Sadiq Khan accuses Lee Anderson of stoking hate with ‘back to France’ anti-migrant comment – as it happened

Lee Anderson, Conservative Party deputy chairman. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

5.00pm BST

Afternoon summary

• Lee Anderson, the deputy chair of the Conservative party, has been accused of “stoking up division and hate” against migrants. The Labour mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, denounced Anderson for saying asylum seekers unhappy about being asked to live on a barge should “fuck off back to France”. But, in comments supported by No 10, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, said Anderson was articulating the “righteous indignation of the British people”. (See 10.18am, 1.13pm, 1.24pm and 1.44pm.)

• The Home Office spent more than £1,500 of public money painting over cartoon murals that were meant to welcome children to a controversial asylum reception centre, it can be revealed.

• The data of millions of voters was accessible to hackers in a cyber-attack by “hostile actors” discovered almost a year ago, the Electoral Commission has admitted.

Lee Anderson speaking in the House of Commons in July. Photograph: Jessica Taylor/PA

Updated at 5.20pm BST

4.48pm BST

Irish PM says breakthrough needed within next two months to ensure NI executive revives before general election

Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish prime minister), has said Northern Ireland could remain without a power-sharing executive until after the next general election if the deadlock is not broken within the next couple of months.

Power sharing has been suspended for 18 months because the Democratic Unionist party is boycotting the executive until it secures changes to the Northern Ireland protocol, the post-Brexit trading deal that creates some new rules for goods being traded between Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Windsor framework, the new version of the protocol that Rishi Sunak negotiated with the EU, was supposed to assuage DUP concerns.

But the DUP has still not endorsed it and Northern Ireland has gone from thinking power sharing would return after the May local elections, to thinking it would happen in the autumn, to thinking, now, it may not even happen then.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Varadkar said he still hoped the executive would revive in the autumn. But he went on:

It is more hope than expectation at this stage, to be frank.

If we don’t seize this window of opportunity in the next couple of months, talk will turn both in Belfast and in London to the next Westminster elections and it might be after that before we can get things going again.

Varadkar said he thought the Irish and UK governments should “work hand-in-glove and apply both pressure and support  …  in a co-ordinated way” to get the executive restored.

But Rishi Sunak did not favour this approach, he said.

There has been a reluctance, I suppose, in Downing Street, to go down that route.

The FT report quotes a UK government official saying involving the Irish government in efforts to restore power sharing would cause problems with unionists.

Leo Varadkar. Photograph: Johanna Geron/Reuters

Updated at 5.23pm BST