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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Boris Johnson has registered a whopping £200,000 in donations in the past two weeks, according to the register of members interests. According to Reuters, this takes the total amount he has received in the last year to £702,000.
Financiers and businessmen who funded the Brexit campaign are among the donors who have poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into Johnson's campaign, breaking the record set by David Miliband who raised £627,000 for his bid to lead the Labour Party in 2010.
Jeremy Hunt has not registered any donations over the past two weeks.
A No 10 source declined to rule out aspects of Ms May's speech being about hard Brexiteers and Donald Trump, while trying to portray the address as "not being about individuals".
"The PM was obviously offered a chance to characterise it about particular people and very remarkably did not take that opportunity," he said.
"This was not a speech about individuals; it was a speech about rising trends."
But the source declined to rule out references about the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Paris Agreement on the climate crisis, were about Donald Trump.
"I don't think it's a secret that we disagree with some of the US on the JCPOA or the Paris Agreement," the source said.
Nor would the source rule out that references to Brexit and absolutism could refer to the hard Brexiteers and members of the European Research Group, when asked.
Peers have backed an amendment to prevent a future PM from suspending parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
The House of Lords has backed an attempt to stop the next prime minister suspending parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Peers voted 272 to 169 in favour of a cross-party motion that will force a government minister to make a statement in parliament in October.
Read our breaking story here:
Bringing same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland enjoys overwhelming support, the MP leading the change has claimed.
Labour's Co Armagh-born parliamentarian Conor McGinn is spearheading Westminster efforts to change the law as the assembly at Stormont remains non-functional.
Same-sex marriage is currently outlawed, even though civil partnerships are allowed.
Campaigners met Mr McGinn in Belfast on Wednesday ahead of what they said was a potential landmark vote in the House of Commons on Thursday.
Additional reporting by PA
Thirteen Conservative peers voted in favour of the motion to prevent the prorogation of parliament, according to the Lords website, alongside 51 crossbenchers, 120 Labour members, 73 Liberal Democrats, a bishop and 14 others.
Against it were 146 Conservatives, 17 crossbenchers and five others.
When the six-week Conservative leadership election began, it looked as if Nigel Farage would be the spectre hanging over it, as the candidates tried to reassure Tory members they would see off the threat from his Brexit Party. As the contest draws to a close, there is a new menace: Donald Trump, writes Andrew Grice in our Voices opinion section.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt won headlines after criticising the US president for suggesting that four congresswomen of colour should “go back” to the nations “from which they came”. But it was hardly the Love Actually moment the headlines implied. Johnson and Hunt (as well as Theresa May, at least so far) stopped short of calling Trump out for racism, as the House of Representatives has now done.
The Home Office has been forced to defend its refusal to disclose figures revealing the detention of hundreds of trafficking victims after a report by The Independent prompted a parliamentary debate on the issue, writes May Bulman.
The department was accused on Wednesday of covering up the plight of victims of modern slavery after it emerged government data obtained via freedom of information (FoI) requests had previously been withheld from MPs when they had asked for it in parliamentary questions.
MPs were repeatedly told by the Home Office that there was “no central record” of how many victims were placed in removal centres and that the department “did not collate or publish the data requested”.
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