Labour hopeful Jess: I’ll f ight to put us back in EU
A LEADING candidate to succeed Jeremy Corbyn yesterday said she was ready to ‘fight’ to take Britain back into the EU, as fresh divisions over Brexit emerged in Labour’s top ranks.
Jess Phillips, who is third favourite for the Labour leadership, said she still believed Leave voters got it wrong – and claimed Britain was ‘safer and more economically viable’ inside the EU.
However, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, who finally confirmed his bid for the Labour crown yesterday, said it was time for the party to move on over Brexit.
Sir Keir acknowledged that the idea of staying in the EU had been crushed by Boris Johnson’s election victory last month.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he said: ‘We are going to leave the EU in the next few weeks and it is important for all of us, including myself, to recognise that the argument about Leave and Remain goes with it. We are leaving. We will have left the EU. This election blew away the argument for a second referendum, rightly or wrongly, and we have to adjust to that situation.’
Sir Keir is the odds-on favourite to succeed Mr Corbyn. But his launch was overshadowed as Mrs Phillips made an eye-catching pledge to campaign for Britain to rejoin the
EU after it leaves at the end of this month. The Birmingham Yardley MP said: ‘I have a Leave seat but I campaigned for Remain because I thought it was the best thing for the people I represent. I am not just going to change my mind on that.’
Asked if she would lead a campaign to take Britain back in, she said: ‘The reality is, if our country is safer, if it is more economically viable to be in the European Union, then I will fight for that, regardless of how difficult that argument is to make.’
Sadiq Khan yesterday called on Mr Corbyn and his allies to ‘have the humility to recognise... we got pasted’. The London mayor told The Sunday Times: ‘Did we deserve to win the general election? Probably not, so the public got it right.’
Sir Keir yesterday acknowledged that Labour’s ‘neutral’ stance on Brexit had cost it votes. The former Director of Public Prosecutions, whose campaign slogan is ‘another future is possible’, said Labour lost trust over a lack of clarity on Brexit, anti-Semitism, and a ‘feeling that the manifesto was overloaded’.
Sir Keir became the fifth Labour MP to launch a leadership bid yesterday, following Mrs Phillips, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, Wigan MP Lisa Nandy and frontbencher Clive Lewis.
Business spokesman Rebecca Long Bailey is set to launch her campaign this week and party chairman Ian Lavery is also considering running.
‘Not going to change my mind’