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Labour leader hands May his shopping list for a Brexit deal, including a customs union and a possible second referendum – as Geoffrey Cox says any soft divorce could be hardened up later
Jeremy Corbyn demanded ‘a customs union with the EU’ in his face-to-face Brexit showdown with Theresa May, he revealed tonight as Tory anger over the meeting threatened to explode into civil war.
The hard-Left Labour leader pronounced his first Brexit discussions with Mrs May ‘useful but inconclusive’, and complained that there ‘hasn’t been as much change as I expected’.
He confirmed he raised the idea of a second referendum and said technical talks on finding an end to the Brexit impasse would continue on Thursday morning.
But just minutes later, amid simmering Tory tensions over the meeting, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox sought to placate angry MPs by suggesting a soft withdrawal might not be the end of the world, because we could later quit any customs union arrangement.ADVERTISING
Mr Cox told the BBC: ‘If we decided, in some considerable years time, that we wanted to review our membership of any such customs union if we signed it – and I’m not saying we will – that’s a matter for negotiation and discussion.
‘There’s nothing to stop us removing ourselves from that arrangement, so we can’t look at these things as permanent straitjackets upon this country.’
As well as a customs union he said they had discussed ‘dynamic regulatory alignment’ with the trade block that would see Britain retain minimum standards on ‘the environment as well as consumer and employment rights’.
Mr Corbyn said he raised the issue of a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal with Mrs May.
‘I said this is the policy of our party, that we would want to pursue the option of a public vote to prevent crashing out or to prevent leaving with a bad deal,’ he said.
‘There was no agreement reached on that, we just put it there as one of the issues that the Labour Party conference voted on last year.’
The meeting came late on a day which saw two two Tory ministers resign in disgust, with MPs demanding a new secret ballot on Theresa May’s leadership today after she chose to hatch a Brexit deal with Jeremy Corbyn rather than leave the EU with No Deal on April 12.
The Prime Minister has enraged her party by abandoning hopes of persuading hardline Brexiteers and the DUP to back her deal and instead offering talks with the Labour leader on delivering a softer Brexit.
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Theresa May leaving the Houses of Parliament tonight after meeting Leader Jeremy Corbyn for talks which sparked uproar among Tory MPs and pushed two ministers into resigning
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A cross-party manoeuvre hatched by Tory Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour’s Yvette Cooper to force a new law through the Commons in a day look set to succeed after a 315-310 decision to allow it to proceed (pictured)
Mrs May and Mr Corbyn were locked in talks for around two hours this afternoon amid fevered speculation they could agree on a customs union plan that would end hopes of post-Brexit trade deals.
Both Labour and Downing Street said the meeting was ‘constructive’. Aides will meet further later before intensive negotiations tomorrow.
The talks also put Mr Corbyn on collision course with his shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, who earlier demanded that any deal reached must be put to a public vote.
She wrote to MPs today ahead of a meeting of Mr Corbyn’s front benchers tonight, saying: ‘(I’m) assuming one of the main topics of discussion will be whether to insist that any planned compromise deal we agree to support will be subject to a confirmatory public vote, with ‘Remain’ as the other alternative.
‘What I would have said is that if we look like reaching any other decision than a confirmatory vote, that would be in breach of the decision made unanimously by conference in Liverpool (last September) and overwhelmingly supported by our members, and it needs to be put to a vote by the shadow cabinet.’
More pressure was placed on the two leaders to agree a deal tonight as MPs backed a controversial plan to force Mrs May to stop a no-deal Brexit in a close Commons vote.
A cross-party manoeuvre hatched by Tory Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour’s Yvette Cooper to force a new law through the Commons in a day look set to succeed after a 315-310 decision to allow it to proceed.
If passed by both the Commons and the Lords the law would require the Prime Minister to delay Britain’s withdrawal beyond April 12.
The attempt to wrestle control of Brexit by the cross-party Remainers sparked fury among Brexiteers.
But the second reading vote passed by just five is almost certain to be repeated when MPs vote again at 10pm after the third reading.
Since the meeting was called dozens of irate grassroots Tory members have been cutting up their memberships in protest and posting pictures of their destroyed cards on social media.
Today Mrs May was bombarded with hostile questions from her own side at Prime Minister’s Questions and as she met with the Labour leader this afternoon junior Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris, who was tasked with planning for No Deal, resigned.
The Daventry MP said: ‘You don’t want to quit the EU without a deal, and that makes my job irrelevant’.
Tonight Mrs May said he had done ‘crucial work’ to prepare the country for No Deal and thanked Mr Heaton-Harris for his service.
This morning Nigel Adams, the junior Wales Office minister, became the first to quit over the concessions to Mr Corbyn and told Mrs May: ‘It now seems that you have decided a deal – cooked up by a Marxist who has never put British interests first – is better than No Deal’.
Ahead of a meeting of the 1922 Committee at 5pm, Tory MPs are understood to be bombarding chairman Sir Graham Brady with demands for a new secret ballot on her leadership despite party rules protecting her from an official challenge until December.
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Theresa May suffered attack-after-attack in the Commons today for choosing to reach out to Jeremy Corbyn to help deliver Brexit