Corbyn vows: Labour will reopen EU talks if we win snap election
JEREMY Corbyn last night said a second Brexit referendum was not “a priority”, but said Labour was ready for a snap election and would get a “better deal” on Brexit if it won.
As PM Theresa May faced threats to her premiership following a five-hour Cabinet showdown over her Brexit deal, Mr Corbyn insisted Labour was ready to go to the polls.
When in power, they would start fresh talks with Brussels. He said: “We have to reopen the negotiations quickly. We would do a better deal.”
Challenged on what Labour’s election manifesto would promise on Brexit, he insisted the party would decide. He said: “It’s a very democratic party. Listen, I am not a dictator.”
The Labour leader has come under mounting pressure to support a second Brexit referendum.
And Mr Corbyn, who spent 32 years on the back benches as a Eurosceptic but campaigned for Remain after winning the party leadership in 2015, risked disappointing Labour’s pro-EU members with his comments.
Quizzed about a second referendum at a ReachFest event, hosted by Mirror parent company, Reach Plc, he said: “I don’t see that as a priority.”
He also revealed his MPs would be whipped to toe the party line in a crunch Commons vote on the PM’s EU divorce pact. He said: “We will be voting as a party.”
Mr Corbyn was tackled about his Shadow Cabinet’s criticism of Labour’s “six tests” for backing a Brexit deal. Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner dismissed the tests as “b ******* ” in the summer. Mr Corbyn said Mr Gardiner had apologised.
Mr Corbyn said: “He said to me he was very sorry for using bad language.”
Mr Corbyn also used the 50-minute panel debate in Soho, London, to blast the Government’s universal credit roll-out and homelessness.
Discussing plans to revive ailing high streets, he said he “didn’t think” he had ever used Amazon. He added: “If we all do that kind of shopping our high streets become payday loan companies, coffee shops and very little else.”
In a bid to win support from youngsters, he said: “Young people have for too long been told, ‘You’re going to have to pay for your education, you better think about private healthcare, you better think about private pensions and you better be thinking about paying for your education’.
“Surely as a society, if we want – as we must have – that skilled, educated workforce for the future then we have to invest in education, training and skills.”
He backed raising corporation tax from 20% to 26% and renewed Labour’s support for a mass renationalisation programme.
He said the water industry was taking out loans to pay shareholders, instead of investing in services.
Mr Corbyn, a veteran activist in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, distanced himself from the party’s policy to renew the Trident submarine programme.
He said: “I have a whole lifetime history of being appalled by nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare.”