Ex-PM also says there is time to find way out of Brexit crisis, at meeting with EU ambassadors

Tony Blair has told European ambassadors that the UK does not have a leader either in the Labour party or the Conservative party, but insisted that parliament could still meet the 12 April deadline for a new proposal on Brexit.

Speaking to the ambassadors for the third time in recent months over breakfast on Friday, Blair said he believed but was not certain that Theresa May would be defeated next week if she put her proposal to a third meaningful vote. He said the key development would be whether parliament can come to an agreement on what form of Brexit it favours in next week’s planned indicative votes.

Anti-corruption campaigners denounce overseas electors bill as ‘representation without taxation’

The government has said it remains committed to passing a law that could allow tax exiles the right to vote and donate to political parties for life, after it failed to pass through the House of Commons.

MPs, including the serial filibusterer Philip Davies, tabled dozens of amendments to the overseas electors bill for debate on Friday, resulting in it being dropped after parliamentary time to discuss it ran out.

Carl Benjamin lined up for potential EU elections, despite ‘rape’ tweet sent to Labour MP

Ukip is expected to choose a controversial YouTube activist, who has been accused of triggering rape threats against a Labour MP, as a candidate if Britain takes part in the European elections, it has emerged.

A party selection process this weekend is likely to confirm the candidacy of Carl Benjamin, a self-styled free speech activist who has been banned from Twitter and some other platforms because of his views, Ukip sources said.

Arriving at the EU summit this week, Theresa May had that purposeful air of a school superintendent walking up the drive to the Addams family mansion, determined that Wednesday and Pugsley should be enrolled in a conventional educational establishment without delay. Some long hours later, May staggered back down the drive much as that school superintendent might, short of having no shoes and an actual bat in her electrocuted hair.

And so to the latest scenes in the Brexit farce. The formula for successful farce-writing, as laid down in the 19th century, is to get your character up a tree in the first act, throw stones at them in the second, then get them down in the third. As far as Brexit goes, the UK went up the tree voluntarily, and has now been throwing human waste at itself for two and a half years. Does anyone want to come and get us down? Sorry, it’s quite … disgusting up here now.

The cliff-edge has moved a tiny bit further away, but it’s still there. Britain will not crash out of the European Union next Friday, thanks to a last act of clemency by the 27 nations we’re about to leave behind. But crashing out remains a possibility, even a likelihood. It might not be a deliberate choice made by the people of these islands, but rather an accident – the product of a series of decisions that were taken and, more often, not taken. Just as the imperial powers stumbled into a war no one wanted in 1914, so the risk remains that we will not jump off the cliff that looms ahead of us, but stumble over it.

Related: The EU knows it, so do our own MPs – Theresa May is finished | Rafael Behr

Prime minister makes clear in private meeting with potential successor she plans to stay put

Theresa May told Boris Johnson that she had no intention of stepping aside to help resolve the Brexit impasse, in a high stakes meeting with the man seen as the favourite to replace her earlier this week.

In the meeting, the former foreign secretary, who remains opposed to May’s Brexit deal, demanded to know how the prime minister would change approach, which was interpreted as a coded message that he believed she should quit.

Possible scenarios range from no deal to May’s deal, Norway plus, second referendum to May’s resignation

We’re much less likely to crash out without a deal next week because the 29 March Brexit deadline has been removed.