MPs have voted in favour of a Brexit withdrawal bill for the first time – but killed off Boris Johnson’s proposal to ram it through Parliament, thereby derailing his plan to leave by Halloween.

The Commons voted by 329 votes to 299 – a majority of 30 – to approve the prime minister’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) in principle, six months after killing off Theresa May’s equivalent version.

However, the PM then lost a vote on his proposed timetable, which stipulated the bill would have to clear all its Commons stages by the end of Thursday in order to fulful his "do or die" pledge to exit the EU at the end of the month, by a margin of 322 to 308.