Follow all the day’s events in and around Westminster and beyond
The government has announced that the Queen’s speech will take place on Wednesday next week. The Press Association has just snapped this.
The state opening of parliament and Queen’s speech will take place on Wednesday June 21, the leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom has announced.
That suggests the government must be confident of finalising its deal with the DUP.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
As for the rest of the papers, here is the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must reads, and here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s politics stories.
And here are four stories that are particularly interesting.
Theresa May’s hopes of securing the support of the Democratic Unionist party for her minority government were faltering last night as the Treasury dug in against the costs of a deal ..
Mrs May faces an internal battle over “bribes” to Northern Ireland. One stumbling block is the “Barnett consequentials” — the system supposed to ensure fair funding for all four nations of the UK.
Downing Street figures want to give funds directly to Northern Ireland as a part of a deal to secure the support of the DUP’s 10 MPs. However, the Treasury has warned that higher spending in the province must normally go through the Barnett formula, requiring additional funds for England, Wales and Scotland as well. This makes funding projects in Northern Ireland very expensive, since for every £1 spent there, an additional £35 must be found for the other nations. Although the Barnett formula can be worked round – the government once gave funds direct to Glasgow city council – senior officials and Tory politicians warn that this could create imbalances and cause resentment in Scotland and England.
One source said: “The Treasury feels like it is being bypassed in these discussions. This deal risks failing the smell test and looking like it is nakedly bribing the electorate.”
After months of arguments and occasional humiliation at the hands of Mrs May and her team of advisers in No 10, Mr Hammond is determined to reassert his authority on the Brexit process.
The chancellor wants Mrs May to push for a significant transition period to allow British business to adapt to leaving the customs union and single market after Brexit in 2019 and to soften her stance on immigration controls.
Mr Hammond has been huddled with advisers in the Treasury for the last 48 hours debating whether to make his differences with Mrs May explicit in the speech, by deviating from her 12-point Brexit plan set out in January.
The alternative would be to give a more coded warning, repeating his previous view that people did not vote for Brexit “to become poorer or less secure”, to avoid further weakening the prime minister.
The bolder version, advocated by some in the Treasury, would fire a missile directly at No 10 because it would show divisions in the Brexit strategy at the heart of government only a few days before negotiations are due to start.
Theresa May will face Cabinet resignations if she gives in to demands from Philip Hammond to water down Brexit, senior Tories warned last night …
A senior Tory source said at least three cabinet ministers were prepared to quit if the prime minister bowed to the demands of her chancellor. International trade secretary Liam Fox has told friends his job would be pointless if the UK stayed inside the customs union.
The source said: ‘There is a co-ordinated operation going on, led by Philip Hammond, that is designed to destabilise the Prime Minister.
‘What they are risking now is creating open warfare in the Tory Party. If Hammond gets his way then you will get Cabinet resignations.’
Top Cabinet ministers today fought a major Brexit dust up with Theresa May in a bid to force her to rejig her negotiating strategy.
Chancellor Philip Hammond joined forces with Home Secretary Amber Rudd to demand the weakened PM prioritise jobs over tough immigration controls
With just five days to go before exit talks formally begin, the senior ministers – who backed Remain – also insisted Mrs May take account of last week’s disastrous general election result to shift to “a more pragmatic approach” to them ...
A senior government source said of the meeting: “Philip expressed some strong views, and Amber backed him all the way.
“Nobody is trying to reverse the EU referendum - we are leaving and everyone is fully committed to that.
“But this election has changed an awful lot, so Philip believes we need to fundamentally reassess where we are.”
There will be a ministerial statement in parliament on the Grenfell Tower fire in parliament this afternoon, the BBC’s Norman Smith is reporting.
Govt Statement on #grenfelltower tragedy in Parliament this afternoon
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 15, 2017
Govt statement on #grenfelltower likely take place in Commons committee room
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 15, 2017
Theresa May is expected to visit Grenfell Tower this morning, according to the BBC’s Katy Searle.
Sources have told the BBC the PM will visit the scene at Grenfell fire this morning
— Katy Searle (@KatySearle) June 15, 2017
Parliament is not sitting at the moment - MPs are still being sworn in - but yesterday John Bercow suggested that a minister would hold a meeting with MPs somewhere on the precincts of parliament to take questions about the fire. But the Home Office, which is responsible for fire service matters, is not sure that a meeting will take place. A source said that Nick Hurd, the fire minister, did speak with some MPs yesterday, and that Bercow might have referring to that when he made his comments.
John Healey, the shadow housing minister, has said a minister should make a statement to MPs today. My colleague Matthew Weaver has more on Healey’s comments here on the Grenfell Tower fire live blog.
Mostly I won’t be writing about the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy on Politics Live because we are covering it on a separate live blog, which you can read here.
But the catastrophe has already generated a political argument about who might be to blame, and on the Today programme a few minutes ago the Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said that what happened amounted to “corporate manslaughter”
Lammy said that a close friend of his family, Khadija Saye, and her mother Mary were missing in Grenfell Tower. Saye, a 24-year-old artist, worked for Lammy’s wife, who is also an artist. Lammy said she was “a beautiful young woman with an amazing career ahead of her”. He had heard nothing from her, he said. “Obviously as the seconds pass we grow more sad and bleak at every second,” he said.
He was hoping she was in hospital, he said, “and not perished in the building as I suspect hundreds will have done by the end of this count”.
He also that the fact that those living in the tower block were predominantly poor was a factor in what happened.
This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way and we should call it what it is. It is corporate manslaughter. That’s what it is. And there should be arrests made, frankly. It is an outrage.
Many of use across the country have been caught up in an election knocking on housing estate doors, travelling up to the top floors of tower blocks, and we know as politicians that the conditions in this country are unacceptable.
We build buildings in the 70s. Those 70s buildings, many of them should be demolished. They have not got easy fire escapes. They have got no sprinklers. It is totally, totally unacceptable in Britain that this is allowed to happen and that people lose their lives in this way. People should be held to account.
Good morning. I’m taking over from Graham.
It had been thought that the main candidates in the Lib Dem leadership contest would be Jo Swinson and Sir Vince Cable. But the BBC’s Norman Smith has been told they might not stand.
Am told likely contenders in @LibDems leadership will be @normanlamb and Ed Davey
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 15, 2017
Am told @vincecable cd takeover leadership of @LibDems on temporary basis as caretaker leader
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 15, 2017
Our colleague Jessica Elgot has analysed Farron’s leadership here and those questions about his faith that kept cropping up. Here’s a bit of it:
In the crucial first week of the general election campaign however, Farron’s real chance to make an impression on the public was dogged with questions over his attitude to gay sex. Initially he attempted to deflect the question by insisting he was not a religious philosopher. When he finally sat down with the BBC’s Eleanor Garnier in an intervention to clarify he did not believe gay sex was a sin, the damage had been done.
He later faced questions too on his attitude to abortion, faced with a copy of an old interview he gave with a Salvation army magazine where he said the procedure was “wrong”. He acted far more decisively, insisting he was “pro-choice” and the time limit on abortion should be set by science.
Meanwhile the shockwaves in Liberal Democrat circles over the resignation of leader Tim Farron are still being felt.
As you will see from our round up below Farron quit yesterday saying: “The consequences of the focus on my faith is that I have found myself torn between living as a faithful Christian and serving as a political leader.
“To be a political leader - especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 - and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me.”
Former Lib Dem deputy leader Sir Simon Hughes has been on Radio 4’s Today programme and called Farron’s statement “brave and honourable”.
“He said very clearly he had become the subject of suspicion because of what I believe or what my faith is ... and it would be the same for people of other faiths who have strong faith views.
“Where there are issues which are very controversial within that faith community it became unfairly difficult that Tim was put in the firing line and felt that he couldn’t adequately do justice to his faith while upholding the liberal values which he has argued for all his life.”
No room for politics on the front pages of the papers today. They all lead on the Grenfell Tower fire so all Brexit and post-election headlines have been, for a day at least, shelved.
The Telegraph though has an interesting enough Brexit story snuck away on its website. It’s behind a premium paywall but basically says that Theresa May is considering offering a ‘sweetener’ to Brussels as talks with the EU negotiator are set to start.
That sweetener is that EU citizens already in the UK may be able to keep the right to bring their non-EU spouses into Britain after Brexit - something which not even UK citizens can do. Apparently this forms “part of a generous package of measures that aim to kick-start Brexit negotiations in Brussels on Monday,” the paper says.
Good morning and welcome to politics live on a day when the goings-on in Westminster will inevitably be overshadowed by the grim aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Here is where we stand in the political world:
The Conservatives and the DUP have been holding back their expected announcement of a minority government deal due to the tragic events in west London. Theresa May also wants time for talks with Sinn Féin and other Northern Ireland parties because of potential implications for power-sharing in Stormont. She is expected to meet parties today at Downing Street.
The Queen’s speech also looks set to be put back from Monday. Jeremy Corbyn has said it was a “nonsense situation” for the country not to know when it will have a functioning government and parliament.
The Liberal Democrats are looking for a new leader after Tim Farron said yesterday he will step down because of persistent questioning over his Christian beliefs. “I am passionate about defending the rights and liberties of people who believe very different things to me,” said Farron, adding that he had never sought to impose his faith on people through politics but it had nonetheless made him the subject of suspicion. Successors are being discussed as a leadership election looms during the summer recess.
Corbyn meanwhile has carried out a light-touch reshuffle of his Labour shadow cabinet, including adding former critic Owen Smith in the Northern Ireland portfolio. Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, loses the job of party chair, which goes to ex-miner Ian Lavery who co-chaired the election campaign.
And later tonight Chancellor Philip Hammond is expected to lay out this vision of a business-friendly Brexit at a speech at the Mansion House.
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