Tory leadership debate: Boris Johnson brandishes kipper on stage as he declares May's Brexit deal ‘defunct' at final hustings
The final Conservative Party leadership hustings with Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, as it happened
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Your support makes all the difference.Tory leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt both stood by their stated approaches to handling Brexit at the final hustings before the polls close for Conservative members to vote for their party’s new leader and the country’s next prime minister.
Mr Johnson repeatedly refused to rule out suspending Parliament as PM to force through Brexit and said the UK would leave the European Union by 31 October with or without a deal.
Mr Hunt meanwhile said he could delay Brexit beyond that point if a deal was in reach, but he has also not ruled out walking away from negotiations without an agreement.
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Theresa May says she is "worried about the state of politics", in both substance and tone. She says all the political parties need to be in the common ground.
She says compromise has become unfashionable. It does not mean compromising your values or convictions but working to ensure things get done.
May warns that the descent of debate into rancour and absolutism is damaging British politics. It is the opposite of politics at its best, she says.
May is now running through the great things achieved by compromise - including the NHS and the UN.
This speech is prompting muttering from Westminster types on Twitter that May is using her last speech to promote compromise - yet she refused to compromise while in No10.
She suggests the reason her Brexit deal did not pass was the entrenchment of different positions.
Theresa May ends the speech by quoting US President Eisenhower, saying: “The middle of the road is the only usable part."
Q&A to follow.
Asked if her speech is inspired by the Tory leadership contest, May says these are things she has been mulling for some time.
Asked about whether she deserves any blame for the language she has used, she admits she may not have always got is right but sometimes things are misinterpreted.
“Has every word or phrase I’ve ever used been perfect? No," she says.
She condemns the language used towards female MPs and says there has been a "coarsening" of discourse.
May says people should not ascribe bad motives to people who disagree with them.
May is asked about Boris Johnson's declaration that the backstop is dead.
She says her successor will decide on the way forward. She says the Good Friday agreement contains an essential compromise. People in Northern Ireland can have Irish citizenship, and cross the border easily.
An audience member asks a good question about whether Theresa May is responsible for her own words, such as "queue jumpers", and the impact they have.
May acknowledges this was a bad choice of phrase and says she has apologised for that.
She also says she is deeply disappointed to not be able to deliver on Brexit, when asked about whether she had left the party in a better or worse state.
She says she put her job on the line to get her deal through the Commons but MPs would not back it.
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