The opposition leader attempted to outflank the Conservatives with the business community by promising to place such an arrangement firmly on the table in a speech on Monday that won the cautious backing of industry representatives.
Corbyn’s suggestion that Labour would pursue “a new, comprehensive UK-EU customs union” after Brexit was praised by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Institute of Directors (IoD), as well as the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne. He claimed the Tories had offered Labour an “open goal” by making no customs union a red line and Corbyn had “just kicked the ball into the back of it”.
The development places May on a collision course with a number of her remain-supporting backbenchers, whose amendment to the trade bill calling for the government to pursue a customs union will now have the backing of the entire Labour party.
The government has already moved to delay the vote until after May’s local election because of fears that it cannot be won.
And now, in a sign of further concern about the impact of a defeat, senior Brexit Tory MPs have sought advice on whether the amendment is legally binding to assess whether May could accept it without having to fulfil its demands. [...]
The prime minister also spoke to the Irish taoiseach on Monday and they agreed they wanted the three options for the Irish border agreed in December “to be examined in detail”. Leo Varadkar pressed upon the prime minister the need to have the third “backstop” option of “full regulatory alignment” north and south of the border “spelled out in the draft legal text of the withdrawal agreement” which is going to be discussed as a key meeting of EU27 permanent representatives in Brussels on Wednesday. Whitehall sources made clear that this issue was causing an even bigger headache for the prime minister than the customs vote.
Fleshing out Labour’s Brexit policy in a speech designed to put clear blue waterbetween the party and the Conservatives, Corbyn told an audience at Coventry University:
• His party supported a “new and strong relationship with the single market” but would seek “protections, clarification or exemptions” in relation to Labour policy on nationalisation and state aid.
• Free movement would end after Brexit “as a statement of fact”, but Labour would put jobs and the economy ahead of “bogus immigration targets”.
• May’s government had kept voters in the dark over what it was seeking from Brexit: “Anything agreed at breakfast is being briefed against by lunch and abandoned by teatime.”
Labour’s customs union policy would prevent Britain from signing independent trade deals, but Corbyn insisted the UK should still be involved in EU-wide negotiations.
“A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest,” he said.
“Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others. That would mean ending up as mere rule-takers.”
Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general, said Corbyn’s commitment to a customs union would “put jobs and living standards first by remaining in a close economic relationship with the EU”, although she questioned the “rhetoric on renationalisation”.
Stephen Martin, the director general of the IoD, which is calling for a partial customs union, said Labour had “widened the debate” and manufacturers would be particularly pleased. However, Martin said there were no easy solutions and it was hard to see the EU extending its trade agreements to a sizeable non-member state without revising treaties.
However, Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of Commerce said Corbyn’s intervention felt “more political than practical for business”. [...]
Asked if Labour could live with only “a right to be heard”, rather than a right to vote or veto, he said: “What we want to achieve and what we will achieve is our right to be able to negotiate and consult at the same time in the European Union on the sort of trade agreements we make. And also to influence them on the sort of trade deals made in the rest of the world,” he said.
Corbyn argued that seeking fresh deals with China or the US was not something Labour wanted to pursue, as that would not compensate for the loss of trade with EU countries.[...]
Full article on The Guardian