CORBYN’S BREXIT BETRAYAL

He’ll snub millions of Labour voters by refusing to limit migration and kill off dream of striking our own trade deals

JEREMY Corbyn was accused of a Brexit ‘betrayal’ last night as he prepared to set out plans that would keep Britain shackled to Brussels.

The Labour leader is expected to say he will sacrifice the ability to strike new trade deals in order to keep Britain locked in an EU customs union – and allow free movement to continue.

In his most significant Brexit speech since the referendum today, he will also call for a ‘close relationship’ with the single market, citing Norway and Switzerland as examples of the kind of deal he is seeking.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said Mr Corbyn ‘seems certain to break the commitments he made to Labour voters at the last election’.

Pro-Brexit Labour MPs warned their leader he risked betraying millions of

party supporters who voted to exit the EU. Former minister Frank Field said keeping the country shackled to Brussels would be ‘to rat on the people’s decision to leave’.

Kate Hoey, another Labour ex-minister, said ‘to divert from the recent manifesto would be a hammer blow to those Labour supporters who came back and voted for us precisely because of our unequivocal position on leaving the EU’.

Labour Eurosceptic Graham Stringer said it was vital to keep the party’s pledge to make a clean break with the EU, adding: ‘Anything less would be a betrayal.’

But pro-EU Labour MP Chuka Umunna welcomed what he called ‘a clear change of position’. In today’s speech in the West Midlands, Mr Corbyn is expected to:

Confirm that Labour would keep Britain in the customs union after Brexit, closing the door on the dream of taking back control of Britain’s trade policy;

Demand a ‘bespoke’ deal that would keep Britain in the single market in all but name, while demanding the right for a future Labour government to tear up EU competition rules to subsidise failing nationalised industries;

Signal that Labour is ready to join forces with Tory Remainers over the customs union in the hope of forcing a Commons defeat that could topple Theresa May;

Leave the door open to a second referendum on the final Brexit deal before the UK leaves;

Accept free movement should continue with only minor curbs to stop firms exploiting ‘cheap agency labour’ from abroad.

It comes barely six months after shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner warned it would be a ‘disaster’ to stay in a customs union after Brexit.

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Gardiner had been ‘speaking very much for himself’ – and added that there

‘Voters will punish him’

had been ‘ unanimous agreement’ in the shadow cabinet that Labour should switch to a policy of pursuing a customs union with the EU.

He acknowledged the shift would make it impossible for the UK to pursue independent trade deals but claimed: ‘We’d be better off doing that with the EU.’

Labour sources suggested Mr Corbyn would take a ‘more nuanced’ position in his speech, but admitted it would include joining some sort of customs union.

Mr Davis said the U-turn would put jobs at risk. ‘Labour may think they have stumbled across a simple solution to Brexit, but there is a lesson they are yet to learn. If it looks like snake oil, and it smells like snake oil, don’t expect it to make you feel better,’ he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

The Brexit Secretary added: ‘This plan would necessitate two serious breaches of Labour’s manifesto … a customs union would prevent us from signing economyboosting, job- creating free trade deals with other countries around the world. This is one of the central prizes of Brexit.’

Mr Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell are lifelong Eurosceptics who have railed against the EU’s customs union for years. In 2005, Mr Corbyn said EU tariffs were destroying agriculture in the developing world, adding: ‘The practice is simply crazy and must be stopped.’

But he has come under intense pressure from Labour members and the unions to soften the party’s line. Labour strategists also believe the shift could wreck Mrs May’s hopes of keeping the fragile Tory coalition on Brexit together.

Mr McDonnell is said to have told Labour’s top team that inflicting a Commons defeat on Mrs May over the customs union is the ‘ best chance’ of an early election.

Sir Keir said: ‘The crunch time is now coming for the Prime Minister because the majority in Parliament does not back her approach to a customs union.’

Mr Corbyn will say: ‘ We respect the result of the referendum.’ But he will add: ‘ Every country geographically close to the EU without being an EU member state, whether it’s Turkey, Switzerland, or Norway, has some sort of close relationship to the EU … Britain will need a bespoke relationship of its own.

‘Labour would negotiate a new and strong relationship with the single market that includes full tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections.’

Despite the EU insisting it will not accept ‘cherry picking’ of single market rules, the Labour leader will demand the right for the UK to tear up the EU’s state aid rules.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries said: ‘Millions of Labour voters took Corbyn at his word when he promised to respect the referendum result and help deliver Brexit. Those same voters will punish him and any Tory Europhile rebels who are considering backing him.’

Meanwhile, First Secretary of State David Lidington will today warn devolved governments not to use Brexit as an excuse to break up the UK. He will pledge to ensure most EU powers relating to devolved areas will be given to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, rather than hoarded by Westminster.

IT’S often said by his supporters that Jeremy Corbyn is a true conviction politician – a man who stands by his principles no matter what. But the Labour leader’s Damascene conversion to the idea of Britain staying in a customs union after Brexit – still shackled by EU trade rules – shows him to be just another cynical opportunist.

At heart, Mr Corbyn loathes the Brussels machine as much as any Tory Eurosceptic. He once described it as a conspiracy that will ‘take away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hand it over to an unelected set of bankers’.

He voted to leave the EEC in the 1975 referendum, against the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties and against a host of other measures aimed at greater integration.

Yet for short-term political gain, he’s performed a screeching U-turn and betrayed the will of millions of Labour voters.

He calculates that by joining with Tory rebels and Lib Dems, Labour can defeat the Government over its plan to take Britain out of the customs union. If they succeed, we would be unable to strike independent trade deals and the whole Brexit process would be thrown into chaos.

Mr Corbyn hopes Theresa May would be so destabilised she’d have to call a general election – which could propel him into No 10. For that prize, the great conviction politician would abandon any principle.

Any Tory MPs reckless enough to join him in this cynical ploy should contemplate the very real danger they may be ushering in an economically illiterate Marxist government which would spell disaster for Britain. However strongly they feel about Europe,

nothing is worth that risk.