Brexit vote: MPs approve Boris Johnson’s withdrawal bill, despite backlash over ‘binned’ protections for child refugees and workers

No 10 defends Zac Goldsmith peerage and cabinet job

Downing Street has defended the appointment of ousted Tory MP Zac Goldsmith to the Lords so he can keep his ministerial post.

No 10 also declined to directly comment on Goldsmith’s previous apparent criticism of peerages as “seedy lists of party apparatchiks appointed by power hungry party leaders”.

The PM’s official spokesman said: “Zac Goldsmith was doing an excellent and committed job in sabinet dealing with really important issues and he will now be able to get on with that work and carry on delivering.”

Asked if it is reasonable to reward an unseated MP so swiftly, the spokesman added: “As I say, he was doing a really important job very, very well on behalf of the country and he will be able to continue doing so.”

A post on Goldsmith’s Twitter account in July 2012 read: “Seedy lists of party apparatchiks appointed by power hungry party leaders & insulated from any democratic pressure for 15 yrs? No thanks.”

After the tweet was put to him, the No 10 spokesman was unable to say how the PM convinced the minister to stay on, saying: “I don’t have details of any conversations.”

‘Game over’? Tory Remain voter says MPs should stop fighting

Former Cabinet Office minister and Remain voter Damian Green has urged MPs who also voted to stay in the EU to give up on their fight as “that game is over”.

Green said: “I simply want to make two points - the first of which is that those of us who voted for and campaigned for Remain should respect the result of the referendum.

“So to those of my friends on all sides of the House who up to now have not accepted the 2016 result, I would appeal that now, after this general election result, please accept the decision, please let’s move on, please accept that that game is over.”

In response, Green MP and ardent Remainer Caroline Lucas said Boris Johnson’s deal is “essentially an executive power-grab, completely deleting all of the provisions that would have allowed parliamentary scrutiny”.

She added: “Can he (Mr Green) explain why, if he is standing up for democracy, he is happy to see a bill reducing democracy?”

Green replied: “I would urge her and others to use all the energy and passion that she has at her disposal to help us as a country forge a new friendly relationship with our fellow democracies in the rest of Europe.”

What is Boris Johnson’s voter ID policy – and why is it so controversial?

Campaigners have condemned the government’s “dangerous” plan to bring in a photo ID requirement at polling stations – claiming the “suppression” will leave tens of thousands of people without a vote.

Our correspondent Benjamin Kentish has taken look at the potential impact:

‘Night out with the boss’

I’m afraid to report that Sajid Javid is making Star Wars jokes. The chancellor has shared a photo by his protege Rishi Sunak (chief secretary to the Treasury) of a “great night out with the boss” – at a showing of The Rise of Skywalker.

Boris Johnson is a ‘left-wing Tory’, claims defence secretary

Ben Wallace has admitted that there’s currently a shortfall in the Ministry of Defence’s budget. The defence secretary also claimed Boris Johnson is a “left-wing Tory”.

Wallace told Nick Robinson’s Political Thinking podcast: “The best thing I can do for the men and women of the Armed Forces is to make sure that we cut our cloth to match our ambition, that manage expectations and say to the [service] chiefs that your appetite has to match your stomach.”

He added: “I won’t hide it - the MoD has a bad reputation in Whitehall for many, many decades. What the people listening and members of the Armed Forces must realise is that it helps no one. We have to be trusted if we are to persuade the Treasury to fund us for long-term projects.”

Addressing reports that the PM’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings wants to overhaul defence procurement, Wallace said: “I had a meeting with Dom this week. Dom is full of amazing ideas where he has spotted loads of improvement in infrastructure and technology procurement and he has spotted how that as our technology horizon changes how we procure has to happen differently and I am incredibly supportive of what he is talking about.”

On the direction of the Conservative party in government he said: “What a lot of my colleagues are about to discover that Boris Johnson is actually quite a left-wing Tory in many areas, pro-immigration as we can see from the manifesto and pro-public spending on investment in our public services and the NHS ... Boris is a social liberal. People are going to find the one nation conservatism he talks about, he means.”

Defence secretary Ben Wallace (EPA) 

Labour lost Facebook war, says former Corbyn aide

Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn, has said Labour lost the election campaign’s social media war on Facebook.

In an interesting piece for The Times, he said the party could not rival its success at the 2017 election, when the platform helped significantly build support for his old boss.

“Facebook’s algorithm change in early 2018 shifted the landscape: it meant more content from friends in news-feeds instead of from pages people liked, and also boosting videos that are watched for longer,” he wrote.

“This meant organic sharing of content developed outside of the party and by Jeremy Corbyn’s team in the leader’s office could no longer compensate for deficiencies elsewhere.”

Parties battled to be seen and heard on Facebook (AFP) 

Vulnerable children must not be treated as bargaining chips, says Lord Dubs 

Labour peer Lord Dubs, who fled the Nazis on the Kindertransport, has condemned Boris Johnson for scrapping the rights of refugee children to be reunited with their families after Brexit.

Lord Dubs campaigned successfully to amend the Brexit bill to include this right - but it has been stripped from the new bill. MPs are voting on the legislation today.

Labour leaver to rebel against Corbyn and back Brexit deal vote

Emma Lewell Buck says she will rebel against Jeremy Corbyn and back the Brexit deal bill this afternoon. She tells MPs that she will always respect her constituents' support for Brexit - and she will always put them first.

She says: 'My party's catch-all Brexit policy failed. Today was and still is an opportunity to stop this procrastination, to send a message to our lost voters... that we do hear them, we do value them, we do genuinely want to rebuild their trust.'

The MP for South Shields also pays tribute to Caroline Flint, Gareth Snell and Mel Onn, Labour leavers who lost their seats in the election. She says it will give them 'no pleasure' to be proved right on Brexit.

There is some speculation that Labour frontbenchers may miss the vote.

The behind-the-scenes battle for Labour’s future

Emily Thornberry called out Jeremy Corbyn’s key allies on the radio – but failed to mention them by name, writes The Independent's John Rentoul.

Read more here:

‘You’ve got nothing’: Ex-Labour MP mocks People’s Vote campaigner

The former Labour MP Caroline Flint, who lost her Don Valley seat at the election, has been arguing with the former director of the People’s Vote campaign Tom Baldwin.

After Baldwin mocked Flint for being too credulous about previous government assurances on workers’ rights – “legally binding guarantees” – Flint said campaigners for a second referendum messed up their chance to get a deal which had some compromises in it.

“The People’s Vote Campaign gambled on all or nothing. You’ve got nothing.”