Tory leadership: Contenders clash over Brexit|By Justin ParkinsonBBC News//

On Tuesday the six remaining candidates to become Conservative leader – and prime minister – go to a second ballot of the party’s MPs. On Sunday night five of them – with frontrunner Boris Johnson not taking part – faced each other during a debate hosted by Channel 4. As expected, the testiest exchanges were over Brexit.

International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and Home Secretary Sajid Javid warned against proroguing – formally ending the current session of – Parliament to get through a no-deal Brexit if MPs fail to back an agreement with the EU. But ex-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said all options must remain open.

Social care funding and taxation were among the other subjects that came up. Have a look at the key moments.

Another debate – this time including Mr Johnson, as long as he gets through the next round of voting – will take place on BBC One at 20:00 BST on Tuesday. In the meantime, here are some quick profiles of the Tory contenders.

Meanwhile, Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has urged his party to make the case for the UK remaining in the EU “strongly”.

So, amid all the arguments, what’s likely to happen next with Brexit?

Teenagers ‘paid to stab other youths’

The BBC has discovered that teenagers in Liverpool are being paid up to £1,000 by gang bosses to stab other young people. So-called “elders” want to distance themselves from violence, from fear of arrest, and so are ready to give the money, the Beyond Today podcast found. This follows government data showing almost three-quarters of people caught with knives and offensive weapons in England and Wales last year were first-time offenders.

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“I have enjoyed meeting Angela Merkel and Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher and all the rest, but I have always done that as an observer. I never wanted to do it,” he says.

“I want to stop Brexit. Fix Britain. And then I want to reform the things that are wrong with the EU,” says Gavin Esler. He has a lot on.

The 66-year-old former BBC Newsnight presenter is standing to be an MEP in London for Change UK – the new pro-Remain party formed by The Independent Group of ex-Labour and Tory MPs.

Esler is speaking to HuffPost UK less than 48-hours after he was unveiled as an election candidate at his new party’s campaign launch in Bristol. “It’s all a bit hazy,” he laughs at the whirlwind.

“We are trying to get up an organisation. We are trying to get each other’s telephone numbers and emails. And we have four weeks until the election.”

The party has had a rocky introduction to electoral politics, with several of its candidates being exposed for making offensive comments online. One stepped down after it was revealed he once said “black women scare me”. Not ideal for a party that brands itself as the sensible centre. Heidi Allen, the interim leader, has admitted its vetting process was “not good enough”.

Esler agrees Change UK needs to “learn very fast” in terms of how to organise. “We absolutely will make mistakes,” he says. But adds: “In terms of the basic principles and message, we are great.”

“We really appeal anybody Britain who is fed up with Brexit,” he says.

And his “gut feeling” is that this year’s poll will see the biggest turnout in Britain for election to the European parliament ever. This, he hopes, will see not “so many strange characters” becoming MEPs as in the past.

This might prove to be true. But that does not mean the pro-Remain parties will be the main beneficiaries.

A YouGov poll of the elections released after this interview put Change UK on 10% of the vote. Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party holds a commanding lead on 28%.

“Nigel Farage has got some strengths,” Esler freely admits. “He really connects with people. He is a very good talker. I find him very affable. I would very happily buy him a beer. And I am sure he would be happy with it to.”

But Esler add of the Brexit Party leader: “He is a talker not a doer. He couldn’t even organise a march from Sunderland to London. He literally talks the talk and doesn’t walk the walk. He is a formidable campaigner. But the message he sends out is essentially hollow. It’s bankrupt.”

And he warns that while Farage is “more honest on that than many other politicians who support Brexit”, his approach is reminiscent of Nazism.

“The word ‘betrayal’ was used in German from 1919 onwards and throughout the 1920s with terrible results. I am not doing some some sort of scary thing here. That kind of rhetoric, ‘saboteurs’, all those kinds of words used about fellow British citizens who happen to disagree is really bad,” Esler says.

For Esler, the jump from journalism to professional politician was “really hard”. As perhaps could be expected of a veteran reporter, he had “always been sceptical about people in power”.

“I have enjoyed meeting Angela Merkel and Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher and all the rest, but I have always done that as an observer. I never wanted to do it,” he says.

The trigger, unsurprisingly for anyone who follows him on Twitter, was Brexit. “This is about Britain. This is about the country I love. People who have stolen our patriotism on the far-right and I want that back,” he says.

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Category / Change UK

Tories clash over Brexit and teens ‘paid £1,000 to stab’

Tory leadership: Contenders clash over Brexit|By Justin ParkinsonBBC News//

Teenagers ‘paid to stab other youths’

Gavin Esler: TV News Must Stop Giving Airtime To The ‘Village Idiots’ Of Brexit

“I have enjoyed meeting Angela Merkel and Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher and all the rest, but I have always done that as an observer. I never wanted to do it,” he says.

Tory leadership: Contenders clash over Brexit|By Justin ParkinsonBBC News//

Teenagers ‘paid to stab other youths’

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