Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does government. If no one knows what to do, if there is chaos and indecision, then the person with the clearest vision — for good or for ill — wins the argument. That’s the lesson of the Russian Revolution, of Weimar Germany, and, without meaning to overdramatize — we are not talking about events on that scale — that’s also the lesson of Brexit Britain.

A severely disabled man had his benefits cut because he didn’t respond to a letter even though he is blind. Alan Moody, 60, was declared unfit to work by his GP 10 years ago after being diagnosed with cerebellar ataxia - a rare genetic brain condition. Despite this Alan from Stanley, Co Durham was summoned to a Department for Work and Pensions ‘work capability assessment’ to qualify to receive employment and support allowance of around £450 a month.

Muslim communities remain isolated even after decades in the UK because men keep marrying foreign wives, a Government adviser has warned. Dame Louise Casey said that there is a "first generation in every generation" phenomenon in Muslim communities which is acting as a "bar" to integration.

Liam Fox released a very revealing written statement yesterday. His department has started to do the preliminary work at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) required for when Britain leaves the EU. Members of the WTO have things called schedules, these are basically a description of your trading relationship with the world. They list things like your tariffs and your services commitments. Britain's are currently held under an EU umbrella and they'll need to be extracted ahead of leaving.

Nightclubs in Preston are to offer free drug testing to people who want to know if their Class A substances are pure. The walk-in booths, run by a charity, will aim to reduce drug-related deaths by checking cocaine and MDMA are not “adulterated or highly potent”. Lancashire police have reportedly said they are backing the scheme, which will operate in the city centre on Friday and Saturday nights from the beginning of next year.

A fresh Conservative revolt this week could force Theresa May to abandon her hopes to keep her plans for Brexit secret. Up to 40 Tory backbenchers are believed to be ready to vote with Labour to bind the Prime Minister into “publishing the government’s plan for leaving the EU before Article 50 is invoked”. The motion, to be debated on Wednesday, demands the government set out its broad aims for Brexit – its stance on the single market, on freedom of movement of EU citizens, and on security matters, for example.

The Home Office is considering cutting international student numbers at UK universities by nearly half, Education Guardian can reveal. The threat is being greeted with dismay by university heads, who say some good overseas applicants are already being refused visas on spurious grounds. The home secretary, Amber Rudd, pledged a crackdown on international student numbers at the Conservative party conference in October, to include tougher visa rules for “lower quality” universities and courses. But senior university sources are warning that the cutbacks could be far more severe than expected.

David Davis has become the first cabinet minister to indicate that Brexit could be stopped by the Government even after Article 50 is triggered. The Brexit Secretary admitted he did not know whether Article 50 could be reversed, despite the Government having fought a case at the Supreme Court on the basis that it could not be.

Drug maker Actavis UK broke competition law by raising prices of hydrocortisone tablets by more than 12,000 percent, Britain's competition watchdog said in a provisional ruling on Friday. Higher prices meant the tablets cost Britain's National Health Service (NHS) about 70 million pounds last year, up from about 522,000 pounds previously, the CMA said.

A BREXIT voter has explained that actually, far from Britain owing the EU £50 billion, they will pay that exact sum to us. Martin Bishop of Ludlow told colleagues that the rumoured £50 billion exit bill is nothing more than a bluff from European officials hoping to reduce the vast debt of honour they owe the UK. He continued: “Really we deserve far more, but we’re being lenient. That’s our trouble as a country. Too kind-hearted.

Michael Fallon has confirmed British-made cluster bombs have been used by Saudi Arabian forces in the current Yemen conflict. The admission by the Defence Secretary in the Commons came after a Government analysis indicated that cluster bombs manufactured in the UK in 1980s had been used by the Saudi-led coalition in the on-going civil war in Yemen.

Bosses at Scotland’s biggest benefits centre have told staff to focus on sanctioning claimants and to forget about processing appeals until after Christmas, according to a whistleblower. The Department for Work and Pensions employee has blown the lid on a drive to prioritise sanctions over appeals after being sickened by the management edict.

One of Jeremy Corbyn’s most persistent critics quit as a Labour MP to take a job in the nuclear industry, triggering a three-way fight for his marginal northern seat with the Conservatives and Ukip. Jamie Reed, the MP for Copeland in west Cumbria since 2005, told the Guardian he was resigning to work for the nuclear processing site Sellafield.

British voters would repeat their decision to leave the European Union if the "Brexit" referendum were held today, according to a new CNN/ComRes poll released Monday. Six months after the UK delivered a result that shocked much of the world, 47% of British adults say they would vote Leave, with 45% saying they would choose to Remain, even though nearly half of them expect the decision to hurt them financially.

Ministers have abolished the civil service’s once high-profile child poverty unit, prompting warnings from MPs and charities that political focus on the issue has been abandoned by Theresa May. The admission came in answers to parliamentary questions, which revealed that the team set up under Tony Blair’s government has been subsumed into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), after seeing its staffing halved in three years.

The UK economy grew by 0.6% in the third quarter, according to official figures, faster than previous estimates. Growth for the July-to-September period had originally been estimated at 0.5%. New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggested that the business and financial sector was more active than previously estimated. The ONS also said that growth in the third quarter of the year was helped by "robust consumer demand".

Theresa May told EU leaders "I think I'd better leave now" after they met a short speech about her Brexit ambitions with silence. Shortly before leaving the summit in Brussels, the Prime Minister made a brief presentation to the 27 leaders on the UK's Brexit position, highlighting her desire to guarantee the rights of migrants.

Britain should be "self-confident" about Brexit and Theresa May must "stop pretending" that the UK will still be a member of the Single Market, the former governor of the Bank of England has said. Lord King, the former governor of the Bank of England, said that there are "real opportunities" for economic reform and new trade deals after Britain leaves the European Union.

Victims of slavery can be British - the story of one such woman is told in the memoir 'Sex Slave.' Under the pseudonym Anna Ruston, she writes about meeting a taxi driver she calls Malik when she was 15. He was kind to her but when she went to his house expecting to meet his family, she was held captive and subjected to sadistic sexual and psychological abuse for the next 13 years. Eventually she managed to escape.

The Government could scarcely be doing more to destabilise and alienate Northern Ireland if it tried. As Theresa May’s Cabinet lurches from one post-Brexit crisis to the next, the Prime Minister’s approach is very damaging for the least understood and most maligned corner of the UK.