BBC Breakfast

The Labour leadership challenger Owen Smith has said it would be "groundhog day" if Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected as party leader.  Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Smith said the leadership contest had been "bitter and bruising" for the Labour Party.

He said whoever wins has got to heal the divisions in the party.  He said his concern was that the country had looked at Jeremy Corbyn and did not see him as somebody who could be a Labour Prime Minister.

Mr Smith said there had only been one opinion poll during the contest and he would be "fighting up to the last minute" to win the opportunity to "save the Labour Party".

If he did not win he said he would sit on the backbenches, but would not serve in the shadow Cabinet.  He said he was "not going anywhere"

Jeremy Corbyn will put Labour on a general election footing if he is re-elected leader, the BBC learns.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown says the prime minister may need to call an early election to get any Brexit deal through the Commons.

The Lib Dems must build alliances with centre-left "progressives" to defeat the Conservatives since the party cannot do it alone, Lord Ashdown tells activists.

Hello and welcome to our continuing coverage of the Liberal Democrat conference and other political developments as the Labour leadership ballot approaches its final stage. The Lib Dem conference will end with the leader's speech delivered by Tim Farron at about 14:45 BST.

A quick recap of the day's main political events:

• Theresa May has addressed a UN summit on refugees in New York, calling for a greater distinction between refugees and people trying to enter a country for economic reasons. Follow the story here
• The MoD has confirmed that the UK took part in a recent coalition air strike in Syria that killed dozens of government troops fighting the so-called Islamic State
• The Liberal Democrats need to build alliances with centre-left "progressives" to defeat the Conservatives, former leader Lord Ashdown has said
• Another former Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, tells the party's conference that the government has "no clue" over Brexit - and leaving the single market would do "untold damage" to the UK economy
• Jeremy Corbyn has said he will "reach out" to Labour MPs if he is re-elected as the party's leader this week - and also faced Mumsnet users, external for a live webchat

During his Mumsnet chat earlier, Jeremy Corbyn said he never tires of reading James Joyce's novel Ulysses "on the grounds that it's very hard to understand the first time, and doesn't get much easier on the third or fourth reading of it".

Following the Labour leader's interview, which also covered biscuits - oh, and politics - "Ulysses" has been trending on Twitter.

BBC Sunday Politics

The new leader of UKIP, Diane James, has said she plans to carry out a "major refresh" of several of the party's policies - but again declined to give details of where she stood.

 Speaking to the Sunday Politics, Ms James, who was elected on Friday, also said she had a one hundred day plan to focus on issues within the party but denied that UKIP was dysfunctional.

Discussing her decision not to set out any policies during her campaign, she said that her current policy on the NHS was to show a clear vision and stand up to Jeremy Hunt.

She also rejected the suggestion she would struggle to appeal to disaffected Labour voters in the north of England.

The prime minister has addressed world leaders in New York, calling for countries to "come together" to deal with the migrant crisis. Read more here

BBC World

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said he doesn’t agree with former Labour leader Lord Kinnock’s assertion that he won’t see another Labour government in his lifetime.

Speaking to BBC World from the United States, the Labour mayor acknowledged that his paty was “going through a difficult time”.

However, he added: “If a week’s a long time in politics, four years is an infinite time in politics. Our job is to make sure we can show the British public we’re an effective opposition, so they trust us enough to be a credible government in 2020."

Mr Khan did not deny reports that he had not spoken to the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn since before the EU referendum, saying: “We’ve both been a bit busy.”

Also at the conference fringes earlier, former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown said he was "bloody fed up" with "having to put up with" a Conservative government.

Lord Ashdown said the Liberal Democrats must re-establish themselves following the 2015 general election defeat and show that they are a "rising force" in politics.

The peer said he was "utterly confident" the party could recover - "but to what purpose?". It was "not good enough" just to want to remove the Tories from power - the ambition should be to put a "progressive government" in place, he said.

"Can you do that alone? No," he said, adding: "You have to reach out to others."

Rather than remain "utterly tribal and content in our bubble" and perhaps increase its number of MPs to 30 or 40, the Lib Dems should reach out to a network of people beyond the party, to build a wider, centre-left progressive movement, Lord Ashdown argued.

Nick Clegg has accused Theresa May of attempting to foist selective education on England with no mandate or evidence.

Speaking at an education fringe event at the Lib Dems' Brighton conference, Mr Clegg said: "One thing I've learned from my time in government is that if you want to make a difference you've got to do it over the long term. You can't just keep chopping and changing.

"You can't - to take a recent example - suddenly out of the blue, with no mandate and absolutely no evidence at all, suddenly declare you're going to foist selective education on the whole school system."

Mr Clegg added that education cannot be allowed to "become a plaything for the whims and wishes of politicians".

The Liberal Democrats' conference has finished for the day but don't despair. They'll be back for more from 09:00 BST on Tuesday.

The Andrew Marr Show

Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green has conceded that some welfare assessments produce incorrect results.

Asked by Andrew Marr about a man whose assessment had led to a £30-a-week reduction in welfare payments, Mr Green said: "I am permanently looking at all these systems. And, of course, there are tens of thousands of assessments going on all the time. There will, I dare say, be individual cases that are wrong. And as they're brought to the attention of ministers we look at them."

He added that he did not agree with those who argue "you should just pay out the benefits and not test people".

Asked about the possibility of further cuts to welfare, Mr Green said the prime minister had committed to meeting the government's previous commitments but added: "There will be no new search for cuts in individual welfare benefits."

The Andrew Marr Show

On Sunday's Andrew Marr Show, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said his party now represents the only proper opposition to the Conservatives - who he believes could be in power for another 25 years.

He described events in the Labour party as a tragedy for British democracy.

And Mr Farron said he hoped people would join his moderate, progressive opposition.

Image source, PA

Nicola Sturgeon will not call another independence referendum any time soon because she fears defeat, the man who led the pro-UK campaign ahead of the last vote has predicted.

Alistair Darling said Ms Sturgeon had to regularly "throw red meat" to her supporters by hinting at a second vote. But he said she "knows she will be finished" if she loses again.

Ms Sturgeon's predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond, believes there will be a referendum in 2018.

Lord Darling led the Better Together campaign ahead of the 2014 referendum, which saw the No side win by 55%-45%, while Mr Salmond was the figurehead for the pro-independence Yes campaign.  

Read more.

Image source, INDEPENDENCELIVE.NET

An SNP MP has been criticised for defending a comedy rap group's use of the word "dyke" to describe Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson.

The Witserface group referred to Ms Davidson, who is openly gay, as "Dykey D" at the launch of a pro-independence organisation at the weekend.

Joanna Cherry, who is also gay, later described the routine on Twitter as "hilariously irreverent satire".

She later said she "regretted the offence that was caused".

And she said she had spent her life campaigning for LGBTI rights, and had herself been the victim of homophobic assaults.

Scottish Conservative MSP Annie Wells had written to Ms Cherry urging her to apologise to Ms Davidson for the "direct attack on her sexuality" and to "challenge homophobic behaviour in future rather than promote it".

Read more.

Former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown has predicted that a snap general election could be on the cards in 2017 as Theresa May tries to get a Brexit deal past Conservative backbenchers.

Lord Ashdown said Mrs May would decide on remaining in the single market in a "Norway with bells and whistles on" compromise that would provoke Brexiteers into revolt. "The probability curve rises now quite sharply towards a May election," he said. "Sooner or later she has to declare her hand about what does Brexit actually mean. Either way she has a revolt on her hands."

He added: "There are deeper divisions in the Tory party than we are paying attention to. The only way out of that conundrum is a general election."

If the prime minister won that election, "then she's able to go into the detailed negotiations... with a bargaining position and the voice of the British people behind her", Lord Asdown said.

A former transport minister says Gatwick Airport is the better option to expand.