Liz rallies Brexit faction, says Graun smear

I doubt if she needs the support, if the polls are right, and the Graun may only be making a last bid to prop up Sunak with this:

Liz Truss may trigger article 16 days after becoming PM, amid Brexit row

Tory frontrunner understood to have received new advice about emergency clause as Northern Ireland legal deadline looms

 

The foreign secretary and Tory leadership frontrunner is understood to have received fresh advice from trade and legal experts about invoking the emergency clause contained in the post-Brexit deal...The deadline for doing so is 15 September – 10 days after the next prime minister will be announced...With a lengthy parliamentary battle expected over the Northern Ireland protocol bill, a senior Truss ally quoted in the Financial Times described the triggering of article 16 as a “stopgap” until the legislation is passed.

Truss’s antipathy towards the protocol has grown in recent days, after British steel producers were told they would have to pay a 25% tariff to sell some construction products into Northern Ireland....The UK government [also] claimed the EU was causing serious damage to research and development in both the UK and EU member states, with Britain frozen out of the science research programme Horizon; Copernicus, the Earth observation programme, which provides data on climate change; Euratom, the nuclear research programme; and space surveillance and tracking

 The GHuran turns to a well-known Parliamentary democrat for a counter:

the Sinn Féin MP for North Belfast, [who] said “reckless threats” to trigger article 16 were evidence of the UK government’s “total disregard for the democratic wishes of people and businesses here”.He said the protocol was supported by most people, companies and elected politicians in the Northern Irish assembly, but the Conservatives had tried fiercely to undermine it. Finucane urged Truss to “get back to the table with the EU to give certainty and stability to our businesses".

 

Ancient Remainer urges Labour U-turn on its U-turn

The Observer today carries an item from a real Labour yesterday's man, one R Hattersley, perhaps to serve as a Starmer kite?

Brexit is a flop, and the voters know it. So why can’t Labour call for a closer bond with Europe?

There was, Hattersley says, a recent suggestion that:

a Labour government should attempt to negotiate some form of customs union with the single market – a prospect of economic expansion so exciting that even the announcement that talks were being considered would stimulate a sudden surge in capital investment.

But Starmer rejected it: 'Labour pronounced Brexit wrong in principle one year and promised “to make it work” the next.'

Hattersely is still, er, unrepentant:

Brexit is a flop. And the voters know it. The opinion polls show both increasing regret that we left the EU and mounting disapproval of the way the government has managed withdrawal. This is not the time for Labour to talk of making Brexit work. It is time to expose its failure and to offer a radical alternative – a closer working relationship with the EU.

Then some excellent weaselling to try to do a KitKat! Will they never tire?:

That is not to argue that the outcome of the 2016 referendum can be ignored. Democracy demands it be respected, notwithstanding the fraudulent claims made by Brexiters. But the decision of a one-day referendum cannot determine a nation’s long-term destiny, as Brexiters must agree. Otherwise, they would have accepted that the argument ended in 1975, when Britain voted by more than two votes to one to remain in the Common Market. In any event, today the European argument is about partnership, not membership.

God save us!

Britain would have to give something in exchange and the first concession would have to be agreement to a measure of European immigration into Britain... It is taken for granted in every negotiation, as it was in the discussion of the deal with India.

 'A measure' -- but that would mean full rights of entry again, the 'four freedoms' and all that, with all that that implies?

Anyway, let's end with a good old hurrah:

It falls to the Labour party to keep the flame of European unity burning bright in Britain. Fortunately, it is possible to combine support for that noble aim in partnership with a hard-headed economic policy of promoting trade and increasing growth.