Isabel Hardman

Theresa May is holding an emergency Cabinet meeting today on how to respond to the latest chemical weapons attack in Syria. Already sources are briefing that the Prime Minister is prepared to take military action without a vote in Parliament, which has naturally enraged a number of parliamentarians. Jeremy Corbyn has said that ‘parliament should always be given a say on military action’, and the SNP have said that a failure to do so would be a ‘scandal’. As we know from the military interventions of the past few years, parliament does not have any formal right to a vote before action, but since the Iraq War, it has become the convention for Prime Ministers to seek approval from MPs anyway.

Jeremy Corbyn didn't pick the most obvious topic to lead on - or indeed mention - at Prime Minister's Questions today. While the Tories are in deep discomfort on the Worboys case, the Labour leader chose instead to talk about something on which even he had to concede Theresa May has shown a fair bit of commitment over the years: mental health. It wasn't until later in the session that the Ministry of Justice's handling of the serial rapist's case was raised at all. But that said, this was one of Corbyn's best Prime Minister's Questions. Normally when he attacks on health, he often meanders around general topics without really prosecuting a particular point or indeed picking up May on the points that she has made.

Theresa May covered a fair bit of ground in her statement to the Commons on last week's European Council meeting. She talked about how EU leaders were supporting Britain in the stand-off with Russia following the Salisbury attack, on the agreement that leaders reached on the next stage of Brexit negotiations, steel tariffs, and on allegations that her own political secretary Stephen Parkinson outed his former partner as gay. On Russia, the Prime Minister told the House that 'I have found great solidarity from our friends and partners in the EU, North America, Nato and beyond over the past three weeks as we have confronted the aftermath of the Salisbury incident'.

Jeremy Corbyn this evening said he was 'sincerely sorry' for the pain caused by 'pockets of anti-semitism' in his party, and is arranging to meet representatives of the Jewish community this week. Tonight the Labour leader has had something of a preview of how that meeting might go, with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council publishing a furious letter in which they accuse him of ignoring the 'mainstream majority of British Jews'. The letter, entitled 'enough is enough', says Corbyn personifies the form of politics that repeatedly fails to take antisemitism seriously, and says that 'again and again, Jeremy Corbyn has sided with antisemites rather than Jews'.

In the past few minutes, Owen Smith has been sacked from Labour's Shadow Cabinet after he wrote an article calling for a second referendum and continuing single market membership. The party this evening released a statement from Jeremy Corbyn which did not thank Smith for his work but instead praised the record of his successor as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Tony Lloyd: 'Tony is a highly experienced former Government Minister who is committed to ensuring that peace in Northern Ireland is maintained and helping to steer the devolution deal back on track.' This is an interesting time of the day to put out a statement about a sacking.

The blue passport has become one of those symbols of Brexit, mocked by Remainers and taken really very seriously by Brexiteers. So it's fitting that the row about is production tells us so much about the way the two camps operate. The current manufacturer of the Burgundy passport is De La Rue, a British supplier, and today that company complained to the BBC that Franco-Dutch firm Germalto had won the contract for the blue passport. Cue nervous responses from ministers such as Matt Hancock about the passport, and plenty of hyperbole from both Brexiteers and Remainers about the news. Those who didn't want Britain to leave the European Union are scoffing that this shows the fallacy of the 'taking back control' argument, and that British businesses are going to lose out as a result of Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn had a good line of attack at today's Prime Minister's Questions, choosing to focus on the financial crisis at Northamptonshire Council. When the Labour leader chooses a less-obvious topic, he has the benefit of surprise, but also the disadvantage of appearing to be avoiding talking about something more important. Today, though, Corbyn had also worked out a smart introductory question, which ended with him asking if what was happening at Northamptonshire was down to 'incompetence at a local level of national level'. This was a difficult question for Theresa May to answer, as it would involve either criticising her own government, or suggesting that Tories weren't very good at a local level.

What did you do this weekend? It seems a significant number of Jeremy Corbyn supporters spent it talking about a hat. The claim that Newsnight photoshopped a picture of Jeremy Corbyn so that he looked 'more Russian' has gone viral, earning tens of thousands of shares across Facebook and Twitter. https://twitter.com/JohnClarke1960/status/974766676213420033 The BBC has had to deny photoshopping Corbyn's hat to make it look bigger, which is a strange denial even for these rather feverish political times. But even if Newsnight producers had wanted to mock the Labour leader up as a Soviet stooge, why would this quick parody matter?

Just in case you had grown confused, the big international story at the moment is actually about Theresa May's response to Russia's involvement in the Salisbury attack, not the internal war in the Labour Party. It's not actually all about Labour, though Jeremy Corbyn and his allies are doing their damnedest to make sure that they get a disproportionate share of the attention. This evening, Corbyn has backed his spokesman's line on Russia, writing a piece in the Guardian which repeats the post-PMQs claim that British intelligence on chemical weapons has been 'problematic'. The Labour leader writes: 'There can and should be the basis for a common political response to this crime.

Jeremy Corbyn was isolated not just by the rest of the House of Commons but also by his own party this afternoon. The Labour leader was the only MP who refused to condemn the culpability of Russia and call for a robust response.  Even his normal allies didn’t manage to support his line: Chris Williamson, who had come into the Chamber with a copy of the Morning Star, bobbed to get the Speaker’s attention for a good while but ended up asking about police cuts.  Those from other parties laid into the Labour leader, with the DUP’s Sammy Wilson accusing him of ‘appeasement’ and Iain Duncan Smith repeating his assertion on Monday that Corbyn had failed to rise to the occasion.

Theresa May has been continuing to call Britain's allies today to discuss the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. She is expected to give a statement to the Commons tomorrow about Russia's response to the allegation that the state was responsible for the attack, and has been seeking assurances that countries such as France, Germany and the United States are on her side. This evening, she spoke to Donald Trump, who told her that 'the US was with the UK all the way, agreeing that the Russian Government must provide unambiguous answers as to how this nerve agent came to be used', according to the Downing Street read-out. You can almost hear Trump saying the words 'all the way', but May was probably listening more keenly for things the President doesn't appear to have said.

Theresa May did a good job in uniting the House of Commons today, but someone who did an even better job in bringing together MPs to praise the Prime Minister was Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader's partisan response to May's statement on the poisoning of Sergei Skripal so antagonised Conservative MPs and so disappointed many on his own side that much of the session was about the failings of the Opposition, rather than the questions for the Government.