FLIP-FLOP CORBYN GETS SET TO VOTE DOWN AGREEMENT

JEREMY Corbyn last night was plotting to block Theresa May’s Brexit deal – just weeks after pledging Labour would support a ‘sensible deal’.

The Labour leader is set to order the party’s MPs to vote down the proposals despite warnings that a failure to back the agreement will plunge the country into economic chaos and lead to us crashing out of the EU without a deal.

In his speech to the Labour Party conference in September, Mr Corbyn had claimed he wanted to ‘reach out to the Prime Minister’ as Brexit was ‘about the future of our country.’.

But Mr Corbyn is preparing to vote against Mrs May’s agreement in the hope it could hasten a general election. Yesterday Mr Corbyn claimed she had negotiated ‘a bad deal that will leave the country in an indefinite halfway house without a real say’.

Downing Street is hopeful that a number of his MPs will defy him and support the Prime Minister, reasoning that a no-deal Brexit would be a worse outcome. Some Labour MPs representing Brexit-backing constituencies have suggested they could back an agreement that prevents a no deal Brexit.

Tony Blair urged Labour MPs to reject the deal and back a second referendum, criticising Mr Corbyn’s ‘refusal’ to ‘lead the country out of the Brexit nightmare’. In a speech in London, Mr Blair said he had some sympathy with the Prime Minister who was faced with ‘an impossible circle to square’.

He said: ‘Nothing can disguise the nature of the deal she has chosen, if reports of it are true. [It] isn’t a compromise, it’s a capitulation. The withdrawal agreement will keep us tied to EU trade policy until there is an end established by ‘joint consent’ – in other words, the EU has a veto.’