Here’s the latest

Published: June 26, 2016 at 4:29pm

The British Labour Party is imploding, with Jeremy Corbyn sacking his shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, after Benn rang him to say that he thinks he should resign.

“He’s a good and decent man but not a leader,” Benn told television journalists. “His heart was not in the campaign. He struggled to mobilise support (for Remain) even among Labour’s core supporters.”

This led to another EIGHT members of the shadow cabinet resigning in the course of today. Read more about it here.

Meanwhile, there was a telling bit of television yesterday when the BBC camera at Corbyn’s press conference inexplicably homed in on his shoes – the kind you would wear for a Sunday walk with your dog – and let the camera actually linger on them for a few seconds.

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Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) said today that she is prepared to use the Scottish Parliament to block/veto the UK’s exit from the European Union.

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Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative MP who was once briefly leader of the Conservative Party and who formed part of the Leave campaign, said on television today that Leave campaigners never promised people that £350 million a week ‘saved in EU contributions’ would instead be funnelled into the NHS.

“We never said that,” Duncan Smith said. “We said part of it could be used for that purpose.” But journalists commenting live on air said they clearly remember the pledge emblazoned on the Leave campaign battle-bus and on posters. Now all they need to do is find the footage.

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In Scotland, Donald Trump celebrated the plunging pound. He was asked what he thinks about the vote fall-out, the first effect of which was the tumbling pound. “That’s good,” he said. “They can do more business. More people will come to (my golf courses in Scotland.” His rivals back home in the United States immediately clipped that into a campaign video.

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Boris Johnson is now hiding from journalists. He gave them the slip today as he walked into a house in Oxfordshire, and coming out of his own home yesterday, with a bag on his back, he brushed off questions, saying that he had to go and play cricket.

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The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, has said that he wants the UK to apply to leave the European Union by Tuesday. That’s the deadline he’s given them – not that he’s in a position to do so, and they’re not in a position to meet it.

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The star of today’s coverage on Sky News has to be Michael Heseltine, the former deputy prime minister. In an ice-cold assessment of the situation, he said that the problems with the country’s economy come before the political parties’ internal problems, and that decisions which affect the economy should not be put on hold while the Conservative Party and the Labour Party solve their leadership issues.

“Investment is being lost and industry decisions are being put on hold,” he said. “Business decision-makers have to know where they stand. An investor considering putting money into Britain now will just take it to another EU member state.”

“It’s quite obvious now that what we had been saying before the vote was correct: that these people have no plan. They never did. There was no plan and there still is no plan.”

Heseltine was asked who he thinks should take charge of the negotiations to take the UK out of the European Union. His answer illustrated the difference between his generation of politicians and today’s: “Farage, Johnson and Gove should be put in charge of those negotiations. They are the ones who brought this about. They claim to know what they want, and they have to take responsibility for the outcome. If others are put in charge of the negotiations, (Farage, Johnson and Gove) will simply blame them for the outcome and say that they screwed it up.”

But meanwhile Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, says that there are no plans for a swift start to negotiations.

Michael Heseltine

Michael Heseltine