Brexit: Juncker says risk of no deal 'palpable' as MEPs debate UK's departure from EU – live news

These are from my colleague Jennifer Rankin.

The European parliament debate was opened by the Finnish European affairs minister Tytti Tuppurainen. She was there to represent the European council, because Finland holds the EU presidency.

She said the EU was facing a “rather bleak situation”. She went on:

In July the UK got a new government and a new prime minister. Unfortunately it is increasingly clear that it has not helped to clarify the situation or the UK’s negotiating position.

When it comes to the most difficult questions – such as the Irish border – the UK has not tabled any new concrete proposals yet.

She said the UK parliament remained divided and the UK Government was still insisting on its negotiating red lines.

We are faced with more, rather than less, uncertainty.

And she also said a no-deal Brexit remained “a quite likely outcome”.

Geoffrey Van Orden, the leader of the British Conservatives in the European parliament and a member of the European Conservatives and Reformist Group, is speaking now. He says the UK government wants a deal, but it must leave on 31 October.

He criticises the European parliament’s Brexit steering group, which is headed by Guy Verhofstadt. He says it is not representative of the parliament.

Marco Zanni, the Italian League MEP leader of the far-right Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament, defends Brexit. He says the EU should respect the decision taken by Britain, which has one of the oldest democratic parliaments in the world.

Philippe Lamberts, co-leader of the Greens-European Free Alliance in the European parliament, told MEPs that if the UK requested a Brexit extension, the EU should be willing to grant it.

Guy Verhofstadt, from the liberal Renew group in the European parliament, says Brexit has led to support for the EU going up.

He criticises the way the UK is handling the rights of EU nationals in Britain. There are examples of EU nationals being refused settled status even though they have been living in the country for one or two decades.

He says Boris Johnson likes to compare himself to movie characters, like the Incredible Hulk. But he should choose another role model, Verhofstadt says. He says Johnson should act like the nanny in Mrs Doubtfire.

He says he knows the British worry about the backstop. But if they don’t like it, perhaps they should give it a different name – like the safety net.

He says it would not work if one side could leave unilaterally.

He says some in the UK think that the EU will back down at the last moment. But that

We are not stupid. It means we will not kill our own companies. We will defend our own companies … We will never accept what people call a Singapore by the North Sea.

Verhofstadt says that Brexit has caused deep divisions in the UK. But the EU will not let itself be divided in the same way, he says.

In the debate Iratxe García-Pérez, the head of the socialist group in the European parliament, said that MEPs would be open to the UK holding a second referendum. And she criticised the UK home secretary, Priti Patel, for saying that free movement would end immediately after 31 October.

Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right EPP group in the European parliament, said in his speech that Brexiters claimed that Brexit would weaken the EU. But three years on, the EU remains strong, he said. He said it was the UK that was losing out, because jobs were leaving.

Barnier says no one should underestimate the costs of a no-deal Brexit.

He says he wants to create the conditions necessary to build a future relationship.

If the UK leaves without a deal, these questions do not disappear. They still remain – issues like peace in Ireland, citizens’ rights, budgetary issues. They would all need to be settled before the UK and the EU could agree a future relationship.

He says, three years after the EU referendum, we should not be “pretending to negotiate”. We need to move forward, he says.

Turning to the future relationship, Barnier says the political declaration opens up a path towards a future relationship of broad cooperation.

He says it currently points towards a free trade agreement. But the text would also allow a closer relationship, he says.

He says the UK wishes to revist the commitments made by Theresa May about maintaining a level playing field after Brexit (ie, remaining aligned to EU regulations.)

Barnier says the level of ambition reached by the EU will depend on the guarantees it gets from the UK, referring to things like social, environmental and competition law.

Barnier says the EU is willing to work “day and night” to get a deal with the UK.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, is speaking in the debate now.

He says Ireland is the big problem in the Brexit talks, because that is where Brexit could do most harm.

He says the UK has said what it does not like about the backstop. But is has not proposed an operable alternative.

He gives an example of the problem. Any cattle, or other animals, entering Ireland through Northern Ireland enter the whole of the EU single market. He says the EU has a long memory of potential safety problem (a reference to BSE, presumably). That is why health checks are so important.

Good morning. It is day two of the supreme court hearing to decide if Boris Johnson’s five-week suspension (prorogation) of parliament was lawful, and I’ll be covering the hearing in detail when it starts at 10.30pm. Here is our overnight story about yesterday’s hearing.

The UK parliament is not sitting at the moment, but the European parliament is and this morning it has just started a debate on Brexit. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, has just finished his speech. He said that the risk of a no-deal Brexit was “palpable” but that his talks with Boris Johnson on Monday were constructive. He said:

I can tell you that the talks we had were friendly, constructive and, in part, positive.

I will post more from his speech soon.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web, although I will mostly be focusing on the supreme court hearing. I plan to publish a summary when I wrap up.

You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.