May sets Brexit vote date but Corbyn senses opportunity to take power
Theresa May yesterday set January 15 as the date for Parliament to vote on Britain’s Brexit deal with Brussels, knowing the opposition Labour Party wants to trigger a general election.
Britain is set to leave the EU on March 29. Despite a high-profile campaign for a second referendum, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has dedicated his party to a quest to take power before the break with Europe.
“We want a people’s vote, which is called a general election,” said Barry Gardiner, the Labour international trade spokesman. “It’s actually the quickest way to go back to the people.”
Skwawkbox, a pro-Corbyn blog, caused controversy when it suggested an election could be triggered for March 21. If elected, that would give Mr Corbyn a week to revoke Brexit.
Mr Corbyn would have to abstain on Mrs May’s Brexit deal and allow it to pass. Labour would gamble that the Democratic Unionist Party, which gives Mrs May a majority in the Commons but opposes the Brussels deal, would turn on its ally.
“This would be a high-stakes and stunningly audacious move by Corbyn and his team,”
Skwawkbox said.
“But it probably represents the most realistic chance for the UK to remove the Tories and achieve a ‘Labour Brexit’ that would avoid the excesses the Tories are hoping for.”
The report was later denied but its publication underlined the depth of planning in Mr Corbyn’s inner circle.
He and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, along with the Unite public sector union leader Len McCluskey, refuse to go along with calls for a second referendum, despite its popularity among most Labour members.
Labour has many seats in the north of England, which voted heavily in favour of Brexit in the 2016 referendum, and the move would allow Mrs May’s Conservatives to say the opposition did not respect the public will.
But there is power behind calls for the second vote, including within Momentum, the activist base that took Mr Corbyn to the Labour leadership in 2015. It is made up of tens of thousands of young, urban members who want stay to in Europe.
At the party’s annual conference in Liverpool in September last year, Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary and a supporter of remaining in Europe, said Labour’s position would now include the possibility of another referendum if all other options failed.
This led to division at the top of the party over the past few weeks as time runs out before the country crashes out of the EU without any deal in place, with all the economic disruption that this could cause.
Mr McDonnell, 67, a close friend and political ally of Mr Corbyn for four decades, indicated in November that the party would “inevitably” back a second referendum because the preferred option of a general election was unlikely to happen.
Mr McDonnell, 67, is politically astute but he is divisive within the party and across Westminster.
A former political officer for a key New Labour figure told The National that Mr McDonnell was “one of the few grown-ups in the room”.
His economic platform, which once seemed radical and included promises to re-nationalise important parts of Britain’s infrastructure, was praised by former Conservative minister Jim O’Neill.
Mr O’Neill said that by “addressing the failures of the market, house prices and low wages, Labour have caught the public mood”.
The push for an election also comes from fears that Mr Corbyn could suffer an electoral backlash if Britain left the EU without a deal.
A poll commissioned by the People’s Vote organisation, which is pushing for a second referendum, was published over the weekend. It showed Labour could lose a quarter of its support if it allowed a “no-deal” settlement.
The survey, which had an unusually large sample of 25,000 people, showed the state of support for the main parties as 40 per cent for the Conservatives and 34 per cent for Labour.
But when asked how they would vote if Labour allowed no deal to happen, their support dropped to 26 per cent.
Until the past few months, the party’s position on Brexit allowed it to avoid committing to any concrete policy as it watched the government tear itself to pieces over such issues as the Northern Ireland backstop.
As Britain enters the final countdown to March 29, the Labour Party could yet play a trump card to end the trials and tribulations of Mrs May, if not Brexit.
Britain’s universities are star performers. A large part of the country’s “soft power”, they bring in students from all over the world. More than a third of Nobel prize-winners who studied in a foreign country went to a British university. That reputation is a cash bonus for towns such as Oxford, Cambridge, York and Canterbury, not to mention the UK as a whole.
In financial terms, they contribute £2 billion yearly to British GDP and support a million jobs. Prime ministers, presidents, leaders from Turkey and United States to Iceland and the UAE have all studied in British universities. Often, they return home with a deep affection for British people, customs and culture.
But all that is being placed at risk by Brexit. University leaders say that crashing out of the EU in March is “one of the biggest threats” to British universities ever. It’s a reality now, a self-inflicted wound. The Russell Group, representing some top universities, reports postgraduate student enrolment from EU countries fell 9 per cent this academic year, following another 9 per cent drop the previous year. When undergraduates are included, the 2018-19 fall is 3 per cent. A few days ago more than 100 British universities wrote to Members of Parliament warning of “an academic, cultural and scientific setback from which it would take decades to recover.”
I am Chancellor of the University of Kent. As the UK’s European University, it has campuses in Canterbury and Medway, plus study centres in Brussels, Athens, Rome and Paris. Our students and staff come from all over the world – the Middle East, China, India, Malaysia – with big numbers from the EU.
One College Master is French, another is German. We have a strong academic reputation and are investing in a prestigious medical centre, but Brexit has made hugely valued staff and students nervous about the future. Some EU nationals worry that the British government is making them feel less welcome, even though their experience of university life is very positive, blessed with enduring international co-operation and friendships.
Whatever the Brexit-obsessed politicians finally come up with, British universities are already pursuing their own foreign policy. We are reinforcing shared values from the Enlightenment, pursuing facts, research, science, debate, truth. We will always welcome new ideas and find inspiration in staff and students from all over the world, including our close friends in Europe.
But the British government’s shambolic handling of Brexit does not inspire confidence. UK universities planned to gain more than £1 billion in European research funding over two years. But amid Brexit uncertainty, Dame Janet Beer, president of Universities UK, warned that “it is critical that … guarantees are extended” to ensure funding will continue, otherwise planning for world-beating research programmes will be impossible.
From the discovery of penicillin to the Higgs Boson or the world wide web, I’m proud of Brainy Britain’s reputation. We attract top talent from the entire globe, and this inventiveness enriches us and the home countries to which most of our students return.
But among pro-Brexit politicians and activists, some carelessly dismiss the problems that leaving the EU creates. One leading Conservative Brexit politician, Michael Gove, famously claimed that the British people “have had enough of experts.” Others say that many core Brexit supporters never went to university, so don’t care if universities suffer.
These ideas are nonsensical. If Mr Gove or any Brexit supporter falls ill or has toothache, he will need treatment from a university-educated doctor or dentist. He will take legal advice from a university-trained lawyer. And he will wish to live in a country where graduate engineers and architects ensure our buildings do not fall down, our water is clean and electricity is available and reliable.
Knowledge, expertise and science have no international boundaries. They depend upon the sharing of wisdom across borders and cultures. The unpalatable truth is that Brexit itself demonstrates what happens when people without real expertise or knowledge manage a difficult project.
Britain’s transport secretary Chris Grayling has provoked ridicule and outrage for striking a £13 million deal with a start-up company to provide post-Brexit ferry services. That’s because the company has never operated a ferry service and its terms and conditions appear to have been hastily copied from a food delivery company.
The UK’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt also invited ridicule when he claimed Britain’s post-Brexit future is “to act as an invisible chain linking together the democracies of the world,” a phrase of incomprehensible and laughable vacuity. Or there is the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab who appeared confused about how trade works between Britain and France across the English Channel.
All the above had the privilege of attending Oxford or Cambridge, two of the most renowned universities in the world, but their incompetence still demonstrate that true expertise has never been more necessary. That’s why universities are shouting out loudly. We fear that a botched Brexit undermines the very visible chains linking experts and researchers worldwide, and especially across Europe. It would help if politicians would think again about these matters, or in the case of some prominent political leaders, any kind of serious thinking would be truly welcomed.