‘Whole world’ wants to avoid no-deal Brexit
STRONG ALLIANCE: JAPANESE PM URGES SUPPORT FOR MAY’S EU PLAN
JAPAN’S PRIME Minister has said that the “whole world” was hoping that the UK would not crash out of the European Union without a deal.
Speaking alongside Prime Minister Theresa May following talks at 10 Downing Street yesterday, Shinzo Abe said that his country offers its “total support” to her EU Withdrawal Agreement. He made clear that Japanese companies, who employ more than 150,000 people in the UK, valued the legal stability offered by the transition period included in the Brexit deal agreed by Mrs May with Brussels.
He said: “It is the strong will of Japan to further develop this strong partnership with the UK, to invest more into your country and to enjoy further economic growth with the UK. That is why we truly hope that a no-deal Brexit will be avoided, and in fact that is the whole wish of the whole world. Japan is in total support of the draft Withdrawal Agreement... which provides for transition to ensure legal stability for businesses that have invested into this country.”
Business Secretary Greg Clark, meanwhile, said that after the Government had suffered two Commons defeats over its Brexit plans in the space of 24 hours, it was clear that there was no majority in Parliament for leaving the EU without an agreement.
“It is my strong view that we need to come together,” he said.
LABOUR LEADER Jeremy Corbyn has rejected fears that his pro-Brexit stance will alienate Remain voters within his own party in key West Yorkshire marginal seats at the next election.
Mr Corbyn yesterday used a speech in Wakefield to call for a General Election if Theresa May’s Brexit deal is defeated in the Commons, but admitted for the first time that this could result in the UK’s Brexit date of March 29 being delayed.
He then went on to Guiseley, in the Pudsey constituency where Labour’s left-wing candidate Jane Aitchison is hoping to overturn the razor-thin majority of 331 held by Conservative Stuart Andrew. He later visited the Morley and Outwood constituency, where sitting Tory Andrea Jenkyns will defend a majority of 2,104 against Labour’s Deanne Fergusson.
Yesterday a survey of 2,000 people in Yorkshire by YouGov, commissioned by the People’s Vote, suggested that declining support among Remainers meant Labour may slip behind the Conservatives as the region’s biggest party.
But speaking to The Yorkshire Post, Mr Corbyn dismissed the suggestion that Remain voters in his party, which represent around three-quarters of the total, would be put off by his proBrexit position.
He said: “No, not at all. We have set out very clearly the issues of poverty and injustice in this country and I set out this morning in my speech in Wakefield about the demands we are making on the Government, which is about to take us into either a nodeal or a very bad deal situation.
“We will vote against both of those and say they have got to negotiate something better, which is a customs union with the EU, which I set out in my speech in Coventry last year.
“It is also what we then put into a General Election. Our conference motion, carried unanimously, included a sequencing of events, opposing the Government’s deal, calling for a General Election and then after that go into that General Election campaign, and our party policy will be decided in advance of the General Election.”
Ms Aitchison added: “I am very confident here. Stuart Andrew is the Conservative MP, he has already said he is going to vote for Theresa’s deal next week.
“Now whether people in this constituency voted leave or remain, none of them voted for that. I am very confident about our stance compared to theirs.”
Earlier, Mr Corbyn said the UK’s Brexit date of March 29 could be delayed if Labour forces a General Election.
He dismissed the Government’s offer to consider new safeguards for workers as part of the Brexit package, backing a trade union assessment that “it simply doesn’t guarantee the protections that we are seeking”.
Mr Corbyn confirmed that Labour would go into any early election on a platform of opening new negotiations with Brussels on a Brexit deal involving a customs union, single market relationship and a guarantee to keep pace with EU rights and standards.
And he said that “time” would be needed to complete these talks. Mr Corbyn said there was “no split” between him and Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer, who suggested on Wednesday that an extension of the two-year period for negotiations set out in Article 50 of the EU treaties may now be “inevitable”.
Asked if he agreed, the Labour leader said: “Quite clearly, moving into office at a period right up against the clock, there would need to be time for that negotiation. What Keir was doing was reflecting the practicalities of how that negotiation would be undertaken... An extension would be a possibility because clearly there would have to be time to negotiate.”
JEREMY CORBYN deliberately chose to visit Wakefield and Pudsey to renew his call for an immediate election because he knows that the outcome in these swing seats will shape the future fortunes of the main parties.
Yet they are also emblematic of the national divide. Two-thirds of voters in Wakefield backed Leave in the 2016 referendum – even though Mary Creagh, the city’s Labour MP, is a staunch Remainer who increased her own majority at the 2017 election.
Meanwhile the electorate in Pudsey voted narrowly to stay in the EU despite Tory MP Stuart Andrew, now a junior Defence Minister, backing Brexit. His majority was cut to 331 votes and Labour has selected a Corbynite candidate from the far-left to trip and topple him.
Just how does Mr Corbyn intend to reconcile these differences if he chooses to table a vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government – he says he is still undecided on the timing of such a move – and forces an election that he then wins?
Voters were certainly left none the wiser following the Labour leader’s speech in Wakefield and Mr Corbyn was asked by a businessman to spell out his opposition to Mrs May’s deal. It would not guarantee future trade investment, he said, before trying – and failing – to play down Shadow Cabinet splits over tactics and a possible extension to Article 50.
And this is the point. An election is likely to replace one set of differences with another because the Tory turmoil masks the fact that Labour, too, is divided over Brexit and that a small number of its MPs did, in fact, vote with the Government this week while others are trying to seek common ground on safeguards for workers’ rights and so on.
If Mr Corbyn did likewise, rather than opposing for opposition’s sake, he might, in turn, find it easier to build the groundswell of support that he needs if he is to ever lead this country.