Day: July 10, 2017

    Campaigners have lost a high-profile case calling for UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia to be stopped over humanitarian concerns as the high court ruled exports could continue. Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) launched the high profile judicial review of the government’s decision to continue granting weapons export licences to the country despite widespread concern over the civilian death toll of its campaign in Yemen. Delivering an open judgment in the high court in London, Lord Justice Burnett, who heard the case with Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, said: “We have concluded that the material decisions of the secretary of state were lawful. We therefore dismiss the claim. The judgment was necessarily long and rather dense, he said. The court is also handing down a closed judgme...

    Theresa May has been accused of offering EU workers in the UK second class citizenship in a stark warning from the European parliament that it would reject her damp squib opening offer on the Brexit negotiations. The prime minister, who will on Monday attempt to relaunch her struggling tenure in Downing Street, was told that the EU legislature would reserve its right to reject any agreement that treats EU citizens less favourably than they are at present. Writing in the Guardian, the parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt and eight other leading MEPs say the UK’s opening offer on citizens’ rights falls short of both the EU proposal and Vote Leave’s campaign pledges. The European Union has a common mission to extend, enhance and expand rights, not to reduce them, t...

    Theresa May will ask Jeremy Corbyn for his support in delivering Brexit and pushing through legislation as she faces up to the reality I now face as Prime Minister. Mrs May will on Tuesday make a direct appeal to opposition parties to contribute, not just criticise and help clarify and improve her policies in the Commons instead of undermining them. It comes at a time Mrs May's leadership is at its weakest, amid open calls by Tory MPs for her to stand down following her failure to secure a majority at the election. Her comments are likely to spark fear among pro-Brexit Conservatives that Mrs May is willing to compromise on their ambition for a hard Brexit. However the Prime Minister is determined not to soften her position on Brexit and insists that ending the jurisdiction...