Tag: Prime Minister’s Questions

Jeremy Corbyn has urged Theresa May to “either listen and change course, or go” in a Brexit-dominated prime minister’s questions which appeared to lay down the most likely battle lines for a series of indicative Commons votes on seeking a consensus departure plan. Corbyn, in return, repeatedly urged May to embrace Labour’s idea of a customs union-based exit plan, and accused the prime minister of using intransigence as a means to force MPs into backing her deal in a likely third meaningful vote. “Why is she prepared to carry on risking jobs and industry in another attempt to, yet again, run down the clock and try to blackmail the MPs behind her in supporting a deal that’s already been twice rejected?” he asked. When May declined to say directly if she would back any plan that emerged from the series of indicative votes scheduled for later on Wednesday, Corbyn said: “I think the house, and perhaps more importantly the whole country, deserves to know the answer to that question.” He continued: “This country is on hold while the government is in complete paralysis. to knife crime, have been neglected. Instead she’s stoking further division, she’s unable to resolve the central issues facing Britain today, and she is frankly unable to govern. Corbyn set to whip MPs to back public vote as frontbench threatens revolt Read more “The prime minister faces a very clear choice, the one endorsed by the country and many of her party: either listen and change course, or go. Her Brexit plan, she also argued, would deliver “the benefits of the customs union while enabling us to have an independent free trade policy”. He said: “It’s a bit strange when a Conservative prime minister says she doesn’t want what the business community want. In the first PMQs question, Conservative Brexiter Andrew Bridgen said his constituents would “never trust the prime minister again”.

May said her policy was to leave the customs union, having as frictionless trade as possible, no hard border in Ireland and an independent trade policy. The Labour leader said there had been no progress in cabinet for five months. May said some people wanted the UK to forget about having an independent trade policy. Neither of those positions was a position of the government. May’s retort was that Corbyn said there wouldn’t be a deal before December. He said the Dutch have already started training new customs officers. How many HMRC extra staff have been recruited to deal with Brexit? He was also more versatile than usual, combining real humour (ie, a joke that actually made people laugh, not synthetic, parliamentary humour – the laughter after his first question went on so long they will probably have to edit it out in the radio bulletins), deadly specifics (the question about HMRC staff), good attack quotes (the ones from car manufacturers), but also questions that accurately and harshly summed up the government’s failings (primarily, the absence of a Brexit negotiating position only five months before the deal is supposed to be completed). Tories who have been withering about Corbyn’s abilities should start asking themselves what it is about the government’s record that has made a Brexit PMQs such a doddle for him. Memorable lines Jeremy Corbyn’s opener: When the prime minister wrote at the weekend that she wanted ‘as little friction as possible’, was she talking about EU trade or the next cabinet meeting?