Leading European politicians have warned that the prime minister’s plan to ditch EU legislation will trigger retaliatory countermeasures, including imposing tariffs on goods

Rishi Sunak’s plan to scrap thousands of EU laws by the end of this year risks triggering a full-scale trade war between the UK and Brussels, senior figures in the European Union have warned.

Letters from leading EU politicians, seen by the Observer, reveal deep concern that the UK is about to lower standards in areas such as environmental protection and workers’ rights – breaching “level playing field” provisions that were at the heart of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement (TCA).

The former Brexit secretary has dismissed as ‘propaganda’ frequent references to his comments in 2016 about Brexit having no downsides

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Davis dismisses Brexit downsides references as ‘propaganda’

Oxford and Cambridge universities, once given more than £130m a year in total by European research programmes, are now getting £1m annually between them

One of the UK’s most prestigious universities has seen its funding from a large European research programme plummet from £62m a year to nothing since Brexit, new figures show.

The latest statistics from the European Commission reveal that Cambridge University, which netted €483m (£433m) over the seven years of the last European research funding programme, Horizon 2020, has not received any funding in the first two years of the new Horizon Europe programme.

Join Norky as he takes us through a brief tour of whisky and how to enjoy it, courtesy of the Bolster Moor Malt Whisky Appreciation Society

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Norky’s rambles: whisky, whiskey or aquavitae

Welsh government offering health staff extra 3% – half one-off, half consolidated – on top of 4.5% increase. This live blog is closed

Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland and first minister designate, has said she is “encouraged” by what she is hearing about the prospects of the UK and the EU reaching a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol.

Speaking after a meeting with Micheál Martin, the Irish foreign minister and tánaiste (Irish deputy PM), in Belfast, she said:

I am very much encouraged by what we’re hearing, I think the tánaiste shares that same assessment and we want both sides to continue in earnest to get a deal, to close this out, to close it out as quickly as possible.

This was a useful and constructive conversation. Over eighteen months ago we outlined the parameters for the way forward. We set our tests and those continue to be our yardstick for measuring any deal between the EU and UK.

There will be no restoration of the NI executive until the protocol is replaced with arrangements that unionists, as well as nationalists, can support. Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market must be restored and our constitutional arrangements must be respected.

Border Force boss says advances in biometrics and data security have made passports redundant – be they blue or red

The UK’s newly minted blue passports, one of the totemic achievements of Brexit, could soon be unnecessary, according to the UK’s top border official.

While Britons queue again for officials to stamp their documents to permit them to cross the Channel, the director general of Border Force, Phil Douglas, said developments in biometrics and data security have made the paper passport effectively redundant – if still politically charged.

Inflation should be back within Bank’s 2% target range by middle of 2024, Huw Pill adds

The Bank of England is alive to the risk of pushing interest rates too high, its chief economist has signalled, adding to expectations that it could be nearing the end of a sustained period of rate rises.

Speaking a day after the Bank raised interest rates for a 10th successive time, by 0.5 percentage points to 4%, Huw Pill said the full impact of its rate increases had not yet been felt in the UK economy.

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority emerges as a hidden influence in large-scale planning outcomes

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Exposed: West Yorkshire’s hidden planning influence

Prime minister speaks in interview on TalkTV to mark his 100th day in office

On the subject of Rishi Sunak reaching his 100th day in office, my colleague Jessica Elgot has a great assessment of how it’s going. Here is an extract.

After Liz Truss left office, polls suggested that voters wanted to keep an open mind about Sunak and rated him significantly higher than his party.

That is now beginning to turn. According to senior Labour figures, their most recent focus groups, with swing voters in Southampton, Dewsbury and Bury last week, were described as being “utterly brutal for Sunak”, with participants engaging in “open mockery” of the prime minister. Even the most pessimistic members of Keir Starmer’s team say they have seen a decisive shift.

In the coming weeks, our new stop the boats bill will change the law to send a message loud and clear.

If you come here illegally, you will be detained and removed.

Rishi Sunak is right to want the protocol dispute sorted. That means standing up against his party’s ultra-sovereigntist wing

Stopping the clock has sometimes been a useful device for meeting the most intractable deadlines in Northern Irish politics. But the clock is currently ticking unceasingly towards two important dates, neither of them many weeks distant now, where stopping it will not be an option for Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary. Mr Heaton-Harris is in a race against time, with major implications not just for Northern Ireland but for Britain.

The two dates in question are the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement on 10 April and the legal obligation to call fresh assembly elections if there is no power-sharing agreement between the Northern Irish parties before 13 April. The dates are not formally linked. Yet each has powerful potential to expose the current fragility of the 1998 power-sharing agreement in the light of divisions caused by the Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit deal between Britain and the European Union.

Hike of 0.5 percentage points lifts rates to 14-year high, but BoE says shorter and shallower recession now more likely

• Interest rates rise again but Bank of England hints at a brighter future

The Bank of England raised interest rates for a tenth consecutive time on Thursday from 3.5% to 4%, but said inflation may have peaked and a recession in the UK would be shorter and shallower than previously feared.

Piling more pressure on mortgage payers and businesses struggling to pay off their loans, the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) said the 0.5-percentage point rise was needed after private sector wages had risen more than the central bank’s previous forecasts.

A new book tells the inside story of Brexit as seen from Brussels. It does not make happy reading for Britain's political class.

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Inside the Deal: How the EU got Brexit done – Stefaan De Rynck

Graham Clark recommends taking some time out to visit Ate O’Clock in the centre of York, a homely, local favourite, offering excellent fare

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Ate O’Clock – time to visit York’s distinctive restaurant

Might the re-emergence of Boris Johnson signal more and more of the same gloomy political weather?

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Groundhog Johnson – out of hibernation

The UK and the EU are inching towards a deal that could settle the vexed issue of the Northern Ireland protocol. How will the DUP react?

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Lessons of Brexit: Northern Ireland

UK officials in flurry of diplomacy seeking agreement with EU over protocol, but play down talk that deal is close

Rishi Sunak is considering a trip to visit Joe Biden in the US as talks between the UK and EU over the Northern Ireland protocol intensify.

The prime minister’s officials are drawing up plans for him to travel to Washington in the coming weeks to discuss a range of topics, including Ukraine, economic security and technology.

Dominic Raab under increasing pressure as civil servants’ union calls for him to be suspended until bullying inquiry concludes. This live blog is closed: Thursday’s political developments continue on a new blog

MPs have been told that paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have coerced young people with drug debts to take part in rioting, PA Media reports. PA says:

A community worker gave an example of a user’s debt being reduced by £80 for doing so.

Megan Phair, coordinator of the Journey to Empowerment Programme and member of the Stop Attacks Forum, said both loyalist and dissident republican groups use the tactic to force people on to the streets.

It’s time for the prime minister to come out of hiding and face the music. The public deserves to know the truth about what he knew and when, including the full disclosure of any advice given to him by the Cabinet Office.

The global economy is hardly booming, but the country is at the bottom of the pile of developed nations for two clear reasons

The International Monetary Fund could hardly have made it clearer this week. The chronic British disease, the underlying one that marks out the UK from the developed world crowd, is our low economic growth.

The IMF’s revised forecasts for 2023 certainly make stark reading for Rishi Sunak. Last week, at a cabinet awayday at Chequers, Sunak told colleagues they would be judged on five issues at the next election, of which one would be their success in expanding the economy. Yet just a few days later, the IMF revised its UK growth forecast down from the very modest 0.3% increase it posted three months ago to a 0.6% contraction.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

For Charles Waterton, marriage becomes a transactional affair enabling him to replenish his depleted coffers

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Petticoat Patrimony part four: the business of marriage

Islamic Relief UK and Give a Gift are teaming up to help struggling families in Bradford this winter

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Islamic Relief UK and Give a Gift unite to help struggling families with cost-of-living crisis

If making the country poorer was a symbol of success, the IMF report was a Brexit day bonus

Hang out the flags. Tuesday marked the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU. Glory day. Correction. Glory days. What we always wanted. Well, some of us. Increasingly just a few of us.

Now is not the time for declinism. As Jeremy Hunt recently told us in his Bloomberg speech, we should stop talking the UK down. People like the banker and former Conservative donor Guy Hands should stop being so bloody miserable and calling Brexit an unmitigated disaster and start cheering its triumphs. So GDP is down 4%. Big deal. It could so easily have been 5 or 6%. Why can’t people focus on that for a change?

This blog has now closed, you can read more on this story here

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, was not exactly on message in his Sky News interview with Kay Burley this morning. As well as implying that he thought the bullying inquiry into Dominic Raab was a mistake (see 10.37am), he made at least three other comments that suggest Rishi Sunak does not have the enthusiastic support of all his backbenchers.

Rees-Mogg said that Sunak was performing “perfectly competently” as PM. Asked how he was doing, Rees-Mogg replied: “I think he’s doing perfectly competently.” When Burley put it to him that that was not much of an endorsement, Rees-Mogg went on: “I made no bones about the fact I thought Boris Johnson was a better prime minister and I wanted him to remain.”

Rees-Mogg criticised the government for stalling the Northern Ireland protocol bill. The bill, which is popular with hardline Brexiters but widely seen as contrary to international law, because it would allow the UK to unilaterally ignore some of the provisions in the protocol treaty, passed through the Commons when Boris Johnson was PM. But it is stuck in the Lords, where it has not been debated since October and where a date has not been set for its report stage. Sunak has shelved it because he wants to negotiate a compromise on the protocol with the EU, and passing the bill would make agreement much harder. But Rees-Mogg said the government should pass it. He said:

The government has just got to get on with it. There’s a bill that has been through the House of Commons that is waiting its report stage in the House of Lords and I don’t understand why the government hasn’t brought it forward.

He renewed his criticism of the strikes (minimum service levels) bill. When MPs debated it last night, Rees-Mogg said he agreed with Labour criticisms of the Henry VIII powers in the bill.

The government doesn’t know what changes it will have to make once this bill is passed. Under clause 3, the secretary of state would be able to make regulations that “amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation passed before this act or later in the same session of parliament as this act”. This is a supercharged Henry VIII clause. Why should MPs or peers pay any attention to any related legislation that may be brought before them later in this session when they know that, unless they object, a secretary of state may simply amend, repeal or revoke it?

The public must be able to rely on powerful independent regulators properly controlling standards, instead we are getting a race to the bottom

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Sick and tired of all those pesky regulations

Factors behind IMF’s latest forecast which shows UK will be only large economy to contract this year

The International Monetary Fund has warned that Britain is expected to be the only large industrialised country to face a shrinking economy this year.

The Washington-based fund upgraded its forecast for most leading economies but said it expected the UK economy to contract by 0.6% this year – a level 0.9 percentage points worse than that which it had pencilled in just three months ago, and slower even than that for sanctions-hit Russia.

Private equity veteran Guy Hands says Boris Johnson ‘threw the country and the NHS under the bus’

Guy Hands, a leading City figure, has called Brexit a “complete disaster” and a “bunch of total lies” that has harmed large parts of the economy.

Speaking on the third anniversary of the UK’s departure from the EU, Hands, the founder, chair and chief investment officer of the private equity firm Terra Firma, said: “It’s been a complete disaster. The reality is it’s been a lose-lose situation for us and Europe. Europe has lost more [in financial services] but we’ve lost as well. And the reality of Brexit was, it was just was a bunch of complete and total lies.

The billionaire businessman Guy Hands has described Brexit as a 'complete disaster' and a 'bunch of total lies' that has harmed large parts of the economy. The founder, chair and chief investment officer of the private equity firm Terra Firma spoke on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on the third anniversary of the UK's departure from the EU. Referencing the bus promising £350m for the NHS during the government's Brexit campaign, Hands said the former prime minister Boris Johnson 'threw the NHS and the public under the bus'

• Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘total lies’, says Tory billionaire
• UK politics live – latest news updates

Most people are now in favour of rejoining the EU, but Labour is right to steer clear of another row over Europe

Today’s Brexit anniversary marks three years of political mayhem and economic calamity. It is also 50 years since Britain joined the EEC. Ten years ago this month, David Cameron made his shameless Bloomberg speech pledging a referendum to placate his party and Ukippers, who he had previously called “fruitcakes”, “loonies” and “closet racists”.

Cameron wrongly thought Brexiteers could be appeased, but they proved insatiable. The more harm their Brexit does, the more extreme versions they demand, chasing those impossible phantasms they mis-sold to the country.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

This article was amended on 3 February 2023 to exclude – in the context of Brexit – a reference to the subsequent high UK energy price, relative to that of the EU. As a linked-to analysis noted, the UK’s own energy policies have significantly driven UK energy prices.

In Newark, hundreds of environmental protesters marched towards Robert Jenrick's office, the local MP, calling on him to vote against the EU retain law bill that put thousands of environmental protection laws at risk. The bill gives ministers the power to abolish an estimated 4,000 laws derived from Brussels by the end of 2023. The deadline has been put in place by Rishi Sunak, who pledged to scrap thousands of EU laws to 'protect Brexit' during his leadership campaign. Cross-party MPs are concerned the deadline is impractical, as hundreds of civil servants would be required to review each piece of legislation. As well as environmental regulations, the EU-derived laws include employment protection and transport regulations

• Cross-party MPs launch fightback against bill to tear up 4,000 EU laws

Ministers want Britain’s judges to interpret human rights not in the light of present day conditions, but those of the 1950s

The government “should not proceed” with its bill of rights. That was the withering judgment delivered last week on Dominic Raab’s proposals by parliament’s joint committee on human rights. MPs and peers assessed the bill and correctly decided that the ideal outcome for the country was to drop the deeply flawed legislation. It’s not a bill of rights so much as a bill of wrongs. The cross-party committee said the justice secretary’s proposals would reduce the protections currently provided, make it harder to enforce human rights, and show contempt for international obligations.

The Conservative party in its present guise is determined to free the executive from accountability, and Mr Raab’s ideas are part of a power grab that includes attempts to restrict judicial review, the right of protest and freedom of expression. Making his bill law would see Britain turn its back on the gains made by human rights legislation. Major advances made by disabled people, same‐sex couples and Windrush victims would never have occurred under these proposals.

David Lammy promises to reconnect the EU to ‘tarnished’ Britain, but when will we fix the democratic flaws that led to the vote?

Pity Labour right now: feeling the righteous heat of Brexit failure, needing to appease ever more vociferous remainers, but desperate not to alarm “red wall” voters.

So we are offered vague words from Labour’s David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, of better connections between the EU and “tarnished” Britain and aspirations about joint talking shops, when the reality is that faced with a continually chaotic UK, the EU will simply protect its members and enjoy the schadenfreude.

Where the US leads in using state aid and subsidies, the EU is now following. But the UK will need a change of mindset

Stagnation nation. That’s an apt two-word description of the UK, where after 15 years of sluggish economic performance the prospect is for a shallow recession this year.

Politicians know they have a problem. In the past 13 years, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak have all proposed different ways of fixing things, none of which have moved the dial that much. Jeremy Hunt says his budget, on 15 March will be all about growth, but don’t hold your breath.

Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editor

Crises in productivity and wealth inequality won’t be solved with ideas from the 80s. It’s not about a bigger pie – we need a different one

According to our politicians and most of the media, the central problem facing the British economy is a lack of growth. We need growth, we are told, to pay for this or that public service, or good wages, or housing. Just this week it was reported that the chancellor would need to plan further cuts in expenditure as a result of the Office for Budget Responsibility downgrading the UK’s growth prospects.

But we should beware framing the lack of growth as the main affliction. In any case, the solutions to the growth problem have been tried and largely failed, whether the austerity of the Cameron years, the tax cuts proposed by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng or the innovation promised by all governments since the 1990s. The problems of the present are genuinely novel, and require not so much growing the British economy as transforming it.

Party has set conditions for a deal but former taoiseach Bertie Ahern says solution is ‘not rocket science’

Bertie Ahern, co-architect of the Good Friday agreement, has said a deal to end the row over the Northern Ireland protocol is “not rocket science”, but compromise is needed. But can the Democratic Unionist party, which has laid down seven strict conditions for a deal, be brought in from the cold?

Northern Irish customers are not disadvantaged by the protocol and forced to go to non-Great Britain suppliers for goods otherwise available in the UK.

There is no “border in the Irish Sea”.

NI has “a say in making the laws which govern them”.

“No checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to GB or GB to NI and remaining in NI”.

No new regulatory borders/laws develop between NI and the rest of the UK.

The consent principle in the Good Friday agreement is upheld.

Labour will not ‘spend its way out of the mess’ but will a more pragmatic approach persuade the core support the party still stands for something?

• UK politics live – latest news updates

Keir Starmer was looking assured, shirt sleeves rolled up and cracking jokes, as he stood in front of a giant orange robotic arm in an east London design lab to make his new year speech.

Just 24 hours earlier Rishi Sunak had given his own address on the state of the nation at the building next door, prompting the Labour leader to quip: “I won’t tell the prime minister where I’m going on holiday this year just in case I find him there as well.”

This is what became of prime movers Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Nigel Farage, Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore

• UK ministers pledged to match EU spending after Brexit. How’s that going?

These five “bad boys” were the loudest voices behind Brexit, but they’ve all gone pretty quiet since then – what has become of them since?

Rishi Sunak soon rowed back from his predecessor’s chaotic experiment, reasserting the seven pillars of UK Treasury wisdom

It was all over for Liz Truss’s war on economic orthodoxy the moment she decided to summon Kwasi Kwarteng back from the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

If the sacking of the Treasury’s top mandarin, Sir Tom Scholar, marked the beginning of the campaign against Whitehall beancounters, then the end came when Jeremy Hunt became the fourth chancellor of the exchequer of 2022.

Conservative supporters disillusioned with the lack of a Brexit dividend are unclear what Labour stands for, and the radical right is rising

• Read more: Brexit failures are hauting Tories

Three years ago, Boris Johnson assembled a unique big tent coalition, delivering the Conservatives a once in a generation majority. That coalition is no more. Current polling points to a 17-point Conservative to Labour swing, far larger than Tony Blair achieved in 1997, with roughly half of 2019 Tory voters now backing someone else. Rejection of the Conservatives spans the length and breadth of the country, from the red wall to the blue wall, among Remain voters and among Brexiters.

The Brexit coalition has collapsed because the forces holding it together – frustration over Brexit and fear of a Corbyn-led government – have dissipated and nothing has replaced them. Johnson fulfilled his Brexit pledges early, passing his “oven-ready” deal in the first months of the government, and following it with a trade agreement within a year. Those early successes have left a growing void. “Getting Brexit done” was supposed to change things for the better. Even the most ardent Brexiters now find the reality disappointing. Half of Leave voters say the government has handled the issue badly, while a record one in five Brexiters now think the decision to depart was a mistake.

Taking questions from MPs at a Treasury select committee on his autumn fiscal statement, Jeremy Hunt denied the Treasury was the source behind a Sunday Times story saying the government was moving in the direction of a Swiss-style Brexit arrangement. 'It is not my position and it never has been,' Hunt said, adding that he did not back taking the UK in that direction

• Senior MPs grill Jeremy Hunt on autumn statement and UK economy – live

Speaking at the CBI conference in Birmingham, the leader of the opposition said if Labour were to win the next general election, it would not take the UK back into the single market or customs union. The Labour leader told the conference: 'The deal the government has got us, it's not working well.' Starmer said the Northern Ireland protocol needed a 'pragmatic answer' and the UK needed 'to reduce trade barriers' in order to make Brexit work

• Starmer rules out taking UK back into single market or customs union if Labour win election – UK politics live
• Keir Starmer vows to wean business off ‘cheap labour’

The prime minister has delivered his firmest response yet to a Sunday Times story suggesting that some in his government wanted a Swiss-type deal with the EU. Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry's annual conference in Birmingham, Sunak said that under his leadership the UK would 'not pursue any relationship with Europe that relies on alignment with EU laws'

• UK politics live – latest news updates

As reports suggest some in government want closer ties with Brussels, we look as what these might mean

Brexit is slowly but surely creeping back on to the agenda as the blame game intensifies over Britain’s poor growth and looming recession.

Discussion of the effects of the UK leaving the EU were quickly drowned out in the weeks after 31 January 2020 as the Covid pandemic took hold. Since then, much of MPs’ economic focus has been on the fallout from lockdowns, global supply chain issues and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At a press conference at the G20 summit in Bali, the British prime minister said he did not believe Brexit was to blame for the UK's economic woes, highlighting instead the legacy effects of the coronavirus pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 'Every country will have its own idiosyncratic things, but those are the overwhelming dominating factors,' said Rishi Sunak.

He claimed the upcoming autumn budget would be rooted in 'fairness' and 'compassion'

• Rishi Sunak holds press conference after meeting with Joe Biden – UK politics live

DUP boycotted power-sharing executive over post-Brexit Irish Sea border and if not revived by midnight election must be called

The region appears to be heading towards another Stormont assembly election just seven months after the previous one. In May, Sinn Féin emerged as the biggest party, a landmark result that made its vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, the putative first minister. But the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) boycotted the power-sharing executive and the assembly, so Stormont has been mothballed. If it is not revived by just after midnight on Thursday – a legal deadline – a new election must be called.

The UK and Ireland have agreed to do 'everything possible' to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland, after a meeting of the British-Irish intergovernmental conference in London. Speaking at a press conference, Chris Heaton-Harris vowed to call another Northern Ireland assembly election if power-sharing was not restored by 28 October. His position was backed by the Irish foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, who said: 'People want devolved institutions in Northern Ireland that can make decisions there, for families, for businesses there'

• UK politics live
  

Aerial footage shows thousands of lorries queueing on the main road towards the port of Dover on Saturday, with UK authorities blaming French officials for the chaos – a claim France has denied. A major incident was declared as a second day of travel disruption consumed the key port amid additional post-Brexit checks. It comes as most schools in England and Wales broke up for the summer holidays, marking the start of one of the busiest periods for foreign travel

• Brexit blamed for Dover gridlock on second day of travel chaos
• Travel chaos: live updates

Huge queues heading for the Eurotunnel in Folkestone formed on Friday after severe staff shortages caused by 'juxtaposed controls', where travellers clear French entry requirements in the UK before crossing the Channel. Holidaymakers also faced long queues at Heathrow, Manchester and Bristol airports in an extremely busy day for air and road travel

• Dover port declares ‘critical incident’ as travellers face six-hour queues
• The headline and text of this video were amended on 22 July 2022. The footage was taken in Folkestone, not Dover as previously stated.

Metropolitan police officers seized the equipment of Steve Bray, the activist known as Stop Brexit Man, on the same day a new protest law came into effect. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act introduced an offence of intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance, in an effort to crack down on disruptive guerrilla protests. These are the sort of tactics that have been used by climate change protesters who have taken their campaigns to the streets

• Police swoop on 'Stop Brexit Man' Steve Bray and seize sound system