Brexit weekly briefing: Corbyn promises to do 'everything necessary' to stop no deal

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Jeremy Corbyn will promise to do “everything necessary to stop a disastrous no-deal Brexit” as he delivers a speech on Monday in which he will accuse Boris Johnson of being a “fake populist and phoney outsider” in the mould of Donald Trump.

The Labour leader will give a flagship speech in the key marginal seat of Corby in the east Midlands as speculation grows about an election in the coming weeks.

Following the leak of documents warning of protests and food shortages in the event of a no-deal Brexit, Corbyn will attack Johnson for the Conservative party’s “failure on Brexit, and its lurch to the hard right, which has provoked the crisis our country faces this autumn”.

The shadow chancellor said on Monday morning that Labour wanted to see parliament reconvened “in the next few days” to work to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

But John McDonnell insisted during an interview on the BBC’s Today programme that it was “non-negotiable” that the Labour leader should be the figure who leads any caretaker government that could emerge.

Downing Street has blamed the disclosure of detailed preparations being made under Operation Yellowhammer on a hostile former minister intent on ruining Johnson’s trip to see EU leaders this week as he also prepares to make his debut at a G7 summit.

The leaked document argues that the most likely scenario is severe extended delays to medicine supplies and shortages of some fresh foods, combined with price rises, if there is a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.

Michael Gove, the cabinet minister responsible for no-deal planning, insisted Yellowhammer represented a “worst-case scenario” and said “significant” steps had been taken in the last three weeks to accelerate planning.

But separate leaks also show that planning of a different kind – for a general election – is being ramped up.

The prime minister’s No 10 operation is increasingly on an election footing, with leaked internal emails revealing he was due to meet Sir Lynton Crosby, the election guru who worked on the campaigns of David Cameron in 2015 and Theresa May in 2017.

What next?

Johnson’s planned meetings with the French president and German chancellor come ahead of the G7 summit in Biarritz at the end of the week, where the PM is likely to meet the US president, Donald Trump, for talks about a potential post-Brexit trade deal.

The general assumption of observers is that no one should expect a breakthrough from Johnson’s visits to Berlin and Paris to meet Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. He is scheduled to hold a working lunch on Thursday with Macron at the Elysée and issue a joint declaration.

In terms of political positioning, he is expected to cling to a hardline message on Brexit and the intention of his government for Britain to leave on 31 October.

For now, his position is that formal talks on Brexit will only take place until the Northern Ireland backstop is removed from the withdrawal agreement negotiated by his predecessor in No 10.

Don’t expect much in the way of comment from European leaders about Operation Yellowhammer, although the Financial Times reports one senior EU official as saying that Johnson must come to the G7 with a credible proposal to prevent a hard border in Ireland.

“The first thing to know is what detailed plan on avoiding a hard border Johnson has in mind – a plan that is compatible with the existing withdrawal agreement,” the official said.

Looking ahead to the G7, where the ever-unpredictable Trump is likely to give an edge to proceedings, the summit marks the first real test of Johnson on the international stage (although other states will be familiar with his approach from his time as foreign secretary). One scenario being sketched out by some was the possibility of a Trump-Johnson alliance of sorts.

Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative MP who chairs the influential Commons foreign affairs committee, said it would be interesting to see if the meeting of leaders became “another six and one, or five and two” with the UK becoming even more part of the “American camp”.

Tugendhat told the BBC’s Today programme that the UK could play the role, as it had done in the past, of a “bridge” between other states and the US.

That’s not quite a scenario other European leaders appear to be contemplating. British officials have been liaising with their EU counterparts on how to get on the right side of the trade war between the US and China, and are already treading a diplomatic fine line over the European-backed Iranian nuclear deal opposed by Trump.

“This is a diplomatic quagmire of a G7,” one European diplomat told the Guardian.

All is meanwhile being done in Brussels to get things right on the European side and to avoid a repetition of the Salzburg summit where Theresa May was seen to have been humiliated.

“A frosty approach would be self-defeating,” an EU official said, while admitting that Donald Tusk, president of the European council, who will also attend, did not always toe the line.

The rest

• Avoiding no deal must be the “number one priority” for the government, according to Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI.

• The home secretary, Priti Patel, is pressing for freedom of movement by European nationals into the UK to end on 31 October under a no-deal Brexit, according to reports.

• Dominic Grieve has accused Johnson of “behaving like a demagogue” and said the UK prime minister’s rhetoric had led directly to him receiving death threats.

• As many as 40 Tory MPs are backing an attempt led by two former cabinet ministers, Philip Hammond and David Gauke, to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, the Telegraph has reported.

• British house hunters have launched a surprise August buying spree before the scheduled Brexit date, with new data showing sales reached their highest point since 2015 during the usually sleepy summer period.

• Brexit party politicians have appeared on programmes that have hosted conspiracy theorists and promoted the views of prominent figures on the hard right, an analysis has found.

• The Democratic Unionist party has been attempting to play down the results of a poll that found almost three out of five voters in Northern Ireland would prefer a border down the Irish Sea to a hard Brexit.

• As many as 40,000 motorists in Ireland who are still driving with a UK licence are being warned they have just weeks to exchange it or face being put off the road in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

• Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, has said that other members of parliament must return to the House of Commons to hold an “increasingly reckless” Boris Johnson to account.

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Matthew d’Ancona, the Guardian columnist and chairman of the Conservative thinktank Bright Blue, argues that what matters now is how those in politics who want to prevent the UK experiencing a “historic disaster” respond to the challenge; how imaginative they are prepared to be; and whether they are ready to put nation before party:

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