Labour calls for manufacturing renaissance after UK leaves the EU

Manufacturing jobs would be brought back to the UK from abroad and the public sector outsourcing “racket” scrapped by a Labour government to stimulate a postbrexit industrial renaissance, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

Focusing on the City and financial services for four decades at the expense of building things is “sucking the dynamism out of our economy”, and robbing workers of good wages and job security, the Labour leader told an audience in Birmingham.

He said there was a need to 0 Jeremy Corbyn was speaking in Birmingham

“reprogramme”withgreater emphasis on manufacturing, and called on Prime Minister Theresa May to change track and negotiate “a brand new customs union” with the EU.

The Labour leader warned the UK could become “a nightmare of chlorinated chicken” that is “in hock to Donald Trump” under the Tories.

Attacking what he called “magical thinking” on the economy, Mr Corbyn said: “We’ve been told that it’s good – advanced even – for our country to manufacture less and less and instead rely on cheap labour from abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector.”

Mr Corbyn added: “We will build things here again that for too long have been built abroad because we have failed to invest.”