Brexit: Labour MPs to hold no-confidence vote in Jeremy Corbyn - as it happened

Cameron says a new civil service unit has been set up to prepare for the withdrawal negotiations. It will be staffed by the brightest and best from Westminster. It will prepare options for the new prime minister.

He says Oliver Letwin is overseeing the process. Letwin will not play a part in the Tory leadership contest. He will consider proposals from MPs from all sides of the House.

Cameron says he has consulted the devolved administrations, and London, and they will be involved in the process.

He will go to a summit in Brussels tomorrow but he will not invoke article 50 immediately, he says.

He says that it is important to stress Britain is not turning its back on the world.

Security cooperation with the EU will continue, he says.

He winds up by saying Britain is in a strong position.

Cameron says the result is not the one he wanted. But he and the cabinet have agreed it must be respected.

He says hate crimes and attacks on foreigners must be stamped out. These people have come here and made a wonderful contribution, he says.

He says there will be no immediate changes to people’s rights.

The withdrawal negotiations will start under a new prime minister, he says.

He says the economy is well placed to face the challenges ahead.

David Cameron is giving his Commons statement on the referendum.

He says MPs voted for a referendum by a margin of six to one.

He welcomes the new MP for Tooting, Rosena Allin-Khan, who has just been sworn in. He advises her to keep her mobile phone on. She could be in the shadow cabinet by the end of the day, he jokes.

And I thought I was having a bad day ...

27 Jun 201610.31 EDT

Jennifer Rankin

The United States will retain its special relationship with the UK, US secretary of state John Kerry has said, but Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union would have consequences.

Speaking to the media in Brussels, the US’s most senior diplomat called for “sensitive, thoughtful, responsible and strategic” leadership, and said the US would do everything it could to make the transition “as sensible as possible”.

During the campaign, the US president Barack Obama made an heartfelt appeal for the UK to remain in the European Union, but now accepts the result.

“That’s democracy,” Kerry said. “We respect the rights of the voters, we respect the process, so it is now up to leaders to implement and do so in a way that is responsible, thoughtful, sensitive and strategic.”

But he stressed the rupture with the EU would have consequences. “Does that mean it doesn’t present difficulties? No there are challenges. Does that mean it is without any impact? No clearly that is not possible either, because there are consequences.”

The US secretary of state is heading to London to meet foreign secretary Philip Hammond. His main priority in Brussels was to stress enduring transatlantic ties with the EU.

“The United States cares about a strong EU,” Kerry said. “The interests and the values that brought is together are the same after that vote as they were before.”

He pleaded for leaders to avoid “scatterbrained or vengeful premises”.

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Will Straw, a Labour candidate in the 2015 general election and executive director of Britain Stronger in Europe, has written a blog for the BSE website saying that Jeremy Corbyn undermined the remain campaign and that he should resign. Here’s an extract.

Jeremy Corbyn should follow David Cameron’s lead. Under his leadership, Labour is further removed from its industrial heartlands than ever before with 29 per cent of its supporters threatening to go elsewhere. New research from the IPPR think tank shows that the poorest families will be hit twice as hard by new inflation caused by sterling’s slide as the richest—many living in areas that voted overwhelmingly to leave.

Rather than making a clear and passionate Labour case for EU membership, Corbyn took a week’s holiday in the middle of the campaign and removed pro-EU lines from his speeches.

Rather than finding imaginative ways for Labour to present a united front and get its message across to wavering supporters, Corbyn vetoed a planned event featuring all Labour’s formers leaders.

Rather than confronting concerns about immigration with Labour’s values of contribution and reciprocity, Corbyn distanced himself from the manifesto commitment to restrict in work benefits for new arrivals to this country and planned a trip to Turkey to talk about “open borders”.

The pound has hit a 31-year low against the dollar, my colleague Graeme Wearden reports on the business blog.

ITV’s Robert Peston points out that this does not quite square with what Boris Johnson was saying in his Telegraph article this morning.

27 Jun 201610.17 EDT

Parliament needs to approve move to trigger article 50, lawyers claim

Owen Bowcott

Any prime minister will need parliamentary approval to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty and initiate the UK’s exit from the European Union, according to a report by constitutional lawyers.

In a legal opinion published on Monday, Nick Barber, a fellow at Trinity College, Oxford, Tom Hickman, a barrister at Blackstone Chambers and reader at University Collegge, London, and Jeff King, a senior law lecturer at UCL, declare that: “In our constitution, parliament gets to make this decision, not the prime minister.” They add:

The prime minister is unable to issue a declaration under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty – triggering our withdrawal from the European Union – without having been first authorised to do so by an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament. Were he to attempt to do so before such a statute was passed, the declaration would be legally ineffective as a matter of domestic law and it would also fail to comply with the requirements of article 50 itself.

Their argument is based on the fact article 50 states that any withdrawal from the EU must be made “in accordance with the state’s constitutional requirements”. Traditional constitutional arrangements involve parliamentary sovereignty.

“Parliament could conclude that it would be contrary to the national interest to invoke article 50 whilst it is in the dark about what the key essentials of the new relationship with the EU are going to be, and without knowing what terms the EU is going to offer,” the three authors suggest.

Handing parliament, where the majority of MPs are remain supporters, a veto on Brexit is not a legal interpretation that is going to be welcomed by leave voters.

According to the BBC, 57 candidates from the 2015 election have signed a letter saying Jeremy Corbyn should resign.

UPDATE: I’ve corrected this post, which earlier wrongly said MPs instead of candidates.

The secret ballot on a motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn will take place tomorrow, my colleague Anushka Asthana reports.

The nearly 1,000 British nationals who work for the European commission have been assured their jobs are safe, the Associated Press reports.

Even though Britain has voted to leave the European Union, the EU commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, wrote in an internal memo that according to regulations, they are “union officials” and work for Europe.

He wrote: “You left your national ‘hats’ at the door when you joined this institution and that door is not closing on you now.”

The memo, distributed to commission personnel after the results of Thursday’s British referendum on EU membership became known, was obtained by AP on Monday.

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