a hong kong legislator who has visited protesters inside the polytechnic university, which is surrounded by police, says supplies of food and water are unlikely to last another day. ted hui from the opposition democratic party told the bbc that about 200 students remained besieged and were exhausted. there has been more violence as police tried to keep activists trapped inside a. the trump administration has declared that israeli settlements in the occupied west bank are not illegal, reversing the united states‘ decades—old policy. israel invaded the area in 1967, and has since built hundreds of thousands of homes forjewish settlers there in defiance of international criticism. the multinational accountancy firm kpmg has decided not to renew its sponsorship of an entrepreneurship initiative started by britain's prince andrew. a major reason is understood to have been revelations about the prince's ties to the convicted sex offender, jeffrey epstein, who took his own life in august.

it's about half past two in the morning, you are up—to—date on the headlines. now on bbc news, electioncast. we are in the selection because of brexit. we want to be getting out and buying up the swiss presidency. if anyone comes up to you and says they know what will happen, cocked an eyebrow, smile politely and turn your back. hello there everyone, are you ready for monday night's edition of electioncast? i hope so, i am. the big thing we discovered today is if you have an advent calendar and you open the first door today, you will be opening the last door and having the last sweetie or chocolate on election eve, on the 11th of december, how cool is that? it will spoil the advent

calendar for christmas but anyway your choice. you do not have to do it. the big set piece event today is the conference held in london, the cpi for the british industry. the confederation of british industry. three party leaders where there and so was our political editor. i asked her for her thoughts earlier on today and we started off by talking about the speech from borisjohnson. he gave basically his normal stump slash after dinner speech but there was a new policy in it which was to cancel the planned cut incorporation tax. he said to keep more money for the nhs. we are postponing further cuts in corporation tax. before you storm the stage, and protest... before you storm the stage let me remind you that this saves £6 billion that we

can put into priorities of the british people including the nhs. we have already cut it from 28 to 19%. the alternative is jeremy corbyn, who will back it back up to the highest levels in europe. the interesting thing about that is the first result of the budget for day—to—day spending any year which means if you want to spend more on stuffin a year you have to balance by saving or reduction and spain being somewhere else because the new physical rule is that you cannot spend more than you are taking in. the other thing is he said this, you can find ways of cutting taxation. every time the tax has been cut in this country, and produce more revenue, who said that? i should go through the motions, who said that? borisjohnson on the 5th ofjuly. so borisjohnson is essentially saying i will cancel a tax cut for business to save money, but when they were going the tax cut they said it would make more money.

a revenue raisers. can both of those things be true? not really. it has long been a divided line between the labour and tory party. if you cut taxes it means business makes more money, so if you cut taxes it means business makes more money, so proportionately you end up getting more tax back into the country covers. the liberal party says if you cut taxes right here right now it means we have less cash to spend on public services,, both things cannot be true at the same time, but as you say, the prime minister is saying we're going to this cut for now, meaning it is money for now the treasury is not going to give away business. the other thing that does not make sense is by historical standards are corporation tax rates is really low. it's 19% at the moment and was going to go down to 17. and still very low compared

to other countries. borisjohnson got a dig in atjeremy corbyn as he does and every 35 seconds and his stump speech. jeremy corbyn made a little gag thing still a warm up man for warming you all up for me and he suppose he thought the cbi audience we need warming up before he came on and spoke because he has raised a lot of eyebrows hasn't he? yes and there are lots of things that they plan to do that the business community did not really like and they are really unhappy about how tories handled brexit and the uncertainty and the agony that has gone on for the last two years. it is not like borisjohnson was welcomed like the prodigal son at this union, but among big businesses in particular there is a lot of nervousness, particularly about the nationalisation is in some of the other plans that the labour party has a really big intervention in the

markets. this is presumably why jeremy corbyn said this. it is not anti—business to be against poverty pay, it is not is meant to say that corporation should pay their taxes just as smaller companies do. it is not anti—business to want prosperity and every part of our country, not only in the financial centres of the city of london. what do we make of whatjeremy corbyn had to say? his big announcement was all these claimant apprentices. you look at actually what is behind it and it is not quite what is in the headlines but we will see with the labour ma nifesto we will see with the labour manifesto as we had this week, the labour party is making a big push on environmental policies, what they called the green industrial revolution. a bit like when the previous government introduced, or tried to really change up apprenticeships and tried to really encourage business to take on apprentices, there is always warm feelings for the notion on the

principle behind it, but then they tend to get very cross and upset about the government handling of it. the current government's apprenticeship levy has become bureaucratic and cumbersome and a lot of people in the business committee do not like it. that is one of the reasons they look at lots of interventions that labour would wa nt to of interventions that labour would want to make. really, would we trust as they see it with the private sector doing more? iwas as they see it with the private sector doing more? i was talking to a big group of business people at the cba this morning, and i have to say, there is a lot of real concern about both of the main parties are. a lot of worry about labour would spread into the private sector and how drastic, radical and popular with jeremy corbyn's how drastic, radical and popular withjeremy corbyn's supporters, it was a lot of anxiety as well is the tory majority, as we come out of the eu we might be in a position where we would be looking at leaving

without a deal if a trade is cannot be done in time. angela swanson turned up after lunch and told a story about her favourite entrepreneur was part of bodyshop. and i pictured her doing what me and all my school friends we do over the weekend which is to go to the shops and... obviously i would not go into the body shop as a boy but she was talking about that. do you think ever route one point not to be self—indulgent or anything on a podcast that you and me and just swenson were all at the body shop in glasgow at different ages? it is not impossible! it is quite likely in fact. she did notjust talk about the body shop but she talked about the other b word. the liberal democrats are the natural party of business. with the conservatives in the pocket of nigel farage and jeremy corbyn stuck in the 1970s, we are the only ones standing up foryou. we believe that any form of brexit, whether it is hard or soft,

blue or red, will be bad forjobs. bad for business. and bad for our public services. she made an announcement about replacing the business rates with a commercial property levies. you have been speaking to businesspeople today, what does that mean? business rates, but unless you run a business, you have no idea what they are what the charges are a deal it is. they have gone up an awful lot for businesses around the country in one of the problems has been that business rate revenue is shared between central government and local government and it is absolutely true an issue in the election that local authority budgets have really had a hard time. in some places not surprisingly, they had put up the business rates to make up for the difference. the tories are talking about having a big reveal of business rates and the lib dems have this other policy of replacing them. and i think when you talk about business, they want to know

what is happening and they do not want reviews, they want decisions and they want to know and i think that is where it is interesting where you see a lib dems leader taking a big role at something like the cbi conference which is not something necessarily you see and they think for a lot of business actually they have the best policy because as we know a lot of people who ran particularly big businesses are unhappy about brexit. does this feed into the whole thing about campaigning to be prime minister rather than just a sort of walk on part? i think that is right, and she gets to the cbi and i think we are also seeing lib dems being a bit squeezed which always happen in campaigns to an extent, where it becomes a question of who is actually going to be the prime minister. we talked before about how saying i am a candidate to be prime minister and i am standing here with ambition and the reason for that is they want to look like they are really credible and not look like a bit player. interesting looking at the cbi because how did the cbi themselves get involved in the election today? how did they as the voice of big business, which

is not all business... no, i think they are trying very hard not to, they are meant to be party political but they do take positions. and i suppose even if you look, as soon as or up and back before both of the main leaders finished speaking, there is a press release saying here is our response to it. i suppose if you are being really great about it, they probably gave the tories sort of seven out of ten and labour it may be about four out of ten, but even me saying that, anyone from the cbi press office listening, where the boss of the cbi, they will say don't that and they tried very very carefully not to be party political. in any shape orform. some will say they have been really political at times. but it is like anything, the interesting thing with any lobby group, whether it is a business trip or a charity or whether it is... you know, they have to be very careful about exactly where they placed their tips

i suppose. lets bring in another colourful character. jennifer arkuri, that tech entrepreneur. i am very worried about talking about who she is or what she was involved... everyone knows who she is. you could sayjennifer, who knows borisjohnson you could sayjennifer, who knows boris johnson and knew you could sayjennifer, who knows borisjohnson and knew him over a period of years when she was working asa period of years when she was working as a tech entrepreneur in london and he was the mayor of london. and gave him technology lessons, she says. this is what he said to victoria derbyshire today about what it is like with her and borisjohnson now? you texted him last week, what did you say? i called him first and he hung up on me. i said why did you block me? hung up on me. i said why did you block me ? click. hung up on me. i said why did you block me? click. i called back, i

was like really? am i going to have to do this? i wasjust pressing it over and over. this is ridiculous. so that was the latest bit of gossip. being loyal to him by doing lots of media interviews. the point about this is there was a serious allegation here which was that she got access to trade tips and public funding because of her relationship whatever. it has always been denied by boris johnson and the conservatives. there is a from the conservative party, saying any claims of impropriety are untrue and unfounded. we state that they aren't motivated attacks from the labour party in city hall and unfounded allegations against the prime minister have been thrown out by the courts. and independent review by the government internal audit agency showed that claims made by the labour party about her company were false.

so, that is a maybe and there is clearly a he said, she said going on in all of this and what is clear is that the conservatives would rather not be talking about this and they wouldn't rather not have to respond to allegations from someone from the prime minister's past, that is very clear. there is a wider question, whatever really happened in that about whether we are in an election where personal allegations actually play or not. traditionally, the conventional wisdom is often wrong, is that for a politician like boris johnson, these kinds of things are baked in. is ita baked in. is it a surprise to anybody when something, some colourful allegation from his past p°p5 colourful allegation from his past pops up, not necessarily. to be clear i'm not seeking to defend, i am not making a defence or justifying anything that may or may not have happened in this case, but there is nothing with politicians of any stroke in colour, if an is made thatis any stroke in colour, if an is made that is similar to things that have been said before, is that a surprise to the electorate? will it surprise

anyone? the polling very much suggest that he divides voters along gender lines, then it is not the kind of thing that the tory central office would want to be out there. what this story is doing is create frosty tv moments because she was on good morning britain on itb this morning again lk, lorraine kelly who made her feelings pretty clear. that was crazy wasn't it. at which point, i am not answering any questions. anyway it isjust me and he says what point is coming on and not saying anything. i'm sorry? what's the point of view coming on the air and not saying anything? i believe i said a few things.

you did not answer any of the questions that were put to you and i did not see the point in your coming on to be honest. you notice that lorraine kelly gets more scottish when she gets angry? i would not know anything about that kind of thing. i'm going to do that at the end of this interview the next time someone avoided the question for 20 minutes. before i introduce my next guest i need to play that theme music which is not based on the tv show they remind me of copy here is a generic version. it is the mulder and scully of the digital election coverage, joey and marianna from bbc trending. we do not understand the cultural reference, i think we are too young. x—files, what did you think it was if you had to guess? a tv show? aliens? and other supernatural phenomenon. i don't have anything to add. mulder and scully were two fbi

agents, one male who believed in extraterrestrials and spooky stuff and one female who was purely rational. and that's the dynamic? and she was the doctor and she stood next to the filing cabinet because she was pregnant and often and there was a lot of sexual tension between them actually. oh, god. just to be clear, it is not the fact that there is sexual tension, it is that you go out and investigate. can we not do this. so where are we and what is the story? we're in sussex seaside and there is a vicious row that broke out over bar charts. so we went there last week and we met a lot of people and found out about this story which is essentially involving a phd student who went out in august and decided he wanted to conduct a poll and knocked on 150 people's, more than that, but he got 150 responses.

it was focused on a no—deal brexit. he was asked who he thinks would be the best candidate to be the remaining coalition and hastings and ride the constituency. what can be described as a leading question but carry—on. and he was interested in the remain, the battle between what remaining voters. he was interested in what remain voters would do this election because it is a marginal seat and the conservatives only won by 246 the last time indicate go to one of the remaining parties. it was amber rudd's seat. he made this post and put it together and it was published on a local news site and i got 3000 hits and it was shared on facebook. and then what happened with this? it really kicked off and a lot of the labour supporters locally were very annoyed

because they were close to the conservatives in 2017 but it is a national story, it was complicated and places to save it was best to beat and labour had a good result in 2017 but slammed in the polls and lib dems have done well and the polls and in the european election lib dems did really well better than labour. there is a genuine point of debate whether you should vote labour or liberal democrats if you want to be the conservatives particular example looks like it is really the limits of... because the lib dems did so much worse in 2017 and labour were behind and so became this online debate and all these facebook grip —— groups. it has been turned into a meme. you are missing out a step. because then, first of all it is for local political geeks was in it and facebook groups and then it spread like a virus to the general public.

yes so the liberal democrats put it on their leaflet and has a dubious claim and showed the liberal democrat candidate out terrible social media is ruining things but this is an example of that 20 years ago this landed on your door mat and you would not have had anything after it, you would read and go back to watching an accident x—files. but now you get lively debates and people can pushback and debate methodologies and argue with memes, and tactical voting is a massive issue in this election and people in facebook groups arguing on voting tactically and it is a big deal on the remaining side because lots of the brexit party going down in the polls recently and borisjohnson he has a lot of leavers battling conservatives and it is an issue in lot of places...

you mentioned the memes. once it appeared on the leaflet, a meme page that supports the labour candidate, and not run by him but run by his fans, produced this meme that shows the lib dem candidate holding a leaflet with the bar charts and he is looking like the joker and then you have... from the recent film. and then you have the labour candidate as batman. because? because he'sjust the good guy apparently. so you started off... it started off as a bar chart but then went even bigger when it turned into a leaflet with batman memes.

and i think also it is a good thing, we talk about the digital election as a separate entity but it is not at all, it works in combination with what ever is going on on your doorstep so we can go online and off—line and back again, and we often like to talk about, we often compartmentalize it but it is good to look at... i'm not going to call him an evil genius because he is not and he also does not have his phd yet, james prentice who did the research, did you speak to him? what did he have to say about it all? he is loving it really, the fact that it became such a massive deal. i'm sorry i nearly called you an evil genius. he's defensive of the polls and methodologies and other polls we spoke to friendly disagreed with the methodology and sample size and the question they said where it leading.

what is his defence for that though? he did a poll in 2017 for the last election that showed, he almost got the result bang on using that same method and sample size so essentially what he has done is repeat that again but looking at a different side of the argument so he can look at what is going on with running. —— remain. this phd researcher guy is a labour member. which also read out the name of all the candidates. another interesting thing about the story is how we think about these big and dramatic russian trolls and these are all really important issues that we should be following really closely but it is massively changing how a few guys in hastings with facebook pages are interacting with this election and on a really local uk centric level, facebook is massive. what is different between now and 2017 is that a lot of older people are using facebook a lot and it is completely embedded in life and ordinary community to use and it is really changing

how politics works. it is different for us as journalists because we are focused on looking at the on the air war, posters, debates, manifestos and we have the grand war with the activists and the canvassing. this is amorphous. what is between the ground and the air? 0ur minds. that is for you to investigate in the next episode, likely collect... elex files. mulder and scully will be back. now you have to watch all the episodes. we will. let's read them out, all the candidates — peter channing from labour. nick perry lib dem. and all those details are available on the bbc website.

another name for you, jarome vince, if you are watching last week that is what we called jeremy vine from radio 2 so we gave him a call to find out what he has been doing in belfast — the radio tv show so we asked him what people in belfast are talking about and the election and whether it is brexit. i think the broader thing if i can cover that is so complicated that it has during people even who live on it. and then, actually one of my colleagues is very politely talking and i am going to release you to speak loudly. i think that the other thing that threw everything here was this comment from borisjohnson the other day, at an event where he was speaking to people and he said with a glass of wine in his hand, there will not be any forms to fill out.

they were all looking through the protocol saying the whole point surely is that there are forms, that stuff goes between northern ireland has got to be some sort of check and reporting and said that is through the whole thing so it is notjust about the border, it is about the alliance with the may government as i say. it is just very interesting dynamic here, where you have a remain majority but the dominant party is brexit. none of it really stacks up. jeremy vince, lighting up lives all across the four nations of the united kingdom. and next time i'm on, please name me wrongly again... there are plenty of letters that we can get wrong again. there you go. i cannot see the caption or as we call it, the aston, hopefully we just called him jeremy vine.

tonight isjeremy corbyn going head to head with borisjohnson on itv at 8pm and a head—to—head big prime ministerial debate. we have never seen that before where two candidates have gone head—to—head like that. there have always been other people in the mix. not appearing in the debate tomorrow night will bejo swinson of the lib dems, or nicola sturgeon of the snp. they lost a legal challenge today where they tried to get themselves spots on the stage. you can listen to electioncast on bbc sounds and we will be back tomorrow. thank you forjoining us. a very frosty start and dense fog patches. it will be a mainly dry day with sunshine around in the north and east. these fog patches could lift up into locale —— low cloud

that many northern and eastern areas should cease —— should stay dry and sunny. it will be less cold in the south—west, a chilly day elsewhere. a chilly start to tuesday night but as we head into the early parts of wednesday as the wind begins to pick up wednesday as the wind begins to pick up from the south, i think rural frost will become more refined to scotland. variable cloud and good spells of sunshine but outbreaks of rain in northern ireland and perhaps the irish sea coasts down into what is the south—west. a chilly day on the cards and less cold in the south—west.

on and not saying anything. welcome to bbc news, i'm mike embley. our top stories: in hong kong, just one hundred activists remain inside the university campus stand—off, with supplies of food and drink running out. we will use whatever means to continue to persuade and arrange for these remaining protesters to leave these remaining protesters to leave the campus as soon as possible. the trump administration reverses four decades of us policy, saying israeli settlements in the occupied west bank aren't illegal. prince andrew loses sponsorship from a major international firm following revelations about his relationship with sex offender, jeffrey epstein. and tiny manuscript, but a big price. one of the first works by charlotte bronte is sold for half a million dollars.