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Top stories

Despite reports last week that the British and Irish governments were close to reaching a deal to solve the problem of the Irish border backstop, as Brexit talks resume in secretive “tunnel” mode this week, it is clear that the issue remains the main stumbling block to progress.

The EU may, it seems, be prepared to accept an all-UK customs union, with some “deeper” clauses, to replace its proposed Northern Ireland-specific one – but that would require acceptance by Downing Street that the customs union was effectively permanent, which Brexiters are unlikely to accept.

And so with Dublin and the EU27 adamant that the backstop cannot be time-limited, EU officials put at “50-50” the chances of Theresa May striking a border deal with Brussels that she can sell to her cabinet and parliament: the two sides’ competing red lines are still “incompatible” in key areas.

The government strongly denied a report that a deal on financial services had been reached, and fishing re-emerged as a major bone of contention, with a number of EU states objecting to any all-UK customs deal without agreement that their fleets can continue to operate in British waters.

Away from the talks, the drama centred on Arron Banks, whose donation to the unofficial leave campaign was the biggest in UK politics. The Electoral Commission said the National Crime Agency would investigate multiple possible criminal offences by the insurance millionaire, prompting calls for Brexit to be suspended.

Banks may not have been “the true source” of £8m in funding to Leave.EU, it is suspected. Separately, new allegations emerged that he may have misled parliament, with leaked emails showing that – despite his denials – his insurance staff worked on the Leave.EU campaign from their company offices.

Controversially, he appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show to insist there was “no Russian money, no interference” and it was all his own dosh – but refused to disclose which of his many companies had generated it.

This is complicated stuff (the arcane nature of his companies’ dealings confused even Banks, let alone Marr), but my colleagues Peter Walker and David Pegg have written two fine explainers on why Banks is being investigated and what questions he has to answer.

All this put more wind in the sails of the campaign for a second referendum, with 1,500 of the UK’s top lawyers and more than 70 business leaders signing open letters to the prime minister calling for a “people’s vote” amid warnings from the credit ratings agency S&P that a no-deal Brexit would trigger a lengthy UK recession.

What next?

While parliament goes into recess this week, the government wants “decisive progress” made on the Irish border backstop question by Friday in the hope that Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, can then call an extraordinary Brexit summit, possibly on 22 November, to seal a possible deal.

A cabinet meeting on Tuesday may see some progress on the UK side, potentially clearing the way for the withdrawal agreement to be sorted by December. That would give parliament the necessary time to ratify it (which it is by no means certain to do). None of the above, of course, is in any sense guaranteed to happen.

Best of the rest

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The Guardian’s editorial makes an important point about suspicions that the money Arron Banks donated to Leave.EU was not his own:

If it is found that crimes have been committed, then Mr Banks ought to face the consequences. But Leave.EU was not the designated Brexit campaign. It is one thing to show that electoral law has been broken. It is another to show that a foreign-funded campaign was so effective that it could mobilise a large enough group of voters who would have not been mobilised otherwise. If it is conclusively shown that the referendum was manipulated and the result unsafe, the headlong rush to leave the EU ought to be paused. We are not there – yet. Ministers are rightly wary of appearing to interfere with the poll result in 2016. But they must also ensure that elections cannot be stolen and that votes are not robbed of their meaning.

Also in the Guardian, Paul Grade argues says member states are willing to stand firm on the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, because:

The crisis would be short. The impact on the UK from customs delays alone would be so disastrous that London would quickly come back to the table. In this sense, it doesn’t matter whether the UK government or parliament blocks the deal. For the EU, no deal is not an end state; it is the continuation of negotiation by other means. This is not fully appreciated in the UK, where … no deal is depicted as a long, hard struggle. The EU will not choose this route just to make a point. But the important fact is that key EU leaders think they can take the risk, confident that it would only last a matter of days before the UK had to seek a deal.

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Ireland’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, makes the point yet again. Oddly, Britain never seems to quite hear it: