Blame game after 6 weeks of Brexit talks end in failure
CROSS-PARTY Brexit talks collapsed amid acrimony yesterday as Downing Street said senior Labour figures were not serious about leaving the EU.
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday pulled the plug after six weeks, saying it was impossible to negotiate with a government that had become ‘ ever more unstable and its authority eroded’.
The Labour leader said the prospect of a new Brexiteer Tory leader raised serious questions about ‘the Government’s ability to deliver on any compromise agreement’.
But Downing Street hit back last night, blaming the ‘strident views’ of Labour Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer, who has demanded a second referendum as the price of any deal.
Business leaders reacted with dismay saying the talks had taken up ‘six wasted weeks’ and there was now an increased risk of a No Deal Brexit.
The CBI employers’ group last night called for Parliament to cancel the coming 11- day Whitsun recess to focus on thrashing out a deal.
Sources said the failure could leave MPs facing the ‘very unpalatable’ choice of either No Deal or no Brexit if Parliament refuses to back Mrs May’s deal for a fourth time when it returns to the Commons next month.
Irish leader Leo Varadkar described the failure of the talks as ‘a very serious development and a very negative development, unfortunately’.
Mrs May yesterday said the issue raised fundamental questions about whether the Labour leadership wanted to leave the EU at all.
Speaking in Bristol during her only campaign event for next week’s European Parliament elections, she said: ‘We have not been able to overcome the fact there is not a common position in Labour about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum which could reverse it.’
Mr Corbyn entered the talks in April on the understanding that any crossparty deal would not automatically be subject to a second referendum.
But Sir Keir, seen as a potential leadership rival, made a public pitch for a ‘confirmatory vote’ involving a second referendum if a deal was struck.
A senior minister said the Labour leader had been ‘outmanoeuvred’ by Sir Keir and deputy leader Tom Watson. ‘To be fair to Corbyn and his team they were serious about a deal,’ the minister said.
‘But Starmer never wanted it to work – he was more interested in trying to ingratiate himself with Labour members who want to stop Brexit. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why – he wants to be leader.’ A Labour source suggested the blame for the talks’ collapse lay with Eurosceptic Tories who had criticised the decision to negotiate with Mr Corbyn.
CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said that it was ‘another day of failed politics, another dispiriting day for British business – six wasted weeks while uncertainty paralyses our economy’.
THeReSA MAY, in her final weeks as Prime Minister, is leaving a hideous and debilitating legacy to her successor. Unwittingly, she has made a Jeremy Corbyn government seem more likely.
That is a terrible result of her failure over Brexit and is quite an extraordinary achievement considering some of the policies that the Labour leader espouses.
Most calamitously, a desperate Mrs May invited him to join Brexit talks and thus elevated his status to a level where the public have begun to see him as a man of influence on the national stage.
even a blind man could have told her such talks were bound to fail. Mrs May is diminished by their failure. Mr Corbyn’s image is enhanced.
The truth is that a cunning Mr Corbyn outmanoeuvred her at every turn. He only joined the talks to prove the Prime Minister was dependent on Labour’s support and to use this leverage to humiliate her and make a general election more likely, sooner rather than later.
Yesterday, Mr Corbyn patronised her in a letter to her, saying he had pulled out of the talks due to the ‘ increasing weakness and instability’ of the Conservative government.
There is much truth in his withering denunciation. Labour, led by a man written off for so long by so many — including by several of his own MPs — is now the bookies’ favourite to be the party with most Commons seats at the next general election.
Possibly relying on the support of Scottish nationalists, Labour could easily be in power by the end of this year, if not sooner.
Consider this scenario. Mrs May quits early next month and a new Tory leader is installed by late summer. Her replacement (probably Boris Johnson) would find it just as hard to push through Brexit and therefore could be forced to call a general election.
With the Tories’ popularity plummeting and party wounds from the leadership contest still raw, Mr Corbyn would present himself to voters as a force for stability.
if elected prime minister, he would introduce a swathe of hard-Left policies that he has championed ever since cutting his political teeth as a young man on a Trade Union Studies course at north London Polytechnic. Whatever his faults, Mr Corbyn’s supporters believe in what they see as his authenticity. He’s never made a secret of his socialist principles and support for what he considers fairness and equality.
So we would have a Labour government nationalising energy, water, the rail firms and Royal Mail, raising taxes for the higher paid, increasing pay for teenagers, scrapping university tuition and investing billions of pounds in public services.
Bein no doubt: a Corbyn government would try to bring about a fundamental transformation of Britain’s society and economy.
As the 69-year-old inches closer to no 10, we’ve had an insight over the past week into what he would do as Prime Minister. i’m afraid the prospect is terrifying.
First, Labour has promised to raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour and to extend that to those under 18. Currently, the minimum for youngsters is £4.35 an hour.
This policy is a brazen bid to woo young voters — just like the promise to scrap college tuition fees, which it has been estimated would cost taxpayers £8 billion a year.
employers across the country are convinced not only that Labour’s minimum wage policy
risks putting small firms out of business, but also that it is flawed in principle.
Young people need to learn on the job and, through no fault of their own, they’re not worth £10 an hour. As night follows day, it would result in a surge in youth unemployment.
Professor Len Shackleton, of the Right- leaning institute of economic Affairs, has warned: ‘Such a rate hike could raise youth unemployment to levels comparable with those in continental europe.’ in Greece, the rate is around 39 per cent and in Spain it’s 34 per cent.
Another example of Labour’s economic naivety was Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey’s misunderstanding of the expected knock-on effects of her plans for the State to buy back the national Grid.
She accused energy companies of ‘ operating the grid to rip customers off, line the pockets of the rich and not invest properly in renewable energy’.
The truth is that under state ownership, energy was more expensive and there were more power cuts. To all but the most blinkered ideologue, it’s obvious that energy privatisation has done good rather than harm.
Also, where would a Labour government find the billions to buy back these companies, and how on earth would MPs be qualified to assess their value for the buy-back?
WHAT’Smore, John McDonnell, the Shadown Chancellor, has said that these companies will be bought back at ‘market rates’.
This sounds like theft to me, as national Grid shareholders would be most unlikely to get fair compensation for their assets, currently worth £64 billion. indeed, the City took fright at Labour’s plans to renationalise utility firms and leave millions of pension
savers out of pocket. in just one day this week, £965 million was wiped off national Grid’s value.
Whatever Labour claims, it won’t be the rich who suffer, but millions of elderly because their pension funds would be severely hit.
Since so many of the shareholdings in British energy companies are thought to come from overseas, much-needed foreign investment will be driven out of the British economy.
in general, the danger is that a Corbyn government would go on a public spending binge at a time when tax revenues collapsed because many businesses might decide to quit Britain.
inevitably, this would lead to more unemployment and spiralling national debt.
Whatever the faults of Mrs May’s Government, she can boast a solid record of economic achievement. employment is at record levels, while the deficit (the difference between what the Government spends and what it receives) is falling and growth has been sustained. The signs are that Mr Corbyn would wreck all this. Very dangerous times undoubtedly lie ahead.
The Tory Party must cease tearing itself to shreds — and, instead, aim its fire on the man who could wreak great damage to Britain.