European unity ‘is our north star’ says Department of State official, as protocol standoff appears to ease

A senior adviser in the Biden administration has urged the UK not to cause more “flare ups” over Northern Ireland as Brexit talks reopen in London.

In an unusually blunt intervention for a policy adviser, the US Department of State counsellor Derek Chollet said the row over the Northern Ireland protocol needed to be resolved.

The prime minister was right to meet other leaders in Prague. But it will take much more work to repair the damage to Britain’s reputation

It would be foolish to suppose that the daylong gathering of European leaders that took place in Prague on Thursday will solve the problems facing this continent. The problems are too huge and pressing for that. The daunting list ranges from the war in Ukraine and relations with Russia, through the gas shortages and high prices facing Europe this winter, to the universal threat from climate change and the challenges of migration for a continent marked by struggling economies.

Nevertheless, the meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) is a helpful but modest step for the continent as a whole, and for Britain’s relations with it. The meeting, conceived by President Macron of France, brought together the European Union’s member states and non-members on an equal basis. It makes better European dialogue with important states on the continental periphery more possible. These include Britain as well as Ukraine, Turkey and Norway, along with the non-EU states of the western Balkans and along parts of Russia’s southern flank.

PM joins first meeting of European Political Community but says visit is ‘not about moving closer to Europe’

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Liz Truss has said her attendance at a European summit in Prague was “not about moving closer to Europe” and that Emmanuel Macron was a “friend”.

The prime minister visited the Czech capital for the first meeting of the European Political Community, a new group dedicated to advancing security and energy cooperation across the continent.

State department counsellor Derek Chollet calls for transatlantic unity and better UK-EU relations

The last thing the west needs now is another flare-up over Northern Ireland, Derek Chollet, the US Department of State counsellor, has warned.

Delivering a strong call for improved relations between the UK and Europe at a time of world instability, Chollet urged all sides to avoid unilateral gestures, including over the Northern Ireland protocol.

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In his interview with LBC Jake Berry, the Tory chairman, was asked if he was channelling When Harry Met Sally when he described Liz Truss as the “Yes, yes, yes prime minister” in his speech to the conference yesterday. (Robert Hutton is very funny about this, and much else, in his sketch for the Critic.) Berry said he was referring to Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister when he delivered that line.

In the same interview, Berry revealed that his joke-making has not improved since yesterday. Talking about the conference in general, Berry said:

I think colleagues saw yesterday that when the going gets tough, the Truss gets going.

I do think my language was a bit clumsy in that regard and I regret it.

The point I was making ... is that the government needs to go for growth to ensure that it can grow the economy and Britain can get a pay rise. You don’t have to tell me how hard people graft in this economy. I know how hard people work.

We’ve got to wait until those figures are available … You simply cannot make a decision on figures you do not currently have.

Analysis: The opportunity to be a deal-maker in a wartime era is not lost on Liz Truss

It was the day before the Queen’s funeral that Ireland finally got the signal it was waiting for – Liz Truss was in the market for a deal over the Northern Ireland protocol.

As is often the case, it was not so much what Truss said but what she did not say, said one source, that made it clear the UK was ready to end its 20-month standoff and resume talks with the EU.

Neither our overstretched prison systems nor our overstressed environment can endure this for much longer – something has to change

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Imprisoned climate protesters and the reality of our broken prison system

Remarks by Ireland’s deputy PM raise hopes of compromise as talks reopen over post-Brexit trade

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The former taoiseach Leo Varadkar has conceded that the Northern Ireland protocol is “a little too strict”, raising hopes of further EU compromises as talks reopen between London and Brussels.

Varadkar, who is now deputy prime minister, said he believed there was room “for more flexibility” in the controversial Brexit arrangements that have cast a shadow over Anglo-Irish relations for the past 18 months.

A new community created as a counter to Russian aggression could help to bring EU countries closer to the rest of Europe

Imagine it’s 2030. You can freely reside in and seek employment across the UK, the EU, Ukraine, Turkey, the western Balkans and a handful of other flourishing democracies. You cross open borders on integrated high-speed rail connections, powered by jointly financed green hydrogen infrastructure and integrated energy grids.

You feel secure as these countries ensure equitable supplies of life-saving vaccines and maintain a joint fast-response taskforce for climate disasters.

Lorenzo Marsili is a philosopher, activist and founder of European Alternatives and Fondazione Studio Rizoma. He is the author of Planetary Politics: a Manifesto

We need genuine devolution and honest representation – only by taking back control will we be able to address the challenges of our time

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Would greater local control help the fight against climate change?

‘Political community’ gives PM a break from her party – but hope of reset in UK-EU relations may be unrealistic

After a bruising fortnight of political turmoil, market panic and vicious Tory party infighting, Thursday offers something of a perhaps unexpected respite for Britain’s embattled prime minister, Liz Truss: a European summit in the gothic and baroque splendour of Prague Castle.

Truss is attending the first meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), a new group proposed by the EU but set to include nearly every country on the continent, barring Russia and Belarus. This new geopolitical talking shop will discuss the war in Ukraine, but also how disparate countries can work together on common interests such as energy. Expected to attend are the 27 EU member states plus 17 non-EU countries, from Azerbaijan to Iceland.

Talks between Irish foreign minister and UK counterpart announced amid change in ‘mood music’

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, is flying to London for talks with his UK counterpart, James Cleverly, as hopes rise of an outline deal to end the bitter dispute over the Northern Ireland Brexit arrangements within weeks.

Talks at official level will start on Thursday afternoon by video link before a working dinner between the two ministers.

It’s not been a good week for the PM – it will be interesting to see how diplomatically she handles plans for a European Political Community

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: The European Political Community: a new thorn in the UK’s side or an opportunity to shape Europe?

New study ranks 12 major UK cities’ parking facilities with some surprising results – and a big win for Leeds

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Leeds crowned best city in the UK to charge your electric vehicle

The chancellor's hubris and ineptitude have left him exposed and weakened after just one month in the job

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Quasi Kwarteng: a diminished chancellor

From the outset of the Tory leadership campaign Truss promised a hardline crackdown on unions. Did she deliberately draw their fire?

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: How Truss harnessed the rail strikes to defeat Sunak

The country gets it. We have listened. Can we now bring on the general election and rid the country of Trussonomics and KamiKwasi thinking?

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: We get it, and we have listened: government U-turn on uncosted tax cuts

With backbenchers, voters and donors turning against the prime minister, does this herald the end of power for the Conservative Party?

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Tory backbenchers have trussed up the PM

Lack of knowledge about the Anglo-Irish relationship past and present has deep personal and political consequences

Before emigrating from Ireland to teach in England in 2006, I assumed British people would know as much about me as I did about them. I was put right just one year into the job, in an east London staffroom, when a colleague teased: “Why the salad, Jen? I thought you Irish loved a potato.”

Contrary to the stereotype, Irish people don’t just happen to love potatoes. Pushed on to infertile land in west Ireland, most notoriously at Oliver Cromwell’s command, farmers had been encouraged to grow the ill-fated crop by their British colonisers. But when the blight came, little was done to help them. The resulting Great Hunger brought the death or emigration of 2 million people – more than a quarter of the Irish population – between 1845 and 1852.

Has post-Brexit government policy multiplied the factors that allow human trafficking and exploitation to flourish? Stella Perrott investigates.

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Channel crossings, Albanians and worker exploitation: how government policy supports trafficking.

Latest updates: Michael Gove says Truss should abandon plan to scrap 45% top rate of tax as large crowds protest in Birmingham

• Summary of key points from Liz Truss’s BBC interview

Q: Are you absolutely committed to getting rid of the 45% rate of tax?

Yes, says Truss.

Northern Ireland minister says he and colleagues had not always respected others’ ‘legitimate interests’

Steve Baker – arch Brexiter and one of the Conservative party’s fiercest campaigners to get the UK out of the EU – has apologised to Ireland and Brussels for the way he and some of his colleagues behaved over the past six years.

Baker told the Tory party conference that he and others in the party had not shown respect to the “legitimate interests” of Ireland or the EU during the campaign to leave the bloc.

In one fell swoop the Truss-Kwarteng ‘fiscal event’ has sent the economy into freefall. What if ‘the lady’s not for turning?’

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Brexiting on ourselves from a great height: a budgetary Truss-up

Some “plan for growth”. Millions face futures they neither deserved nor were prepared for, so suddenly has disaster hit. Mortgage payers will be unexpectedly hammered. All homeowners face a sharp fall in house prices in which most of their wealth is held. Worse, those dependent on functioning public services and benefits confront privation and even destitution.

Compelled to find up to £40bn of spending cuts in November to pay for Liz Truss’s unwanted tax cuts, the Treasury has to cripple the state to restore financial credibility. Capital investment, the science budget, new schools and hospitals, uprating benefits and public sector wages in line with inflation – forget them all. Instead of a stimulus to growth, Britain faces intense economic and social dislocation and ongoing stagflation. Austerity is back, this time on an epic scale.

Rumours rife as farmers fear PM plans U-turn on financial subsidy measures to improve environment

The chaos in the English countryside began with the click of a civil servant’s mouse. At the end of last week, farmers who had been working with the government on environmental subsidy schemes saw that their regular meetings about it had been removed from their online diaries without warning.

This appeared to hint at what had been feared – that the new post-Brexit farming subsidy scheme was in danger of being scrapped.

Bill would see 570 EU-derived environmental laws removed at end of 2023, with little time to replace them

The government’s “Brexit freedoms bill” could see all legal protections from pesticides abolished, wildlife campaigners have warned, putting insects, wildlife and human health in danger.

The bill, published a week ago by prime minister Liz Truss’s new administration, would result in all EU-derived laws being removed at the end of 2023, including 570 environmental regulations. The government could retain or amend some regulations, but has not set out plans to do so. Campaigners are worried there is insufficient time to put new regulations in place.

Additional requirements would be time-consuming and threaten capacity, Dover port boss says

Post-Brexit Channel border delays could multiply from next May, with a five-person vehicle being held for up to 10 minutes if the EU goes ahead with a planned biometric entry system, the Port of Dover has said.

The entry-exit system (EES), which is due to start in May 2023, will require all non-EU nationals to register their fingerprints and be photographed before entering the bloc.

Starmer attacked the new Truss government, set out green policies and was unafraid to address Brexit, previously a no-go area

It lasted just 50 minutes rather than last year’s 90, but Keir Starmer’s speech to the Labour conference covered a lot of ground, and even included some policies. Here are five main takeaways from his address:

Experts say scheme’s rules urgently need significant changes to prioritise worker protection

• Indonesians wait on UK farm jobs after paying deposits of up to £2,500
• Indonesian man who paid £1,000 for UK farm job

As farms began to panic about a likely shortage of labour caused by Brexit, the seasonal worker visa was presented as a panacea.

Just 2,500 people came to Britain in a pilot of the scheme in 2019. But when the predicted shortage came to pass the following year, it was expanded rapidly, before an assessment of the pilot could be concluded.

‘The ‘woke’ outlook on national identity, national sentiment and immigration now tends to be the more popular”; and “whereas it might once have represented a widespread view, now the ‘anti-woke’ position on ‘culture war’ issues often appear to be more of a minority one.”

It’s a striking conclusion from Sir John Curtice and Victoria Ratti in the latest edition of the British Social Attitudes survey, published last week. The gold-standard annual survey of public opinion has tracked public views on a host of issues for almost 40 years and is invaluable in tracking changes in attitudes over time. The new edition, on “Public Attitudes in an Age of Crisis”, explores attitudes to issues ranging from taxation to constitutional reform. The most fascinating insights came, however, in the chapter on the culture wars.

Big dramas can make politics look small, and in an age of constant upheaval voters can miss how badly the country is being run

Politics in Britain is again marching to strange rhythms. Officially, nothing much has been happening this month, because of an all-important period of national mourning. But in reality Whitehall has been busy, even frantic. The Treasury has been purged of its most senior civil servant and given a new, pro-growth mission. The latest emergency budget is being drawn up, thinly disguised as a “fiscal event”. And a new, potentially very risky government has been settling in. Yet another Conservative experiment on the country is being prepared, largely unscrutinised.

Much of our politics has had this simultaneously stuck and manic quality since at least the EU referendum. Brexit deadlocks and “cliff edges”, the pandemic, Tory leadership contests, the cost of living crisis, the invasion of Ukraine and now the Queen’s death – each has accelerated or paralysed politics, making a mockery of the once common idea that British democracy is about steady progress.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

After sacking the his top official, the new chancellor’s next act was politically crass and insensitive. It does not bode well

One of the themes of the coverage of our late Queen’s life has been what a good sense of humour she had. But I did not see any references to the day it fell to her to make her speech at the opening of parliament on 21 June 2017.

On that day her monarchical duty, in the Queen’s speech, was to outline the proposed legislation that would prepare the UK for its departure from the European Union.

Liz Truss might rue a previous Conservative government’s ruling that the King had not just a right but a ‘duty’ to make his views known

Liz Truss is Britain’s third prime minister in just over three years. This degree of instability is the product of the modern Conservative party’s refusal to confess its mistakes and to correct them. Instead, the Tories appear obsessed with blaming opponents for their repeated failure to deliver on their promises. The death of Queen Elizabeth II is a chance for the prime minister to reset this attitude in a number of controversial and unresolved matters. The monarch’s passing – and the outpouring of affection for the late Queen – hints at a yearning for a more unifying public conversation. Ms Truss must also be aware that the evolving nature of monarchy, and the arrival of an opinionated King Charles III, sets the stage for possible public conflicts between ministers and the crown.

The first might come over Northern Ireland and Brexit. The King’s view that “no man is an island” in the run-up to Britain’s departure from the EU was interpreted as a rebuke to those who saw these islands’ destiny as independent from the continent. It was also widely remarked this week that the King seemed more at ease with Sinn Féin, which wants to remove Northern Ireland from his kingdom, than with the Democratic Unionist party, which is desperate to remain in it. This might be because of the rupture in the political settlement caused by the DUP’s boycott of the power-sharing pact following its rejection of the Northern Ireland protocol.

Chancellor may lift EU-era restriction in hope of making UK more attractive to financial sector

The focus is back on banker pay after it emerged that the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, is considering scrapping the City bonus cap as part of the government’s wider pro-growth agenda.

What is the banker bonus cap?

After Brexit and then the death of the Queen, national unity and global respect are in doubt

After the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, what’s in store for post-Elizabethan Britain? Whatever you think of the institution of monarchy in a democracy, there must be huge respect for her 70 years of dedicated service as an impartial head of state and a unifying figure in Britain and beyond. Yet so much of what she represented is now in doubt.

She stood for the almost paradoxical unity of four nations in a single nation, the United Kingdom. But now the Scots are quite likely to leave the British union in order to rejoin the European one. Northern Ireland increasingly sees its future with the Republic of Ireland, as a kind of informal member of the European Union. Even if Britain doesn’t go all the way back to being just England and Wales, it will need a constitutional reordering.

What could happen if Liz Truss triggers article 16 – and will it increase Brexit hostilities?

The EU is bracing itself for another tumultuous and bruising battle with the UK over Brexit, despite hopes and pleas for Liz Truss to be pragmatic and try to seal a deal on the protracted Northern Ireland issues.

“No one is optimistic. We are in for a very bumpy few months,” said one EU source.

Ascent to power took in spat with the Turnip Taliban, a late conversion to Brexit and a gallery of photos mimicking Thatcher

From the stage of the Liberal Democrat conference to the Tory leadership - via viral fame over cheese imports - Liz Truss has been on quite a political journey in her quest for the keys to Downing St. Here we cover the key moments of success, strife and good fortune that have made her favourite to replace Boris Johnson.

Last year, Ukrainians helped plug post-Brexit labour shortages. With the focus now on Asia, it’s unclear who should police issues such as illegal broker fees

As a Guardian investigation reports that Indonesian workers picking fruit for leading UK supermarkets have ended up with debts of up to £5,000 for a single season, we look at what is driving a crisis in British agricultural labour and how exploitation can be avoided.

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

Speaking in the Commons, Theresa May told MPs that the government's proposals to modify the Northern Ireland protocol would 'diminish' the UK's standing in the world and she 'cannot support it'. The bill proposed by the government, she said, is not 'legal in international law'. 

•  Northern Ireland protocol bill will ‘diminish UK in eyes of the world’, Theresa May tells MPs – live

The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has described the government's attempt to modify the Northern Ireland protocol as 'both necessary and legal' during a debate in the Commons. However, Labour's shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, told MPs that the government's proposal would violate the UK's commitment to international law, and urged Truss to reach a negotiated solution

• UK faces ‘significant risks’ to quality of food imported post-Brexit, says report
• Brexit: MPs debate Northern Ireland protocol bill as Irish PM tells of concern at UK unilateralism – live

The UK's former chief Brexit negotiator defends Brexit on the sixth anniversary of the EU referendum, when Britain voted to leave the EU. Speaking at the annual conference of the UK in a Changing Europe organisation, David Frost said: 'The view that Brexit is hitting us from an economic and trade perspective ... cannot be supported by any objective analysis of the figures.' His comments come a day after a report by the Resolution Foundation thinktank said Brexit was damaging the competitiveness of UK exports and making the cost of living crisis worse for households

• Brexit is working and naysayers have axes to grind, claims David Frost
  

Hundreds of suitcases were piled up at Heathrow after issues were reported with the baggage system.

Staff created a sea of luggage as many people were forced to travel without their belongings and told they may not get them back for up to two days.

It is the latest incident of travel disruption at UK airports, which entered the busy summer season with heavy staff shortages leading to hundreds of flights being cancelled.

The industry has been accused of failing to anticipate demand after two years of disruption caused by the Covid pandemic

• ‘Baggage mountain’ leads to Heathrow cancellations, as easyJet cuts schedule

The EU's Brexit commissioner has confirmed the body has decided to take fresh legal action against the UK over its new legislation bypassing sections of the Northern Ireland protocol. Along with reviving the infringement process it launched in 2021, the EU is initiating two more processes – accusing the UK of failing to comply with provisions in the protocol relating to controls at border posts and the sharing of data

• UK politics news – live updates

The EU will not renegotiate the Northern Ireland protocol agreement, the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, has said in response to Britain's decision to override some post-Brexit trade rules for the region. 

'Renegotiating of the protocol is unrealistic,' he said. 'Any renegotiations would simply bring further legal uncertainty for the people and businesses in Northern Ireland. For these reasons, the EU will not renegotiate the protocol'

• UK risks EU trade war as Northern Ireland protocol bill is published
• Follow the day’s politics news – as it happens

The foreign secretary has said the legislation would fix issues with the post-Brexit protocol by easing checks for firms selling goods from Great Britain destined for Northern Ireland rather than the EU. But the EU, legal experts and even some Conservative MPs have said the move breaches international law

• UK risks EU trade war as Northern Ireland protocol bill is published
• Follow the day’s politics news – as it happens