Corbyn says post-brexit trade deal with US risks ‘rat hairs in paprika’
Next month’s general election is the most important for a generation, writes Richard Leonard
Jeremy Corbyn will claim a post-brexit US-UK trade deal negotiated by Boris Johnson would put British consumers at risk of finding “rat hairs in paprika and maggots in orange juice” due to lower food safety standards.
The Labour leader’s inflammatory allegation is part of a direct attack on the Conservatives this morning, when he will accuse the prime minister of trying to “hijack” Brexit to bring about a low-regulation economy.
At a rally in the key Labour target seat of Harlow in Essex, he will claim the government’s post-brexit agenda represents “Thatcherism on steroids” in an attempt to win over Eurosceptics in an area that voted by a margin of more than twoto-one to leave the EU.
Labour has sought to make the fate of the NHS under a post-brexit trade deal with the US a key issue in the election campaign, despite repeated denials from Downing Street and the White House that the health service will be part of negotiations.
Ramping up his rhetoric, Mr Corbyn will raise the prospect of cuts to statutory holidays,
pointing to American laws that give workers just ten days off with pay each year.
Turning to food safety, environmental protections and workers’ rights, Mr Corbyn will claim: “Given the chance, they’ll run down our rights at work, our entitlements to holidays, breaks and leave.
“Given the chance, they’ll slash food standards to US levels where ‘acceptable levels’ of rat hairs in paprika and maggots in orange juice are allowed and they’ll put chlorinated chicken on our supermarket shelves.
“And given the chance, they’ll water down the rules on air pollution and our environment that keep us safe.”
He will add: “Margaret Thatcher’s attack on the working people of our country left scars that have never healed and communities that have never recovered.
“The Conservatives know they can’t win support for what they’re planning to do in the name of Thatcherism. So they’re trying to do it under the banner of Brexit instead.”
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, the Labour leader described how he had laid down the law to the shadow cabinet over the party’s Brexit position, telling colleagues they had to accept it was now settled.
“I just said, ‘Look, this debate is now over’,” he said. “We’ve done it, the party has now made its decision and that’s it; and that’s what we’re going to campaign on’.”
Mr Corbyn also said he had made a unilateral decision to back Mr Johnson’s decision to go for a December election, despite the objections of some colleagues, including chief whip Nick Brown.
“I didn’t alert anybody in advance – it was my decision,” he said. “On my own. I made thatdecision.andtheygulped and said, ‘Yes, Jeremy’.”
Yesterday Nigel Farage warned there would “be no Brexit without the Brexit Party” as he declared war on both the Conservatives and Labour.
In a show of strength in London, the Brexit Party unveiled more than 600 candidates who will stand across Scotland, England and Wales, underlining the resources at its disposal.
Mr Farage denounced the deal agreed with Brussels by Mr Johnson as “not Brexit”, and attacked the “conceited arrogance” of the Conservative Party for rejecting his call for a Leave alliance.
“We won’t split the vote because we will be the only people actually offering Brexit, leaving the European Union and its institutions,” he said.
He said that, as leader of Ukip, they had done “far more harm” to the Labour Party than to the Conservatives, and vowed to target the five million Labour voters who backed Leave in the 2016 referendum.
The Brexit Party would now focus on those Leave-voting Labour constituencies that were represented by proremain MPS, he said.
“I will be out in those Labour constituencies. I’ll be in the east Midlands, I’ll be in south Wales, I’ll be in the north-east. I want the country to know the sheer extent of Labour betrayal.”
But, amid growing Tory concern about the impact that the Brexit Party could have, Jacob Rees-mogg, the Commons Leader and Brexiteer standard-bearer, called on Mr Farage to “retire from the field”.
He told LBC radio: “I think he would be well advised to recognise that battle he won. He should be really proud of his political career.
“It would be a great shame if he carries on fighting after he has already won to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
“I understand why Nigel Farage would want to carry on campaigning because he has been campaigning for the best part of 30 years and it must be hard to retire from the field. But that is what he ought to do.”
Downing Street confirmed that Mr Johnson will not seek any extension to the Brexit transition period if he is returned to No 10 in the election.
Under the Prime Minister’s proposed deal with Brussels, the UK will continue to follow EU rules after it has left the bloc until the end of 2020 to allow the two sides to negotiate a new trade deal.
“The Brexit process has been going on for long enough,” a spokesman said.
Outgoing European Commission president Jeanclaude Juncker used a valedictory interview to claim Mr Johnson told “so many lies” during the EU referendum campaign.
Mr Juncker said it had been a mistake for the commission to remain neutral during the referendum because “there needed to be a voice to counter them”.
He also criticised “my friend”, the former prime minister Tony Blair, for sticking to a “narrative” that European integration was a threat to the UK.
“I didn’t alert anybody inadvance–itwasmy decision [to go for a December election], on my own. And they gulped and said, ‘Yes, Jeremy’.”
JEREMY CORBYN
Labour leader
It is as simple as this. Scotland has the power to decide if Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn is in Downing Street by the end of the year. My own assessment is that Johnson represents a dangerous strain of nationalism which poses the biggest threat to the very future of the UK. In stark contrast, the election of a radical and redistributive Labour government is the most positive argument for the UK, and would eclipse the SNP’S case for the establishment of a separate Scottish state. Little wonder that the SNP is more concerned with attacking Labour and talking up another independence referendum.
What is equally puzzling about the Nationalists’ current argument is that it is predicated on Brexit, when an incoming Labour government is pledged to giving the choice back to the people, re-energising the chances of the UK remaining in the EU.
This election offers an unprecedented opportunity to vote in a reforming socialist government, which will transform the lives of people in Scotland like few governments before. This election is about ending the rigged economic system, the decade of cuts and wage squeeze and securing the real change that the people of Scotland need.
There is a rising determination, not least emerging among our school pupil strikers, which our representative democracy needs to better reflect, on the need for a new urgency of action and a renewed vitality in our thinking. People are tired of a status quo where the idle rich get richer and the working poor get poorer. This is not just the view from Scotland. It is the view from right across these shared islands.
An incoming Labour government will be therefore acting from day one to deal with the legacy of the Tory Brexit chaos with a public vote including remain on the ballot paper, reviving our public services, giving 700,000 working women and men in Scotland a pay rise to £10 an hour, and investing an additional £70 billion in Scotland’s public services and infrastructure. At the weekend we announced how Labour’s plan to retrofit homes to the highest energy efficiency standards possible could create at least 18,500 direct and 16,600 indirect jobs in Scotland and give households a cash boost, while tackling the climate emergency. We will also reverse the decision to scrap free TV licences for over-75s.
This is just the start of the transformational change that will improve lives here in Scotland. Since 2007, Scottish politics has been dominated by our constitutional position. The 2014 independence referendum, with its decisive vote to remain in the UK, was said to be a once-in-a-generation test of the sovereign will of the Scottish people.
However, the 2016 referendum decision to leave the EU and the shambolic response to Brexit by the Tory Party, not least in the hands of Johnson, has led to fresh agitation for another independence referendum. The SNP’S own blueprint for a separate Scotland – the Sustainable Growth Commission published in 2018 – acknowledged that an independent Scotland would be shaped by foreign direct investment, by low taxation and by prolonged and intensified austerity as an independent Scotland adjusts to its new reality. This would mean public spending cuts, stealth tax rises, lower wages, greater job insecurity, fewer opportunities for all and poorer public services.
So, neither the status quo, nor the nationalist prescription, are what Scotland and the rest of the UK needs. In fact, in government, the SNP has been the status quo’s biggest champions, in spite of their rhetoric. They have presided over decline through inaction. They talk of political sovereignty, but economic sovereignty lies increasingly in the hands of faraway board rooms, increasingly overseas.
Jeremy Corbyn and I have also been clear that a second independence referendum would not be the priority of a Labour government in its formative years. Labour is opposed to independence and we believe another referendum is neither desirable, nor necessary. The best case against independence will be the election and actions of radical redistributive Labour governments in the UK and in Scotland.
So Labour is committed to securing new powers for the Scottish Parliament, including borrowing powers and the power to enhance employment rights above the UK level – with a clear mandate for these powers to be used to empower every workplace and community.
We will also abolish the unelected House of Lords. Jeremy Corbyn has already stated: “We have a House of Lords that is dominated by a small number of people from London and the South East. I would want to see an elected second chamber that it is representative of all regions and nations of the United Kingdom”.
The Scottish Parliament must use the powers it already has to lead the way in building the kind of public services and welfare state that we need across the UK, rather than acting as passive receivers of cuts from Westminster. We need an active industrial strategy so that we have a government with a comprehensive economic action plan devised by unions, employers and government and its agencies to move beyond the SNP’S case-by-case industrial rescue service. Nicola Sturgeon’s focus in this General Election is to talk about independence to divert attention from the SNP’S failing record in charge of Scotland’s public services and economy. In government, the First Minister has voted with the Tories to keep the failed Scotrail franchise in the hands of the Dutch state, letting passengers and workers down. The NHS is missing more targets every single month, letting patients and staff down. The SNP Government has failed to stand up to the Tories and failed to abolish the two-child cap and the rape clause, letting all of us down. With this record, little wonder that the SNP wants to focus on breaking up the UK.
This is the most important election for a generation. It is not a proxy vote about some future referendum. It is about who forms a government and who runs the UK and in whose interests they govern and legislate for the next five years.
That is not some political game but a serious question that demands proper consideration and deserves an outcome that, in my view, must lead to the election of a majority Labour government.
Richard Leonard is an MSP for Central Scotland and leader of Scottish Labour.