We have now closed today’s live blog. Thanks for all your comments and for reading. Here are our latest political stories and my colleague Andrew Sparrow’s roundup from earlier.

ITV should not be allowed to give Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn the opportunity to “sidestep” debating Brexit, the Liberal Democrats have said after the High Court ruled the debate between the two party leaders tomorrow evening will go ahead as planned.

In a statement following the decision, Lib Dem president Sal Brinton said:

The Liberal Democrats’ position in this election and that of our leader is unique - Jo Swinson is the only leader of a national party fighting to stop Brexit.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn should not be allowed to sidestep debating the issue of Brexit with someone who wants to remain, and ITV should not give them the opportunity to do so.

That is why this is an incredibly disappointing verdict. Not just for the Liberal Democrats but also for democracy in this country, and for every remainer who deserves to have a voice in this debate.

This law needs to change. ITV needs to change. Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats brought this court case because our politics needs to change too.

Televised debates between political party leaders should be framed in stronger legislation. But more than that, our democracy should not be in the hands of invisible corporate structures, and arrangements for such debates should always be accessible and transparent.

Earlier, (see 5.10pm) the SNP said excluding Nicole Sturgeon from the debate meant Scots were being treated as second-class citizens.

ITV said in a statement: “We welcome the court’s decision and will continue with our comprehensive election coverage as planned.”

Jeremy Corbyn has paid tribute to a Labour campaigner with terminal breast cancer who died days after describing being left in hospital without treatment for hours.

Jayne Rae, 53, from Whittle-le-Woods in Lancashire, died on Monday morning after a year with the disease. In a video shared by the Labour leader on Sunday she painted a grim picture of the difficulties patients faced in accessing treatment.

“I have never seen people lying in corridors covered in blood, dying, doctors under stress, nurses unable to help to the point of they were crying in frustration,” she said, adding that her mother was “begging” staff for help as she spent several hours waiting for treatment in “extreme pain”.

Corbyn tweeted following news of her death: “Incredibly sad to hear that Jayne died this morning. Jayne’s life ended as she lived it: making the world a better place for others. Jayne sent me this video which shows her passion for defending our NHS and making sure it’s there for everyone whenever they need it.”

ITV’s Rachel Younger has more on the reason for the high court’s decision not to allow the Lib Dem/SNP legal challenge to tomorrow’s two-party election leaders’ debate.

From my colleague Jim Waterson

A Labour government would launch an investigation into British colonialism and its legacy today, the party’s election manifesto is expected to declare, according to this HuffPost UK story by Paul Waugh.

David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary who is trying to defend his South West Hertfordshire seat as an independent, having been thrown out of the parliamentary party for rebelling over Brexit, has been campaigning today with Amber Rudd, another former Tory cabinet minister who resigned the whip over Brexit.

Speaking at a Unite conference in Brigton, the union’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, described Boris Johnson as “Eton’s answer to Del Boy”. He said:

Ultimately this election is about trust. Who do we trust to charter our communities out of the troubled waters, to a better future?

Is it Boris Johnson, a man whose privileged upbringing has given him such an arrogant sense of entitlement to rule, and would appear to be prepared to stop at nothing to keep the keys to Number 10. Eton’s answer to Del Boy.

Or is it Jeremy Corbyn, the only leader able and determined to speak for our whole nation, on Brexit as on other issues.

And here is my colleague Owen Bowcott’s story on the high court decision.

Patience Wheatcroft, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, has announced that she is supporting the Lib Dem Chuka Umunna to be the next MP for the Cities of London and Westminster. She is a strong opponent of Brexit and supports a second referendum.

We have not written much here today about Jennifer Arcuri, who has been giving interviews about her friendship with Boris Johnson, which has now led to him being subject to various investigations into whether he abused his position as London mayor because her firm benefited from sponsorship and trade mission access during his term in office. But my colleague Marina Hyde has been watching, and she has a great write-up here.

And here is an extract.

The most worrying moment for Johnson’s team will have been the bit where [Victoria] Derbyshire told the otherwise elliptic Arcuri she could help him out by saying there was no conflict of interest. Quick as a flash she shot back: “And he could help me out. Like, two months ago.” She’d sent him a text, she revealed. “You wanna read it?” she asked, reaching for her phone. “‘Is this the price of loyalty? To be hung up on, ignored and blocked? Why would I remain silent if you can’t even speak to me?’”

So there you have Jennifer Arcuri in all her, like, glory – this election’s picaresque anti-heroine. And I’m afraid we all know what happens to those. In the story of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, who would definitely have been monstered on GMB, Thomas Hardy is clear: “The woman pays.” And so with Jennifer of the Arcuris. The woman pays. The prime minister? Nah, seems unlikely. But that’s business. Try not to choke on it.

On the Today programme this morning Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary, said that cutting the rate of corporation tax had led to the overall income to the government from this tax going up. Given that she was speaking only hours before Boris Johnson announced that he was abandoning a proposed further cut in corporation tax, her comment could be seen as an implicit criticism of the policy her leader was about to announce. She told the programme:

What we’ve seen since we’ve reduced corporation tax from 28% to 19%, making it the lowest in the G20, is we’ve seen an increase in the amount of tax taken by the exchequer.

This afternoon the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the tax and spending thinktank, has published a short briefing note on the Johnson announcement. It says that, while Leadsom may be correct in saying overall revenue has gone up while the rate has gone down, she would have been wrong if she was implying a causal relationship. The IFS says:

Corporation tax revenue has increased since 2010 even while the headline rate has been cut. But that does not mean that rate reductions have increased revenue.

First ... much of the rise in revenue since 2010 is simply recovering from the effects of the financial crisis and recession. We would have expected a recovery in profits even if the corporation tax rate had not been cut.

Second, while the government has reduced the headline rate of corporation tax, at the same time it has increased corporation tax in other ways, including reducing capital allowances for investment, introducing the bank surcharge, restricting companies’ ability to offset past losses against future profits, and a raft of anti-avoidance measures ... Taken together these measures recoup around £10bn of the £13bn spent reducing the headline rate.

The IFS also says the Johnson decision to abandon the proposed cut in corporation tax will free up £6bn for the government to spend on other things.

These are from the Press Association’s Ian Jones.

Labour has softened its pledge to find a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030 after unions pushed for a target of significant progress rather than a firm commitment, my colleagues Rowena Mason, Heather Stewart and Matthew Taylor report.

In an interview with BBC News Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, has just ridiculed the idea that Brexit would be “done” under Boris Johnson’s plan to pass his withdrawal agreement. That would not be Brexit over, she said. She said it would just be the end of “series one”; there would be a whole “box set” yet to come, because of the post-Brexit trade negotiation with the EU. Swinson said the Lib Dem policy of abandoning Brexit and staying in the EU was the only way of resolving this quickly.

The Federation of Small Businesses has welcomed Jeremy Corbyn’s promise to tackle the late payments crisis, which has left many small businesses waiting without cash for invoices to be honoured.

“Our late payment crisis remains the biggest scourge afflicting the UK’s small business community. It destroys 50,000 firms a year at a cost of at least £2.5bn to the economy,” said chairman Mike Cherry.

Q: Could the Lib Dems work with Labour if it replaced its leader?

Swinson says, if the Lib Dems do not get a majority, they will still want to stop Brexit.

She says neither Boris Johnson nor Jeremy Corbyn deserve to be PM. Lib Dems votes will not put either of them there, she says.

She says there is a real fear in the Jewish community about Corbyn becoming prime minister. There is no way the Liberal Democrats could vote for him to be PM on that basis, she says.

Jo Swinson is now taking questions.

Q: Won’t your plan to abolish business rates, and replace them with a levy on landlords, just lead to rents going up?

Swinson says business rates can be a crippling cost.

Swinson says the offer from the two main parties is a “terrible choice”. The Conservatives do not respect the rule of law. And Labour thinks little of property rights, she says.

A Tory official has been in touch to say that an Office for Budget Responsibility report earlier this year said cutting corporation tax from 19% to 17% would have cost the Treasury £5.4bn by 2023-24. (See para 4.36 on page 83 here [pdf].)

(So, when Boris Johnson told the CBI abandoning this tax cut would save £6bn for the NHS and other public services, it seems he was generously rounding up the total.)

From Sky’s business correspondent Paul Kelso, who’s at the CBI conference:

Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, claims small businesses would benefit from a “clean break” Brexit.

Jo Swinson is to present the Liberal Democrats as “the natural party of business” when she speaks to the CBI conference this afternoon, primarily as the party wants to prevent Brexit.

Swinson, with an ever-growing entourage of reporters and TV crews in tow, took one of the Lib Dem battlebuses to Kings Langley, just north of London, to visit Imagination Technologies, a sizeable UK firm which specialises in graphics processing and other computing functions, though from the marketing and intellectual property side, rather than manufacturing.

This was explained at some length to Swinson as she toured a big room in the firm’s HQ lined with various laptops, phones and tablets using the company’s products. At one point she was shown a device designed to answer voice questions, which happily provided details about Imagination Technologies. “Which UK party wants to stop Brexit?” Swinson asked it, getting a long, slightly awkward silence in response.

Speaking to reporters at the visit, Swinson said she would have some “some very specific” policies to announce at the CBI, but provided a message that was, as is much the party does in this election, centred around Brexit:

The Liberal Democrats are now the natural party of business. Instead of the Brexit plans of the Conservatives and the Labour party, that are going to hit the economy hard, the Liberal Democrats will stop Brexit. We also want to make sure that businesses can get the skills and the talent they need.

The Overseas Development Institute is holding what it says may be the only general election hustings devoted to the topic of overseas aid. It is just starting now, and there is a live feed here. Those taking part include Ray Collins, the former Labour general secretary, Lady Sheehan from the Lib Dems, Natalie Bennett from the Greens and Elizabeth Babade from the Brexit party.

Tory sources are saying that the £6bn figure for the amount saved by not going ahead with next year’s corporation tax is an annual figure, not a cumulative, five-year figure. (See 12.44pm.)

More on how much the government will save by abandoning the corporation tax cut from 19% to 17% due to come into force next year.

In 2016 the Treasury said this tax cut was worth just £945m a year. (See 12.44pm.) Earlier this year my colleague Richard Partington said that this cut was expected to cost the Treasury much more than originally assumed. “An analysis based on HMRC data suggests that the loss of revenue from the planned cuts, initiated by former chancellor George Osborne but supported by incumbent Philip Hammond, could add up to more than £6bn,” his report said.

And, according to Newsnight’s Ben Chu, in 2017 the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that by 2022 this tax cut would cost almost £7bn.

These are from Newsnight’s economics editor, Ben Chu.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has put out a statement saying Boris Johnson’s decision to abandon the corporation tax cut planned for next year will not repair the damage caused by Tory tax cuts. He said:

Johnson has announced a temporary pause in the Tories’ race to the bottom on corporation tax

It cannot compensate for the lives that have been lost and will not repair the damage done to our communities to pay for the Conservatives’ handouts to big business since 2010.

The government’s own figures show that billions have been lost to the public purse, which has had real consequences across the country.

Labour is committed to gradually raising corporation tax to 26%, which would still be lower than the 28% level it was at when Labour left office in 2010.

This is from Nick Macpherson, a former permanent secretary at the Treasury, on Boris Johnson’s corporation tax announcement - an effective tax rise.

The main rate of corporation tax is 19%, but it was due to fall to 17% in April next year.

At the time this cut was announced, by George Osborne in the March 2016 budget, the Treasury said this would cost £945m in 2020-21.

It is not clear yet why Johnson is saying this would raise £6bn for the NHS. He may be using a cumulative, five-year figure - in which case what he has announced today is a long way off matching the Labour plans, which Labour itself says would lead to health spending being £6bn a year higher in real terms than under current government plans. (See 11.26am.)

UPDATE: I’m still waiting for clarification from CCHQ, but there have been reports saying that the corporation tax cut was going to cost far more than assumed in 2016, and that £6bn a year is a fair figure. (See 1.13pm.)

FURTHER UPDATE: The £6bn figure is an annual figure, the Tories say. (See 1.26pm.)

Extinction Rebellion protesters have been at Labour HQ this morning as part of their campaign for parties to commit to much tougher action to deal with the climate crisis, including reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2025. The group says it is going to target all the UK political parties.

Corbyn is taking three more questions. These are from members of the CBI audience, not journalists.

Q: What is your attitude towards the sharing economy?

Corbyn says he approves of sharing, not wasting.

Q: What are you going to do to disprove claims that Labour is “for the many, not the Jew”, and to show that you care about antisemitism and racism?

Corbyn says racism is a scourge and an evil for all of us. Whether it is antisemitism, Islamophobia, or any other form of racism, it is evil. He says it has no place in a civilised society. Labour will continue to fund protection for synagogues and other places of worship, and it will continue to fund anti-racist education in schools.

He says Labour will audit the way the public sector recruits to promote diversity.

He says he was brought up to hate racism. He has opposed it all his life. He says he will carry that attitude into Downing Street.

Q: You have not mentioned industrial strategy. Are you going to follow the current government’s strategy?

Corbyn says Labour will increase corporation tax, but not beyond 2010 levels.

Poverty is a terrible waste, he says. Children growing up in poverty can find it hard to learn if they do not have space to do their homework.

Q: How will a four-day week help productivity?

Corbyn says this will be funded and paid for by productivity increases. He says over many years working times have come down as a result of productivity increases.

He ends by saying he thinks everyone would support a fairer and more egalitarian society.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

Corbyn tells his audience that there are many things they agree on.

What a Labour government will do is raise the platform on which our whole society stands so that businesses and individuals can build themselves up even higher and reach their dreams.

You know despite people’s differences, there are things we can all agree on. None of us wants to live in a society where we have to step over rough sleepers on our way to work. None of us wants to live in a society where foodbank collection points are needed in every supermarket. None of us wants to live in a society where one in three children grows up in poverty.

I just want to live in a decent society. And I know you do too. It doesn’t have to be an either/or choice because the opportunities created for businesses under a Labour government will be immense.

Corbyn says Labour’s plans mean tackling inequality and addressing the climate crisis can go hand in hand.

Our green industrial revolution means that tackling the climate crisis and reducing inequality can go hand in hand because the inequality that scars our society is not inevitable; it’s not an act of God or a law of physics.

It’s the result of deliberate government policy that has made us one of the most unequal countries in Europe both between the billionaires at the very top and everybody else and between the different parts of the UK.

This inequality is unsustainable and immoral. Ending it requires government action so that investment reaches all and people are supported to unlock their talents.

Corbyn is now giving details of Labour’s proposed 320,000 new climate apprenticeships.

Corbyn claims the PM wants to hand over parts of the NHS to American companies under a trade deal with the US. He claims that this could lead to £500m a week handed over to US drug companies. Labour would legislate to stop this, he says.

(The £500m per week figure is not particularly plausible, because it is an extreme, worst-case scenario. This Channel 4 News FactCheck explains why.)

Corbyn says Labour supports the proposals in the CBI’s own manifesto for the election.

Contrary to what some people claim, Labour does not think the state can address all the problems facing the country without help from business, he says.

Corbyn says Labour will ask big businesses to pay their fair share of tax.

And some services will be brought back into public ownership.

But this is normal in many parts of Europe, he says.

Jeremy Corbyn is due to address the CBI, but there is a problem with the autocue.

Johnson says he is announcing package of measures to help business flourish.

Here is how they were summed up in an overnight press notice from the Conservative party. (Bold from original release.)

A business rates cut. The burden of business rates will be reduced as part of a fundamental review.

A jobs tax cut. National insurance contributions will be cut by £1,000 for over half a million employers.

A construction tax cut. Tax relief on the purchase, building or leasing of a structure will be increased by 1%.

A research tax cut. We will review the scope of R&D tax credits and increase the rate by 1%.

Johnson says the country needs a government that “believes in business” and understands the importance of wealth creators.

He claims more businesses have been created in the UK since 2010 than in France and Germany combined.

Johnson is broadening out his speech now to wider policy areas. The Tories would cut crime, he says, and invest in education.

Young people must be able to, literally, find work, he says. And that is why infrastructure is so important, he says.

He says, as well as focusing on big infrastructure projects, Johnson says he wants to focus on smaller transport projects too: better roads, better buses, more cycleways. He loves cycleways, he says.

He says, by doing this, government can create “the platform for growth”. And, if it does that, the market will respond, he says.

Johnson says he wants to cut the productivity gap in the UK.

But he will do that not be decapitating the tall poppies, but by levelling up.

Johnson claims Jeremy Corbyn would be dependent on an alliance with the SNP.

And he says Corbyn’s position on the EU is “positively mind-boggling”.

He says it is still not clear whether or not Corbyn will campaign for the deal he will negotiate with the EU. Or, like Alec Guinness in the Bridge on the River Kwai, will he blow up the bridge he has himself constructed?

Johnson says there is a pent-up, tidal wave of investment waiting to come into the UK once Brexit is resolved.

He says he would not normally introduced party politics into a speech like this. But this is an election campaign, he says. He says the Tory Brexit deal is ready to go. You just add hot water and stir, he says (using his Pot Noodle simile again).

He says the Conservative plan would give stability and certainty to business.

It is a Blue Peter deal - “here’s one I prepared earlier”.

And he says every single Conservative party candidate has explicitly backed his deal. (In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, he said they had been asked to give a pledge to that effect.)

Johnson says the economy is not achieving as much as it could.

There is so much more natural energy to unleash, he says.

The country is being held back by politics, by parliament, he says. He is using a version of the passage released in advance. (See 9.29am.)

Boris Johnson starts by saying it is a pleasure to be at this venue, a hotel near the O2 arena. He says as London mayor he gave planning permission for it to be built.

He is now delivering his familiar riff about who much the UK exports to the rest of the world.

These are from the BBC’s business editor, Simon Jack, on the speech and Q&A from Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general.

Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of the CBI, is speaking at the conference now.

She has just argued that business is at risk from ideologues on both the right and the left in politics: from those on the right, who want a no-deal Brexit because it will lead to deregulation; and from those on the left pushing a nationalisation agenda.

I will post the quotes shortly.

The CBI conference has started. John Allan, the CBI president, is giving the opening speech.

There is a live feed here.

Prof Sir John Curtice, the elections expert who is in charge of the exit poll used by the BBC and other broadcasters, told the Today programme this morning that he thought Labour had made “a bit of ground at the expense of the Liberal Democrats amongst remain voters” during the campaign so far but that it was still struggling with leave voters.

The Labour party has spent most of the last week not talking about Brexit but trying to persuade voters on the leave side of the argument to come to the Labour party on the basis of its domestic agenda. The truth is the polls suggest this is not having any cut-through at all.

Labour’s share of the vote amongst leave voters – a grand total of 14% – is exactly the same now as it was a week ago, and that’s the other clear message from the polls.

Curtice also said the Liberal Democrats were finding it difficult to win over remain voters from the Conservatives.

Equally for the Liberal Democrats, another absolutely clear message, that a lot of them think they can forge ahead by taking away remain voters from the Conservatives – well, I have to say the polls suggest that so far again their strategy is not doing much good.

Curtice said there was a “binary choice” when it came to Brexit at the election.

Either we get a Conservative majority, and in the wake of that majority Boris Johnson will be able to pursue Brexit along the lines he proposes - and at the moment that is the direction in which the polls are quite firmly pointing - or perhaps we get a hung parliament and given that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Greens and Plaid Cymru are apparently all on the same page in wanting to have a second referendum, then presumably that is what would happen in the wake of a hung parliament.

At its party conference in September Labour passed a motion saying the party should work “towards a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030”. But that does not necessarily mean the 2030 target will be in the party’s manifesto, and on the Today programme this morning Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, implied the manifesto target will be looser. This is from the BBC’s Norman Smith.

UPDATE: This is what Gardiner told Today:

We will have a power sector 90% powered by renewables by 2030. That is absolutely in line with achieving the overall targets that we have set which is to make sure that well before 2050 we have achieved the net-zero which we need to do ...

The target that we’ve already committed to is to make sure that we have a net-zero economy well before 2050.

What we’ve said is that we’ll be making sure that the power sector – and this was the key thing that intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) said – that you have to have halved your emissions by 2030 in order to have a chance of achieving the targets, the global targets, that we need.

In an interview on the Today programme Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary, said that if the Conservatives won the election their immigration rules would be “fair to the world” and not just the EU. She explained:

The immigration rules at the moment allow free movement from all EU nations and then quite significantly tighter rules from the rest of the world.

Our immigration rules will be fair to the world once we leave the European Union.

What that means is, instead of being open, free-access to benefits, to work and to coming here without a job to the EU but tight for the rest of the world, what we will have is a system that can control the types of workers that we need in our economy, that can be driven by the needs to the UK economy, and that will be fair to the entire world instead of just free movement from the EU.

Labour’s David Lammy has accused her of “migrant bashing”.

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Sarah Marsh.

As my colleague Matthew Weaver reports, Boris Johnson is facing fresh pressure over his relationship with the American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri. Arcuri gave an interview to ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning and, although she has refused to say whether she had an affair with Johnson when he was London mayor, she described their relationship as “very special”.

Asked directly on“was it an affair”, Arcuri replied:

I’m not going to answer that question, but as you can tell there was a very special relationship there and when it did come out, half the people already assumed the affair and told me to admit.

The other half just wanted me to deny, deny, deny.

We will be pausing the live blog for a while and resuming shortly. Thank you

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, are also speaking at the CBI conference.

Labour has promised to create a climate apprenticeship programme that will train an average of 80,000 people a year.

Under the plans, they said they will deliver 320,000 apprenticeships in England during their first term in government, with the programme creating 886,000 by 2030.

The conference comes after the CBI director general, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, said Corbyn’s nationalisation plans would “freeze investment”, and called on Labour to work with business.

She told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “We look at the policies on the table and we have real concerns that they are going to crack the foundations of our economy.”

That’s it from me, I am now handing over to my colleague Sarah Marsh, who will then pass the baton to Andrew Sparrow. Thanks for reading.

If you need to wake up fast, click on this offering on rail transport from Jeremy Corbyn and turn the volume up to 11.

That’s the papers. Time for a little more on the latest from the Arcuri investigation from Matthew Weaver. The London assembly’s oversight committee is going to review a case stemming from 2010, when Johnson failed to declare an interest after having affair with the City Hall adviser Helen Macintyre, who later had a child with him.

At the time, Johnson acknowledged that a potential conflict of interest had not been disclosed and vowed to “bear in mind the definition of close associate for the future”.

Len Duvall, a Labour assembly member who chairs the committee, said: “I’m looking at the paperwork into Helen Macintyre. We need to understand that because he was advised to make those declarations in the future. The question is why did he hide the new relationship with Arcuri?”

You can read more here.

The i takes a similar tack to the Guardian, with the calls for Andrew to meet the FBI following his interview. It notes that he could face a subpoena to testify if he were to travel to the US.

The Financial Times reports on the latest developments in the Saudi Aramco IPO and gives its picture slot to the unrest in Hong Kong at the weekend.

The Daily Express sticks to the election schedule, and gives Boris Johnson’s business boost top billing, but mentions Andrew’s widely derided TV interview in a blurb at the top.

The Daily Mirror has its own exclusive, quoting a former royal protection officer’s view of Andrew’s denials regarding Virginia Giuffre’s allegations that he had sex with her when she was 17.

The Daily Mail engages in damage limitation for Andrew, quoting the prince’s friends as saying he regretted not showing more sympathy for Epstein’s victims.

The Sun says Andrew told the Queen the interview was “a great success”, and reports on criticism of Jeremy Corbyn for saying he would be prepared to give up the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent.

The Times says Prince Andrew is defiant despite the fallout, and pushes its exclusive about the encounter by Emily Maitlis. It gives its fifth column to Johnson’s attempt to heal the rift with business caused by Brexit.

The Telegraph splashes with an unhappy Queen (in a very striking hat), quoting a royal source as saying she did not give the BBC interview her blessing. It gives Boris Johnson its anchor spot underneath with his pitch to businesses at the CBI today.

Today’s newspapers are almost entirely taken up with the fallout from Prince Andrew’s Newsnight interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, variously described as a “car crash” or a “great success” on today’s front pages.

Today’s Guardian focuses on Epstein’s victims, with their lawyers demanding that Andrew speak to the FBI.