Former Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach joins the Lib Dems - as it happened

My colleague, Peter Walker, has just published a story on Sandbach joining the Lib Dems:

In June, as the Tory leadership contest raged, Sandbach complained of abuse at the hands of male party colleagues. She tweeted an image of messages she said were from one and suggested that similar abuse had been behind the decisions of three female former Conservative MPs to leave the party.

Sandbach, who was then still a Tory MP and was supporting Rory Stewart in the party’s leadership race, said the message read: “You too are a disgrace. Time you left the party I think.” She added:

Barely is the ink dry on the results and the dark ops begin. This from a male conservative MP to me as I sit on the train home.

She tagged it with the words “completewankspangle” but later deleted the tweet. In a supplementary tweet that remained live, she wrote:

It’s bad enough when you get it from complete strangers. Is it any wonder three female MPs left.

Just last week, my colleague Maya Wolfe-Robinson visited Sandbach’s constituency; a safe Tory seat is estimated to have voted 52% in favour of leave in the referendum.

She reported that Sandbach felt her stance – voting for Theresa May’s deal, but against a no-deal Brexit – reflected her constituents’ views. Here’s what she found when she spoke to some of them:

Earlier this month, Sandbach lost a vote of confidence among members of her local Conservative party association.

She was appealing the withdrawal of the Tory whip, following the prime minister’s decision to remove it after she voted with opposition MPs to take control of the Commons order paper in September.

But Tory party members in her Eddisbury constituency in Cheshire passed a vote of no confidence in her. The ballot was symbolic but opened the door to formal deselection. At the time, Sandbach complained of “entryism” and said she was granted only six minutes to set out her defence.

This is obviously deeply disappointing, but I won’t allow an unrepresentative handful of people decide who gets to be the MP for tens of thousands of Eddisbury voters.

All my constituents can rest assured that I will continue to represent them in parliament, standing up for a sensible, pragmatic Brexit deal and confirming that it is what the people want through a ‘final say’ confirmatory referendum.

The BBC is set to reject Labour’s complaint about a Panorama documentary which alleged widespread antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s party, according to individuals with knowledge of the case.

The decision is likely to set up a clash between the public broadcaster and the opposition that will run during the forthcoming general election campaign.

The episode of Panorama entitled “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” was broadcast this summer and made a number of claims about Labour’s attitude towards the issue in recent years. It interviewed party activists and officials who said they were undermined by senior Labour bosses in their attempts to tackle antisemitism.

Labour strongly rejected the programme’s conclusions, which included suggestions from a group of whistleblowers including the former general secretary Iain McNicol that Jeremy Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications, Seumas Milne, and the current general secretary, Jennie Formby, interfered with investigations into antisemitism.

However, the Guardian has learned that the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit, the top level of the broadcaster’s internal complaints process, has finished investigating the concerns raised by Labour and decided to back the programme-makers. A BBC spokesperson declined to comment.

My colleague, Rowena Mason, has just published this story on Boris Johnson’s “PR stunt” visit to a Cambridgeshire hospital:

Julia Simons, a 23-year-old medical student, who had confronted the prime minister, said:

Staff were not informed even when he was in the hospital. He was too cowardly to face the uncensored opinions of staff because we know the reality the effects of his government’s and party’s policies on patients.

A No 10 spokesman has contradicted Trump’s claim that a UK-US trade deal might not be possible under Boris Johnson’s Brexit withdrawal agreement.

The PM negotiated a new deal which ensures that we take back control of our laws, trade, borders and money; a deal which people said he would never negotiate. Under this new deal, the whole of the UK will leave the EU customs union, which means we can strike our own free trade deals around the world from which every part of the UK will benefit.

Last night, my colleague Rowena Mason reported that the Tories’ election campaign was set to be run by Isaac Levido, the former right-hand man of Lynton Crosby. The PM’s de facto chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, was not due to be centrally involved and had remained in Downing Street, she reported.

This evening, she has this update:

It emerged earlier this afternoon that an inquiry had concluded the £100,000 government grant given to a firm run by Jennifer Arcuri, the US businesswoman embroiled in a conflict of interest row over her close friendship with Boris Johnson, was “appropriate”.

The shadow culture secretary and Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, has now said:

This ‘review’ is a complete whitewash. The documents published raise more questions than we had before. No one reading Hacker House’s grant application would give the company a penny, let alone £100,000 of tax payers’ money.

The fundamental question of why Hacker House was ever given this grant remains unanswered. The public deserve to know why their money was handled so irresponsibly. We will not let this lie.

On Corbyn, Trump said:

I have great relationships with many of the leaders, including Boris. He’s a fantastic man and I think he’s the exact right guy for the time and I know you and him will end up doing something that could be terrific if you (Farage) and he, if you and he get together as, you know, an unstoppable force.

And Corbyn would be so bad for your country. He’d be so bad, he’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places. But, your country has tremendous potential, it’s a great country.

Trump told LBC he has got on well with both the current and former prime ministers on a personal level. Referring to the current occupant of No 10, Trump said:

Oh yeah, Boris and I have a great friendship, we’ve become friends. Boris and I, when he was running they were saying: ‘He’s the Trump, he’s the Trump.’ We have a lot of the same things going, I guess.

Boris is a terrific guy, you know that he’s a terrific guy. I think it was time for Boris, it was time you needed him.

As some correspondents in Westminster have pointed out, this could end up playing better for Labour than for the Conservatives:

Referring to his relationships with Theresa May, Trump told LBC:

Well, I liked her very much. You know, I disagreed with certain things that she did but I like her; she was always very nice to me, I was nice to her ... I told her exactly how to make a deal but she didn’t listen to me and that’s okay; not everybody listens to me. Some people do.

According to May, Trump’s advice to her was to “sue the European Union”.

Trump also suggested that gossip about the US having its eyes on the NHS may have started with the Labour leader, telling LBC:

I don’t even know where your healthcare system started with respect to us taking over your healthcare system. I mean it’s so ridiculous I think Corbyn put that out there.

In reality, besides Trump having himself put it out there (see previous post), his ambassador to London, Woody Johnson, has also explicitly and publicly raised the prospect.

On US designs on parts of the NHS, Trump told LBC:

No, not at all, we wouldn’t even be involved in that no. We’re trying to fix our health service. We all have our health service problems ... No. it’s not for us to have anything to do with your healthcare system. No, we’re just talking about trade.

The US president has previously contradicted himself on whether or not Washington would want the NHS on the table in trade talks. In June, he said:

When you’re dealing on trade, everything is on the table. So NHS or anything else. A lot more than that.

Later the same day, he said:

I don’t see [the NHS] being on the table. Somebody asked me a question today and I say everything is up for negotiation, because everything is. But that’s something I would not see as part of trade. That’s not trade.

Here’s what Trump told Farage on his discussions with the prime minister over the latter’s Brexit deal:

We wanna do trade with the UK and they wanna do trade with us and, to be honest with you, this deal – under certain aspects of the deal – you can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t trade.

Trump added that the US would be barred from some parts of the UK market under Johnson’s deal; a situation that he said “would be ridiculous”.

Reacting to Trump’s LBC interview, the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesman, Chuka Umunna, has said:

Donald Trump is unfit to hold the office of president of the United States. Boris Johnson is unfit to be prime minister of the United Kingdom.

This endorsement is yet another example of the cuddly relationship between the two men. As the saying goes, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.

Trump is a bully, a misogynist and a racist. Yet the Conservatives have fawned to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with him. A trade deal that would threaten food standards and our precious NHS.

Liberal Democrats will continue to stand up to regressive politics and will continue to fight to stop Brexit and build a brighter future.

As has been suggested elsewhere, Farage has opened himself up to claims of hypocrisy by inviting a sitting US president to intervene when the UK is preparing to vote on its future.

Here’s what the Brexit party leader told Fox News in 2016 in reaction to Barack Obama saying the UK would be at the back of the queue in trade negotiations if it voted to leave the EU:

Vladimir Putin behaved in a more statesmanlike manner than President Obama did in this referendum campaign. Obama came to Britain and, I think, behaved disgracefully; telling us we would be at the back of the queue. Vladimir Putin maintained his silence throughout the whole campaign.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has responded to Trump’s interview with LBC, tweeting:

Corbyn’s referring to Trump’s claim that the US would have no involvement in the NHS under a post-Brexit US-UK trade deal. The US president has, at different times, said the NHS would and would not be on the table in any such negotiations.

Donald Trump opened his interview with LBC by again repeating his nonsense claim to have correctly predicted the result of the Brexit referendum when he opened his Turnberry golf course on 24 June 2016.

The Brexit referendum was held on 23 June 2016.

Trump’s interviewer, the political campaigner and Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, nodded, said “yep” and allowed the false claim to pass.

Here is some comment from journalists on the Trump interview.

From the BBC’s Jon Sopel

From my colleague Paul Johnson

From the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges

The legislation to allow the early election has now had royal assent, the BBC’s Nick Eardley reports.

With John Bercow standing down as Speaker at the end of today, here is a Guardian compilation of some of the highlights of his time in the chair.

And here are some excerpts from what was said when MPs paid tribute to him yesterday.

Boris Johnson was booed as he ended a visit to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, the Cambridge News reports. There is a story here and a live blog covering the visit here.

The pro-Labour Skwawkbox blog has also posted some footage.

These are from Mark Urban, Newsnight’s diplomatic editor, on the story that Boris Johnson has been accused of holding back the publication of a report from parliament’s intelligence and security report looking at the issue of Russian interference in British elections.

Boris Johnson made an election stop at a primary school in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where he joined a group of children in an activity sorting pictures of London into past and present, the Press Association reports. The PM held one black and white image aloft and suggested “past?”. One pupil agreed and said it “looks dirtier”, to which the prime minister replied: “That was when Ken Livingstone was running it.”

Referring to a photo of London Bridge, Johnson told the youngsters: “You know what they used to do? They used to stick the decapitated heads of the enemies on spikes.”

He also visited a classroom where children were mummifying pumpkins with salt, and another where they made firework collages.

At the last election the conventional opinion polls turned out to be a very poor guide to the result. On that basis some people argue they should be ignored completely, but the political parties take them seriously, they are better than most other ways of trying to gauge public opinion and even sceptics will admit that they pick up movements in opinion, even if they don’t provide a reliable guide to the final result.

With that in mind, here are the results of the three polls around today.

• An Ipsos Mori poll for the Evening Standard gives the Tories a 17-point lead over Labour. The poll also confirms that Jeremy Corbyn’s personal approval ratings remain dismal. The Standard reports:

Mr Johnson has the best personal scores of any leader since 2017, with 46% satisfied and 44% dissatisfied — a net score of plus 2.

Conservatives are overwhelmingly happy with their leader, with 80% satisfied and 9% dissatisfied.

Mr Corbyn has failed to improve since last month’s record-breaking low personal scores. Just 15% of voters are happy with his performance and 75% are unhappy — a net score of minus 60.

Labour voters are divided about their leader, with 46% satisfied and 49% dissatisfied.

• A YouGov poll gives the Tories a 15-point lead over Labour.

• A Survation poll for the Daily Mail gives the Tories an eight-point lead over Labour. As the Mail reports, it also gives Boris Johnson a small lead over Jeremy Corbyn on the issue of health. It says:

Asked which leader had the best health policies, 36% of voters said Mr Johnson while 34% opted for Mr Corbyn.

There is more information here on the Guardian’s election poll tracker.

I missed this picture earlier. Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn was practising for when he meets the Queen ...

Here is a good question from below the line.

GuyBarry

31 October 2019 1:09pm

It's being reported that Jeremy Corbyn has the lowest approval rating of any opposition leader since 1977. But the leader of the opposition in 1977 was Margaret Thatcher, who went on to win three general elections. Am I missing something?

You are right, but you are missing something.

It was Sky’s Beth Rigby who put it to Jeremy Corbyn that he has the lowest approval rating for any opposition leader since 1977. (See 11.51am.) She was referring to this Ipsos Mori survey. But I don’t think she meant it in the way you have interpreted it. What Ipsos Mori says is that Corbyn has “the lowest net satisfaction ratings of any opposition leader since the survey began in 1977” - not the lowest rating since the opposition leader in 1977, Margaret Thatcher.

Here are the figures.

After his failure to meet his cast-iron, “do or die” pledge to deliver Brexit by 31 October (today), you might have thought that Boris Johnson would think twice before setting a fresh deadline for Brexit. But he has been at it again. During a visit to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, he said if the Conservatives were elected, Brexit would definitely happen by the end of January. He said:

If you vote for us and we get our programme through ... then we can be out at the absolute latest by January next year.

He also said he had an “oven-ready” Brexit deal ready to go if he won the election.

At first minister’s questions in the Scottish parliament the Scottish Tories’ interim leader, Jackson Carlaw, immediately asked Nicola Sturgeon if she’d like to thank Jeremy Corbyn for allowing her a second independence referendum.

(Actually Corbyn was yesterday using the same form of words that the Labour leadership has done since the summer: opposing independence but not refusing another referendum, though not in early years of a Labour government. The trouble is that this contradicts Scottish Labour’s official policy and, like their Brexit stance, isn’t easy to put across on the doorsteps.)

Sturgeon hit back by asking Carlaw about a story in this morning’s Times, suggesting an electoral pact by Tories and Labour to step back and allow the Lib Dems a clear run in their attempts to oust SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, in his Highland constituency, previously held by the late Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy.

She also hit a nerve by telling Carlaw that she sympathised with him, given that his party had so little confidence in him that they used a backbencher’s photo in their election material. This refers to leaflets bearing the face of recently departed leader Ruth Davidson: the loss of her personal voter appeal is something the Scottish Tories are expected to feel keenly during this campaign.

While Sturgeon hammered her message that only a vote for the SNP could keep the Tories out of Downing Street, and Carlaw pitched the Tory guarantee of no more referendums, don’t expect the electioneering at Holyrood to let up anytime soon ....

The event is now over. I will post a summary shortly.

Corbyn is now taking questions from Labour supporters at the event.

Q: What will Labour do to improve youth services?

Corbyn says we should be cherishing and supporting young people. Some councils have been able to maintain youth services. He says he wants to say thank you to youth workers for what they do.

At this point his voice seems to give out for a moment. He recovers, and jokes about there only being seven more weeks of this to go.

He says Labour will properly fund youth services.

Q: How will Labour fix the education system?

Corbyn says the Tories said they were introducing a fair funding system for schools. But that was Orwellian, he says. It was cut after cut after cut.

He says he wants to remove the stress on children they suffer under the education system. League tables are great things, he says. He says that as an Arsenal supporter. But he says they do not work for education. They are contributing to rising stress for chldren. That is why Labour would end testing at key stage one and key stage two.

More questions.

Q: Are you part of the Islington elite?

Corbyn says he has been MP for Islington North since 1983. Almost 40% of the children in his community are in poverty. A third of people live in the rented sector. People are terrified of universal credit. He says his community has people who are totally up against it. He has been proud to represent his constituency.

And, whatever position he has held, he has always worked flat out to represent the people who elected him.

Q: Would you appoint all your shadow cabinet to the same jobs in cabinet?

Corbyn says it would not be appropriate to decide who will serve in cabinet now.

Q: Would you serve a full five-year term as PM?

He says he loves meeting people, he loves campaigning, and he will be so proud to lead a Labour government that ends universal credit and builds the homes the country needs.

When he joined Labour in the 1960s, he wanted a more just society and a peaceful world. Nothing in those beliefs has changed.

Q: Would Labour abolish Eton?

Corbyn says the manifesto is still being written. He says it will be discussed at the clause V meeting. For starters, Labour will ensure public schools have to pay their taxes in full.

Q: Do you think all leaders should publish their tax returns?

Corbyn says he and John McDonnell publish theirs in full. The first time he did this, it turned out he had overpaid tax by about £300.

Q: When did you last speak to Nicola Sturgeon?

About 10 days ago, Corbyn says. He says as a political leader he has to keep in touch.

From the Scotsman’s Paris Gourtsoyannis

Corbyn is now on his peroration.

Boris Johnson thought he was being smart holding this election in a dark and cold December. He thinks you won’t go out to vote. He thinks you won’t go out to campaign.

Well I say this: Labour will be out there in every city, town and village with the biggest and most confident campaign that our country has ever seen, bringing a message of hope and change to every community.

Even if the rivers freeze over, we’re going out to bring about real change for the many, not the few.

All we need to keep us warm is the thought of removing Boris Johnson’s Conservatives from government – and the chance to rebuild and transform our country.

Back in Battersea Arts Centre Corbyn says: when Labour wins, everyone wins.

Hundreds of thousands of people in every part of our country who will make this the biggest people-powered campaign in history.

We’re young, we’re old, we’re black, we’re white, we’re straight, we’re gay, we’re women, we’re men, we’re people of all faiths and none, from the north and from the south.

And when Labour wins, the nurse wins, the pensioner wins, the student wins, the office worker wins, the engineer wins. We all win.

The Conservative party press office is posting tweets rebutting Corbyn’s speech as he delivers it. Here are some examples.

Corbyn says Boris Johnson wants people to think that Brexit is being blocked by an establishment elite. But people know that the Conservatives are the establishment elite, he says.

Corbyn is now using the “whose side are you on” passage I quoted earlier. (See 9.24am.)

Corbyn says a decade of Conservative cuts has done huge damage to the country.

After a decade when real wages have fallen, for too many people, what they see is the community they love being run down through years of deliberate neglect. The evidence of a decade of economic vandalism is all around them.

It’s there in the boarded up shops. In the closed library and swimming pool. In youth centres that have closed their doors. The high street like a ghost town. The elderly couple who are scared to walk down their road because violent crime has doubled. The army veteran sleeping under blankets in a doorway. People struggling to make ends meet. The mother and her children eating from a food bank because they’ve been forced onto universal credit.

That’s the evidence of Conservative cuts. Well I say, no more.

Labour would end austerity and scrap universal credit, he says.

Corbyn turns to the claim that Brexit could open up the NHS to American corporations.

Despite his denials, the NHS is up for grabs by US corporations in a one-sided Trump trade sell-out.

Channel 4 Dispatches revealed this week that the cost of drugs and medicines has repeatedly been discussed between US and UK trade officials. Remember Johnson’s famous promise of £350m a week for the NHS? Well his toxic Brexit trade deal with Trump could hand over £500m a week of NHS money to big drugs corporations.

We will stop them. Labour won’t let Donald Trump get his hands on our National Health Service. It’s not for sale, to him or anyone.

(I am using the quotes from the text sent out by Labour. Corbyn is making some minor changes to the text, but the quotes I am using represent what he is saying.)

At this point activists in the hall break into a change of “not for sale” for 10 seconds or so.

Corbyn turns to Brexit.

Friends, today is the 31st of October, the day Boris Johnson promised we would leave the EU. He said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than delay beyond today. But he has failed. And that failure is his alone.

You can’t trust Boris Johnson.

Corbyn confirms Labour’s plan to hold a referendum, with voters being given a choice between a “sensible deal” and remain.

It is not complicated, he says (trying to counter claims that Labour’s Brexit policy is not straightforward.)

Corbyn says this election is a once-in-a-generation chance to transform the country, and to ensure that no community in any part of the country is ever left behind again.

Some people say real change is not possible, he says. Really? A health service where people do not have to wait, and prescriptions are free? Is that asking too much?

Is it asking to much to have a care system where people are treated with dignity, with free personal care?

It is asking to much to have a real living wage for everyone, including young workers from the age of 16?

Is it asking too much to have homes that people can afford, rents that don’t break the bank, and an end to the disgrace of rough sleeping?

30 hours free childcare for all children. A good education from cradle to grave. Is that too much to ask?

Corbyn says he would put rail, mail and water into public ownership, ending the Tory rip-off.

What about real action on the climate crisis by creating hundreds of thousands of new, green energy jobs in communities where they’re most desperately needed?

No, that’s not asking too much. Because we have to radically change course now to avoid living on a hostile and dying planet.

Jeremy Corbyn is speaking now.

He says he is launching the most ambitious and radical campaign the country has ever seen.

If you want to live in a society that works for everyone, not just billionaires, if you want to stop the cuts and save the environment, then this is your chance to vote for it.

He says the choice could not be clearer.

Labour stands with you, he says. It will put wealth and power in the hands of the many. Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, who think they are born to rule, will only ever look after the few, he says.

De Cordova is talking about her constituents who have been affected by government spending cuts. And, on Brexit, she says regardless of how people voted, no one voted for their living standards to go down.

Battersea voted overwhelmingly to remain, as she did, she says.

And she says only Labour will sort Brexit out, by giving the British people a final say.

Labour will end the privatisation of the NHS, she says. It will build more home, and tackle the climate crisis through Labour’s green new deal.

Marsha de Cordova, the Labour MP for Battersea, is introducing Jeremy Corbyn. The event is in Battersea Arts Centre.

She won the seat from the Tories in 2017 with a majority of 2,416.

She says Battersea has a radical history. London’s first black mayor, John Archer, was elected in this very building, she says.

The event is starting now. Jeremy Corbyn and the shadow cabinet are coming in.

From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

Last night Nicky Morgan, the culture secretary, announced that she would be standing down from parliament. In an interview with the BBC’s Radio Leicester this morning, she insisted that she was leaving not “for any reasons of disagreement with the prime minister or the direction of the government at all”.

She said the abuse she had received as an MP had contributed to the decision, adding:

I think the role of being an MP has changed. I think the abuse, because of the platforms, because of how strongly people feel about the current political situation, that has changed enormously in the almost 10 years since I started.

Here is an updated list of the MPs standing down from the Institute for Government’s Gavin Freeguard.

And here is some Twitter comment on Morgan’s resignation.

From the Economist’s John Peet

From the author and political commentator Robert Harris

From Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis

Even if women are standing down in the same proportion as men, it does look as if the average age of the women who are standing down is lower than the average age of the departing men. Many of the men going are at the end of their careers. I have not had time to do the maths, but that seems to be less true of the women.

More than 300,000 people have applied to register to vote in 48 hours, according to government figures. As the Press Association reports, a total of 139,162 applications were submitted on Tuesday, followed by 177,105 on Wednesday. This is well above the typical number for weekday applications, which has been averaging around 37,000 for the past month.

There is no sign of Boris Johnson this morning yet, but here, for the record, is the statement he released overnight ahead of the visits he is doing today to a school, a hospital and a police station. He said:

Today should have been the day that Brexit was delivered and we finally left the EU. But, despite the great new deal I agreed with the EU, Jeremy Corbyn refused to allow that to happen – insisting upon more dither, more delay and more uncertainty for families and business.

We cannot continue along this path. I didn’t want an election – like the country I wanted to get Brexit done, but it is the only way forward.

The public wants and expects the government to give them hope and to improve their opportunities.

This is exactly what my government has been doing for the past 99 days and exactly what my government will continue to do if the public choose the Conservatives in this election.

I want next year to be a great year for our country – with more investment in frontline NHS services, the recruitment of thousands more police officers to reduce violent crime and investment in every one of our primary and secondary schools across the country.

The alternative is for the people of this country to spend the next year, which should be a glorious year, going through the toxic, tedious torpor of two more referendums – on EU membership and Scottish independence – thanks to Jeremy Corbyn’s incessant indecision.

Now is the time to break the deadlock so we can move on as a country. The Conservatives will campaign for a parliament that gets Brexit done and delivers on the people’s priorities, including the NHS, education and crime.

And here are the two main points Johnson is making. As is almost routine with Johnson statements, neither of them is properly true.

• Johnson claims that Labour is to blame for parliament not being able to pass his Bexit deal. It is true that Labour voted against the programme motion, setting aside just three days for MPs to debate the bill. But the programme motion was defeated because the DUP (supposedly Johnson’s allies) and former Tories who had had the whip removed voted against it, and Labour offered to strike a deal with the government on a programme motion giving MPs more time to debate the bill, which may well have passed. But Johnson did not try this, and instead shelved the bill and went for an election.

• Johnson claims there would be two referendums in 2020 under Labour. It is true that Labour wants to hold a second Brexit referendum next year, but the party says it would not allow a second Scottish independence referendum in 2020. Johnson is making this claim because Corbyn has not ruled out allowing a second Scottish independence referendum at some point, and its exact timing would be a matter of negotiation between London and Edinburgh.

Yesterday the Liberal Democrats sent out a note inviting journalists to a slogan launch this morning. That could be a first. Having covered general elections since the 1990s, I’ve seen poster launches, campaign launches and manifesto launches, but never something billed as an event to announce just a slogan.

My colleague Peter Walker was there. And it turns out the slogan is: Stop Brexit, Build a Brighter Future.

Peter is not over-impressed.

While we are on the subject of the Commons standards committee, MPs will later debate a motion saying they should suspend the Labour MP Keith Vaz, as recommended by the committee, for offering to buy drugs for sex workers.

In an interview on the Today programme this morning Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said Vaz should stand down instead of standing for election again. She said:

I think he should consider his position. I think he himself should agree not to be a candidate. It has been a very sad issue, not just for him but for his family and his children.

When it was put to her that the Labour party has not removed the whip from Vaz, a move that would prevent him from standing again as a Labour candidate, she replied: “Not yet.”

The Conservative MP Sir Henry Bellingham has been ordered to apologise to the Commons for the late declaration of a financial interest, the Press Association reports. The Commons standards committee found he did not declare his non-executive chairmanship of Clifton Africa Ltd, an African mining and development company, within the 28 days required. In a report the committee said such cases were normally dealt with through a “rectification” procedure, but, despite “extensive” correspondence with the parliamentary commissioner for standards, it said Bellingham had taken “far too long” to correct the record. As a result, the committee said it was recommending that he should issue a written apology to the house.

The Conservatives argue that Labour’s claim to be offering change (see 9.02am) is bogus because the party is offering another referendum on Brexit. This is what James Cleverly, the Tory chairman, said in a statement last night, responding to the advance extracts from Jeremy Corbyn’s speech released in advance. Cleverly said:

A vote for Labour is not a vote for change. It is precisely the opposite - a vote for more delay and uncertainty on Brexit, meaning the government can’t focus on people’s priorities, like the NHS, schools and crime.

(But Cleverly also said in his statement that Labour’s “extreme economic ideas would wreck the economy” - which I suppose would be change of a sort.)