Brexit

Earlier I wrote about how a paper circulated to ministers before Chequers makes clear that the UK’s plan to follow a ‘common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’ with the EU ‘would not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal’ as the UK would be unable to recognise the US’s ‘array of standards’. But Number 10 are absolutely insistent that this doesn’t mean there won’t be a trade deal with the US; they also say that senior figures in government and trade experts are confident that a deal could still be done and that Theresa May wouldn’t be talking to Donald Trump about a trade deal next week if one wasn’t possible.

Earlier this afternoon, Cabinet Ministers received key papers ahead of the Chequers meeting tomorrow. The paper states that ‘The UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’. It goes on that the UK will make ‘an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods’. As I say in the magazine this week, one of the key questions is how this will be done. If, as Downing Street currently wants, parliament is in charge of this process then the Brexiteers might be able to stomach it. But if the EU insist on this process being automatic then I expect that several Cabinet Brexiteers would find this unacceptable.

Tonight England faces Colombia in a crunch World Cup match that could see Harry Kane's team put on the path to success – or cruelly eliminated from the tournament. So, to get viewers in the mood, Mr S thought it was time to announce the winners of Steerpike's Brexit football chant competition. After sifting through the entries, here are the three top entries – from across the spectrum of Brexit sentiments. Don't forget to chant them tonight: Mine eyes have seen the glory of a life that's Euro-free, No more rules and regulations, no more siege mentality. We've finally blown the whistle on the Brussells referee And this is why we sing, We're not in Europe, We are England. We're not in Europe, We are England.

England's crunch World Cup game against Colombia is only a few hours away now and the whole country is getting excited. Over at the Guardian, however, the big game is a perfect opportunity to take a pop at Brexit voters. According to a piece on the paper's website, 'If this England team represents anyone, it’s the 48%: the remainers'. It goes on to say: Of course, what the article doesn't make clear is what stop and search actually has to do with Brexit. And nor does it have much time apparently for the third of Asian voters, or the 27 per cent of black voters, who voted in favour of Britain leaving the EU. Still, it seems that some people are determined to read the referendum into every situation – including the World Cup. In the spirit of unity, Mr S.

The big Brexit crunch meeting at Chequers isn't until Friday but already Tory civil war is breaking out into the open. The divisions in the Conservative party on Brexit had previously been confined to a couple of spats on Twitter. Not any longer if today's Daily Politics bust-up between Ed Vaizey and Owen Paterson is anything to go on. While Tory MPs who appear alongside each other on TV can usually be relied on to back each up, it seems that when it comes to Brexit, these rules don't apply: https://twitter.com/edvaizey?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Paterson: “You cannot dismiss the election and neither can the Labour party. Theresa May, forget the seats, she got the second largest number of votes since John Major.