Labour in threat to bind May’s hands over Irish border
Labour has pledged to try and push through changes to Brexit legislation that would make a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland impossible.
The party’s shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, has insisted such a legal commitment is needed to prevent any kind of “checks, controls or physical infrastructure” at the border.
In a speech in Birmingham as the countdown to Brexit approaches the one-year mark, Sir Keir said an amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill was
needed to ensure there was no drop in cross-border co-operation in Ireland.
Sir Keir said: “We do not do this lightly. I know from my time in Northern Ireland that this is not an issue to play party politics on, or to divide the House unnecessarily. this amendment is born of necessity because of the government’s failure to advance a credible solution in Northern Ireland.”
Sir Keir said Labour would also try to rewrite the government’s Brexit legislation to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a deal if Parliament rejects any agreement Prime Minister Theresa May strikes with Brussels.
Labour hopes to build a coalition of peers and MPS to reject the “take it or leave it” approach on offer from ministers which would see a vote against the final agreement interpreted as a decision to back a “no deal” Brexit.
Sir Keir said: “If Parliament rejects the Prime Minister’s deal, that cannot give licence to her, or the extreme Brexiteers in her party, to allow the UK to crash out without an agreement. That would be the worst of all possible worlds.”
He added: “Should the Prime Minister’s deal be defeated, it must be for Parliament to say what happens next, not the executive.”
Meanwhile, a poll has found that more than a third of voters rate leaving the EU ahead of maintaining the Union with Northern Ireland.
Of those surveyed, 29 per cent said retaining Northern Ireland within the UK was more important than Brexit, while 36 per cent put Brexit first. The Yougov online poll sampled 1,630 adults but did not survey voters within Northern Ireland. DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said he did not think the findings were relevant, while Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou Mcdonald said she was “not hugely surprised”.
“If the people of Britain are minded to break the union and say a fond farewell and to facilitate the reunification of our country we would greet that news with delight, to put it mildly,” Ms Mcdonald added.
In the Commons, Conservative MP Ken Clarke earlier urged the government to ignore “nationalist nonsense” over the decision to award the contract to produce the first post-brexit blue passports to a French company, criticising the “slightly childlike, jingoistic element” to the debate.