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Five pizza-eating cabinet ministers — Andrea Leadsom, Penny Mordaunt, Liam Fox, Michael Gove and Chris Grayling — put it about that Theresa May, the Prime Minister, could be persuaded to amend the draft withdrawal agreement with the EU before she signs it at a summit this Sunday. But Mrs May said that she had a deal and was determined to ‘deliver’ it. Having warned that if her Brexit withdrawal agreement was rejected Britain could end up either with no deal or no Brexit, Mrs May went off to Brussels, leaving the new Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, behind. Jacob Rees-Mogg had declared that he had sent a letter to Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, calling for Mrs May to go; 48 in all were required, but numbers rose slowly, and some MPs withdrew their letters after sending them. Asked if his plot had descended into a Dad’s Army farce, Mr Rees-Mogg said: ‘I’ve always admired Captain Mainwaring.’ The ten Democratic Unionists abstained on votes for the Finance Bill ‘to show our displeasure’, as their Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson put it. Three water cannons bought and refurbished for more than £320,000 while Boris Johnson was Mayor of London were sold for £11,000.
The BBC began a consultation on how licence fees for over-75s should be paid for after the government stops funding them in 2020; the cost of such licences is expected to be £745 million a year, a fifth of the BBC’s current budget. The sugar tax on soft drinks introduced in April had raised £153.8 million by the end of October. Planning permission was sought for a 1,000ft tower called the Tulip, though it would more resemble an amaryllis in bud, to be built next to the Gherkin in the City of London.
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