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It was a busy week. In Brussels, EU leaders signed off on the terms of the transition period and their vision for future trade, but warned that the UK must provide a legally watertight solution for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The European council president, Donald Tusk, said the EU would not draft its political declaration forming the basis of the future relationship until a way was found to avoid a hard border. Promisingly, the lead Department for Exiting the EU civil servant tasked with finding a solution quit after three months.

Britain, incidentally, still seems to expect negotiations on the new relationship to be concluded during the transition; many EU capitals think that’s highly unlikely and believe the status quo will have to be extended beyond December 2020.

In the UK, a political storm was brewing over Observer revelations that Vote Leave – fronted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – channelled money through another campaign to a company linked to the scandal-hit data miner Cambridge Analytica.

Boris Johnson, right, and Michael Gove on the Vote Leave campaign trail in 2016. Photograph: Getty Images

Evidence given to the Electoral Commission by a former volunteer, Shahmir Sanni suggested a £625,000 Vote Leave donation to the supposedly independent BeLeave, later paid to the CA-linked digital services company AIQ, could have violated election rules.

Lawyers said Vote Leave members “may have committed criminal offences”. A former CA employee said the company had conducted data research for the other main pro-Brexit campaign Leave.EU, and misled the public and MPs about it.



And in the Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn came under fire for sacking Owen Smith after the shadow Northern Ireland secretary broke party ranks and called for a referendum on the final Brexit deal in an article in the Guardian.

Labour “cannot allow itself to break apart over Brexit”, the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, told the Observer. In a speech in Birmingham, Starmer later said the party would table amendments to the EU withdrawal bill aimed at stopping the UK crashing out without a deal if parliament rejected the Brexit outcome.

Oh, and there’s now just a year to go until Britain leaves the EU.

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In the Financial Times (paywall), Philip Stephens argues that Britain’s latest Brexit strategy is that “any deal will do” – as long as it keeps the Tory party together:

The story of the first phase of article 50 negotiations was a procession of capitulations. British demands collided with European realities and Theresa May retreated at every turn. The second phase will be much the same except that, as the clock ticks faster, she will be even quicker to abandon her positions. May has other priorities. Politics must trump economics, and the interests of the Conservative party those of the nation. Supply chains, investment and jobs cannot be allowed to get in the way of her efforts to avoid a Tory rupture. For her, the vaguer the autumn accord the better. A fuzzy statement of intent will be sold as all things to all sides – to her party’s nationalists as a clean break with the wicked EU, and to pro-European Tories as the precursor to a close and strong relationship. Most MPs, including those on the Tory side, think Brexit will be bad for Britain. So do a majority of cabinet ministers. At the very least they want to soften the blow. But they are told by the prime minister they must vote for the good of party before country. Perhaps there is a precedent. I cannot recall it. When last did Britain’s elected representatives take a decision that they fully expected would make the nation poorer, less influential and less secure? The cynicism takes one’s breath away.

In the Observer, William Keegan says Brexit was making Britain a joke nation even before the blue passports affair, with May’s transition deal no cause for optimism:

Some leading Brexiters have been noticeably sanguine in the face of a “transitional” deal heralded by many remainers as a rejection of most of their initial demands. They don’t all agree with Nigel Farage that it is “a complete sellout”. This, of course, is because unless a great act of prime ministerial or parliamentary statesmanship puts an end to the farce, the Brexiters see the transitional deal as a mere postponement of their plan to take this benighted country to the edge of the cliff ... Whichever way one – at least this one – looks at it, the most sensible thing the prime minister could do is to rise to the occasion, to be true to her own instincts (and, I understand, those of her not-uninfluential husband) and make a Churchillian broadcast to the nation. In this she would explain that – God knows! – she has tried to honour the referendum result and reconcile the conflicting forces within her party, but enough is enough.

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Excellent if depressing thread from a Renaissance poet. Or someone.