firebrand Dennis Skinner. He answered in one word “Iraq”. The Skinner line is that the coup was timed to avoid Corbyn calling for Blair’s head next Wednesday from the dispatch box. Indeed, many would say that when Corbyn stated that he would be prepared to see a former Labour prime minister tried for war crimes then he sealed his fate as leader of the parliamentary Labour party.

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Claire.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, is on the Today programme. He says Jeremy Cobyn is a winner. He has won every byelection Labour has fought since the election, and held councils in the local election that Labour was expected to lose. He says he is asking people in Labour to “stand back” and have a proper, rational conversation about the future.

Q: You talk softly. But your message is unbending. You don’t mind if you cannot fill shadow cabinet posts. You are not prepared to compromise.

McDonnell says that is not true. He wants to hear what people’s concerns are.

Q: Their concern is that Corbyn is a loser ...

McDonnell says they are wrong. His record shows that. He wants to hear what other worries are.

Q: Labour figures say they cannot get to see Corbyn.

That is not true, says McDonnell. Corbyn has an open-door policy. He will meet any MPs.

Q: So Angela Eagle can have a one-to-one meeting with Corbyn? And Tom Watson? (There have been reports saying Corbyn is refusing to meet his shadow cabinet critics, or refusing to meet them without key advisers present.)

McDonnell says of course Corbyn will be willing to hold meetings with people like Eagle.

• McDonnell says Corbyn is willing to have one-to-one meetings with his shadow cabinet critics.

While in the UK legal moves and opinion columns ponder the possibility of not triggering article 50, EU officials are wondering the same thing.

Politico reports:

What if the UK never withdraws?

The EU cannot force the UK to notify its withdrawal, but it could try to invoke sanctions under article 7 using the rationale that the political and economic uncertainty created by the delay is undermining the union. But that’s unlikely. Tusk’s top aide [Piotr] Serafin urged national diplomats at their meeting last week to remember that the UK is going through a crisis and they should avoid escalating it by threatening sanctions.

In the meantime, [Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff, Martin] Selmayr suggested at the meeting with diplomats last Sunday, according to a source present, that the EU treat the results of the British referendum the same way it has treated the results of the Dutch referendum in April on trade with Ukraine: by leaving it in limbo.

So here, too, the plan might well be … to not have a plan.

This afternoon, Jeremy Corbyn will appear in front of the home affairs select committee to answer questions from MPs about Labour’s antisemitism review, published last week.

Keith Vaz, the committee’s chairman, said:

We have seen a deeply troubling upsurge in antisemitic incidents and speech across Britain and Europe in recent times, including within our political discourse …

We are grateful to Jeremy Corbyn for coming to give evidence on his and the Labour party’s position following the publication of the independent report on antisemitism in the party on Thursday.

Ken Livingstone – currently suspended from the Labour party over comments he made linking Hitler to Zionism – gave evidence to the same committee last month and was accused by Chuka Umunna of being a “shame and embarrassment” to the party.

Boris Johnson has found unlikely agreement on his claim that the vote to leave the EU has been met with hysteria – from shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

McDonnell told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

Now is the time to sort of calm down, everyone calm down. Since the referendum there’s sort of been mass hysteria in virtually all our political parties and I can’t completely understand it. I’ve never seen anything like it, allegations being made, claims being made. Untruths being said.

McDonnell said claims that plans were afoot to install him as Labour leader in place of the embattled Jeremy Corbyn were untrue:

That has never been discussed. Last week I was accused of a coup against Jeremy myself. This week I was accused of forcing him to stay in. It gets ridiculous.

Hammond said voters had made it clear that they wanted restrictions on freedom of movement, but that this came at a cost:

We need to be realistic – we need to accept that the terms of trade must change.

In an article for the Telegraph today, Hammond said:

Simply doing our ‘stubborn best’ by demanding access to the market while offering nothing in return may sound brave, but would be foolhardy.

Was that a coded reference to Sarah Vine’s exhortation, in an email to her husband Michael Gove, to “be your stubborn best”?

“Not very heavily coded,” Hammond told Today.

Alain Juppé, former prime minister of France and a candidate for the centre-right presidential nomination, says in the Financial Times today that the remaining EU states shouldn’t give the UK a hard time:

[Brexit] does not mean we are going to punish the UK. We need to find ways to co-operate, to find a solution to have the UK in the European market, one way or another – whether that is part of the European Economic Area or something else.

But, he adds, Britain does need to trigger article 50 soon:

They can’t say yes, no, maybe. Now they must draw the conclusions of the vote. When you get divorced, you don’t stay in the same house. It’s not a question of days, but it has to be fast.

The decision to leave the EU has cast the future of the so-called Osborne Doctrine – by which Britain positioned itself as China’s best friend in the west – into doubt.

Many observers believe that as a result of Brexit, the “golden” relationship between London and Beijing, whose main architects were David Cameron and George Osborne, is now on life support.

But in an interview with the Financial Times, his first since the vote, Osborne has vowed to step up his courtship of China. Announcing another major trade visit here before the year is out, the chancellor said:

We’ve got to get on a plane and sell Britain to the world. And for me that means putting more effort still into our relationship with China.

Beijing will have been disappointed to see its most vocal European cheerleader vote to quit the EU. “I think their initial reaction [to Brexit] was: ‘Fuck!’,” one veteran political observer told the Guardian last week.

But China’s ambassador to London said this weekend he hoped to continue writing a new chapter of “golden era” relations.

Chinese consumers, at least, are taking advantage of the plummeting pound to go on post-Brexit spending sprees for Hermes handbags and Hugo Boss scarfs. Yu Yiran, one happy Chinese shopper, told the Communist party-run Global Times tabloid she was elated by the result:

I am going to buy a Louis Vuitton handbag as soon as possible in case the exchange rate changes again.

Today’s secretary of state for closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is John Whittingdale:

The immediate prompt must be the attack – that’s not too strong – on Michael Gove in the Telegraph today by Boris Johnson’s former campaign manager Ben Wallace and its key eye-opening claim:

When I was a government whip and Michael was the chief whip, the office leaked like a sieve. Important policy and personnel details made their way to the papers. Michael seems to have an emotional need to gossip, particularly when drink is taken, as it all too often seemed to be …

UK citizens deserve to know that when they go to sleep at night their secrets and their nation’s secrets aren’t shared in the newspaper column of the prime minister’s wife the next day, or traded away with newspaper proprietors over fine wine.

Tory MPs vote tomorrow in the first round of leadership culling that will see the five candidates reduced to four.

John Redwood – previously a Boris Johnson backer – announces today that he’s opting instead for Andrea Leadsom:

She has a fresh and determined mind, with the qualities necessary to get us out of the EU quickly and with the minimum of disruption.

Whereas the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, tells the Telegraph he’s backing Theresa May:

I know that Theresa has the qualities and the character to take our country forward and, with her quietly determined, down-to-earth style, to reunite us after the referendum.

Mishcon de Reya, the law firm taking action on behalf of an anonymous group of clients against the triggering of article 50, has published this explainer on the move:

The referendum held on 23 June was an exercise to obtain the views of UK citizens, the majority of whom expressed a desire to leave the EU. But the decision to trigger article 50 of the Treaty of European Union, the legal process for withdrawal from the EU, rests with the representatives of the people under the UK constitution.

The government, however, has suggested that it has sufficient legal authority. Mishcon de Reya has been in correspondence with the government lawyers since 27 June 2016 on behalf of its clients to seek assurances that the government will uphold the UK constitution and protect the sovereignty of parliament in invoking article 50.

If the correct constitutional process of parliamentary scrutiny and approval is not followed then the notice to withdraw from the EU would be unlawful, negatively impacting the withdrawal negotiations and our future political and economic relationships with the EU and its 27 member states, and open to legal challenge. This legal action seeks to ensure that the article 50 notification process is lawful.

The firm says it has retained David Pannick QC and Tom Hickman to act as counsel. Pannick wrote in the Times last week that an act of parliament would be needed to trigger article 50.