Corbyn Makes Plans to Meet Barnier on Brexit
Corbyn Makes Plans to Meet Barnier on Brexit
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Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party, will travel to Brussels on Thursday to meet with European Union officials including the bloc’s Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier, according to a person familiar with his plans.
Corbyn will go the day after the end of a four-day party conference in Liverpool, England, at which Brexit has been a dominant theme. Delegates overwhelmingly voted in favor of a motion that keeps open the option of campaigning for a second referendum on leaving the EU.
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The old-school socialist, who voted against EU membership in 1975, will be looking to maintain momentum after the party gathering sought to portray his team as a government in waiting and ready to take power. His ambiguity on Brexit has drawn much scrutiny.
Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit policy-setter, said on Tuesday that the party plans to vote down Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce agreement with the European Union, and sees a second referendum as a way of avoiding a chaotic no-deal Brexit.
Starmer set out what he called a “sequenced, structured,” strategy for the next few months in Parliament, when May is expected to put the Brexit deal she negotiates to lawmakers for approval. Labour will vote against the deal, and if it manages to defeat the government, the party will push for an election.
If it fails to force an election, the party would then press for a second referendum, but is split on whether it would be on the terms of the deal or another vote on leaving the bloc.
“We’re ruling nothing out, and therefore not ruling out remain,” Starmer told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.
To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Penny in Liverpool, England at tpenny@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs
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