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European elections: UK goes to the polls as pressure continues on May to resign - live news May close to abandoning Brexit bill amid growing cabinet backlash - live news
(about 3 hours later)
At the Nato event where he was speaking this morning, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, also refused to say what he would be telling Theresa May today about the EU withdrawal agreement bill. This is from the BBC’s Norman Smith. The appointment of Mel Stride to the cabinet, as the new leader of the Commons, will be seen as a discreet boost to Michael Gove, the environment secretary, who is a candidate to succeed Theresa May. Stride has reportedly been campaigning on behalf of Gove although, according to a recent report in the Sunday Times (paywall), he has been so discreet about it that some MPs got the impression he was running himself. Here is an extract from a story Gabriel Pogrund and Tim Shipman wrote earlier this year.
Jeremy Hunt declines to say what he'll be telling PM today about her Withdrawal Bill. "All such discussions shd remain confidential." Mel Stride, a Treasury minister, has hosted dinners at his home in recent weeks during which he has made the case for Gove, gathering a cadre of supporters from different wings of the party should he decide to run.
It is understood that he is one of several cabinet ministers raising concerns about the bill, and in particular about the provision in it for a vote on a second referendum. The role of Stride, who runs the Deep Blue group of traditional Tories, as a cheerleader for Gove was so shrouded in secrecy that some MPs believed he was running for leader himself.
Theresa May will still be PM when President Trump visits the week after next, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, has said. This is from the Telegraph’s Jack Maidment. Stride further muddied the waters by hosting a dinner a week ago on behalf of the leadership team of Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary.
NEW: Jeremy Hunt says Theresa May will still be Prime Minister when Donald Trump comes for his state visit in the first week of June. "Theresa May will be prime minister to welcome him and rightly so," he just told a cyber security conference in London. Downing Street has just announced
This is not a surprise, but it is probably worth clarifying. Those in the Conservative party who want Theresa May to resign now are not asking for her to leave office immediately. They want her to resign as Conservative party leader, so that the party can start the leadership contest. It is widely agreed that she will stay as PM until the party has elected a new leader, which would not be until the end of July at the earliest. As prime minister, she cannot resign until she is in a position to tell the Queen who she should appoint as a successor. Mel Stride, the Treasury minister, will become leader of the Commons.
(Well, in theory she could, but it would not be the done thing ...) Jesse Norman, the transport minister, will replace Stride as financial secretary to the Treasury and paymaster general.
There was no sign of Andrea Leadsom outside her Westminster home on Thursday morning, the Press Association reports. Her husband, Ben Leadsom, stopped on his bicycle to tell reporters: “It was a tough day yesterday, but she’s happy she made the right decision.” He said he could not comment when asked whether the MP for South Northamptonshire would run for leadership of the Conservative party. Michael Ellis, a culture minister, replaces Norman as transport minister.
If you want information about the candidates in your area, or where you can vote, the Who Can I Vote For? website is helpful. And Rebecca Pow joins the government, replacing Ellis as culture minister.
This is from the Tory MP Sir David Evennett. Margaritis Schinas, the European commission’s chief spokesman, has posted a tweet saying that a video promoted by a pro-unionist Twitter account from Northern Ireland contains a quote falsely attributed to Martin Selmayr, the secretary general of the EU Commission. The video claims Selmayr said Northern Ireland was “the price to pay for Brexit”. Selmary has denied saying that, and Schinas said the claim was being “spread maliciously”.
Theresa May must now resign. We need a new PM a new Cabinet and a new approach to Brexit. The sentence attributed to the @EU_Commission Secretary General at 1:16 of this video is fake, fraudulent and pure disinformation that has been spread maliciously. https://t.co/3mR2KuipVR
What has changed for Theresa May in the last 24 hours or so is that MPs in the mainstream of the party, who have generally been supportive of her up to now, have joined those calling for her to resign. Evennett is a good example. He voted remain in the 2016 referendum and, although he voted against May’s deal in the first Commons vote, he supported it in the second two. He is not someone who has been publicly speaking out against her in the past. The Twitter account has no name attached to it and just describes itself as “promoting the positive benefits of NI’s membership of the UK”.
Penny Mordaunt, the defence secretary, is reportedly one of the cabinet ministers who has told Theresa May she is unhappy about the plan to include a provision for a vote on a second referendum in the EU withdrawal agreement bill (Wab). This morning, asked about this, she told reporters: During an urgent question in the Commons earlier Caroline Dinenage, the care minister, apologised on behalf of the NHS for the abuse of people with learning disabilities and autism at the specialist hospital Whorlton Hall. The abuses were exposed in a harrowing report by an undercover reporter working for the BBC’s Panorama which has led to a police investigation, 16 staff being suspended and the hospital being closed.
I have given my advice to No 10 and today I am going to be getting on with my job which is to keep the country safe and look after our armed forces. Dinenage said:
This is from Labour whips, an official account. On behalf of the health and care system, I am deeply sorry that this has happened.
Confirmed that @Mark_Spencer will make the business question for the Government, had been some suggestion that @PaulMaynardUK may take it but given his reported comments to the Prime Minister they may have thought better . . . https://t.co/FJqXbpFagN She said the actions revealed by the Panorama programme were “quite simply appalling” and that the government would look at whether criminality was involved, whether the regulatory framework was working and whether oversight was fit for purpose. She told MPs:
This refers to a report that Paul Maynard, a government whip, told Theresa May during a private meeting that her Brexit strategy risked destroying the Conservative party. Where it is essential that somebody has to be supported at distance from their home, we will make sure that those arrangements are supervised.
Usual request for an election day: if you are posting a comment below the line (BTL), please do not tell us how you voted. Under the Representation of the People Act 1983, it is an offence to publish, while the polls are still open, any information about how people have voted based on “information given by voters after they have voted”. This law is designed to stop on-day polling influencing the results, but the lawyers say it covers comments from individuals too, and so please desist. We won’t tolerate having people out of sight and out of mind. Where someone with a learning disability or an autistic person has to be an inpatient out of area, they will be now visited every six weeks if they are a child or every eight weeks if they are an adult.
(But if you were to tell us that you expect party X to do very well, that would not be a problem.) There are a lot of reports on social media of EU nationals being denied a vote in today’s European elections.
Britons have started voting in the European elections. The polling stations opened about two hours ago and, as usual, they will stay open until 10pm. But, because most other EU countries do not vote until Sunday, the votes will not be counted until Sunday night. EU nationals can vote in the UK in European elections. They have to register, like UK nationals. But they also have to fill in a form, known as the UC1 or EC6 form, saying they will only be voting in the UK, and not in other EU countries.
These are elections, of course, that were never meant to happen, because the UK was supposed to leave the EU in March. But despite being unwanted and unexpected, the results could be more consequential than the results of any other European elections in the UK’s history. According to opinion polls, Nigel Farage’s Brexit party is on course to a win by a huge margin - much more than the two points by which Ukip, which he was then leading, beat Labour in 2014. And some polls have the Tories heading for fifth place. At the very least this is bound to have a considerable influence on what happens in the forthcoming Conservative leadership contest, although Farage claims he could even tear down the two-party political system. Local authorities have to process these forms. But, as my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reported on Tuesday, there have been reports that in some areas this has not been happening properly.
The fact that Britain is voting will give Theresa May some respite from the intensifying calls for her resignation - mainly because, while polls are open, there are limits to what broadcasters can report. But that does not meant the pressure is going away. As we report in our overnight story (see below), following the resignation of Andrea Leadsom, May is under pressure to make an announcement about the timing of her departure imminently. Many EU citizens will be unable to vote in UK, campaigners warn
Pressure grows on May to quit as Leadsom resigns over Brexit deal Lisa has met EU nationals today being denied the right to vote and she has asked people with similar stories to get in touch.
Here is the agenda for the day. Just been to polling booth in London Tower Hamlets where two German nationals denied vote. They returned their UC1 form by hand on 2 May. I witnessed Kat phone the no she was given by officials and she was told the form was not processed until 16 May - 9 days after deadline.
9.05am: Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, speaks at a Nato cyber defence conference. EU citizens denied their legal right to vote because local council did not process their forms...man on phone told them they could no nothing about it
10.30am: Business statement in the Commons. Normally Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, would be giving it, but following her resignation Mark Spencer, a whip, is due to take her place. #deniedmyvoteEU citizens - please do contact me. I am doing story on this today and want to hear your stories. lisa.ocarroll@theguardian.com
3.30pm: Matt Hancock, the health secretary, speaks at a King’s Fund conference. The pro-European campaigner Gina Miller is also asking people affected to get in touch.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary when I wrap up at the end of the day. Knew about UK expats being denied a vote today. https://t.co/qGgoDjQftRBut now hearing EU citizen are being turned away from polling stations & told 'vote in your own country' - if this has happened to you email us at info@remainunited.org as a breach of your rights@remainutd
You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads. And on Twitter some people are sharing their experiences using the hashtag #DeniedMyVote. Here is an example, from Agata Patyna, a barrister.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow. Turned away from polling station this morning. Told I should vote in my EU member state. Called local council yesterday, they confirmed I could vote. Called again today. Apparently council had no time to send out forms to all EU residents. Nothing they can do now #DeniedMyVote
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone. To clarify, I registered before the deadline. Have been here since 2005. Voted many times before. This is ‘my’ EU member state.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. The Evening Standard has more examples here.
Margot James, the digital minister, has said Theresa May is being hounded out of office. Speaking to the Press Association after an event in London, she said:
It’s all very regrettable but she’s being hounded out of office because parliament will not make a decision and the parties just have an inability to compromise. But in the end there’s got to be a compromise.
Theresa May is due to appoint a new leader of the Commons today, Number 10 has said.
This is what Valerie Vaz, the shadow leader of the Commons, said in the chamber earlier about the government’s decision not to publish the EU withdrawal agreement bill tomorrow. (See 11.22am.) She said:
Yesterday the prime minister told the house that the second reading of the withdrawal agreement bill would be in the week commencing June 3rd, now we hear it’s not, so in less than 24 hours the prime minister has broken her word. This is yet another broken promise by the prime minister on Brexit.