This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May Try a New Approach: Cooperation
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn Open Treacherous Brexit Negotiation
(about 2 hours later)
LONDON — After doing battle for years over how to withdraw Britain from the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May and the opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, met on Wednesday as potential but wary partners, following her stunning decision to reverse field and seek Mr. Corbyn’s help to get a plan through Parliament.
LONDON — After years of partisan battling, Prime Minister Theresa May and the opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn began an emergency, 11th-hour effort Wednesday to find common ground on Britain’s tortuous effort to withdraw from the European Union.
The two-hour meeting in a wood paneled office in Parliament ended on an optimistic note, with the parties promising to appoint teams to continue the negotiations.
The question was, could they overcome their antagonistic history and find a way out of the quagmire?
“Today’s talks were constructive, with both sides showing flexibility and a commitment to bring the current Brexit uncertainty to a close,” the government said in a statement. “We have agreed a program of work to ensure we deliver for the British people, protecting jobs and security.”
The first signs, following a two-hour meeting between Conservative and Labour leaders in a wood-paneled office in Parliament, were guardedly optimistic, at least from the government’s side.
There is much work to be done.
“Today’s talks were constructive, with both sides showing flexibility and a commitment to bring the current Brexit uncertainty to a close,” a government spokesman said. “We have agreed a program of work to ensure we deliver for the British people, protecting jobs and security.”
Mr. Corbyn, a left-wing critic of the European Union, has played coy throughout the preparations for the withdrawal, or Brexit, pledging not to do anything to help the “Tory Brexit” and remaining vague about his own preferences. While he has indicated a willingness to work with the prime minister, the Labour Party has laid down six tests for Brexit, some of them seemingly designed to make such cooperation impossible.
Mr. Corbyn, who is navigating treacherous political terrain in the negotiations, was markedly less enthusiastic.
One of those tests, for example, calls for a deal that will “deliver the ‘exact same benefits’ as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union.” That would almost certainly rule out significantly limiting the immigration of European Union citizens to Britain, breaching the reddest of red lines that Conservatives have vowed not to cross.
“There hasn’t been as much change as I expected, but we will have further discussions tomorrow to explore technical issues,” he said.
For months, Mrs. May worked sedulously to sell the withdrawal plan she negotiated with the European Union to the strongly pro-Brexit faction of her party, and to minimize the need for opposition support. Any other approach, she feared, could tear her party apart.
Mr. Corbyn said he told the government that Labour wanted to remain in a customs union with the European Union, with access to the bloc’s single market and regulatory structures, adding: “I also raised the option of a public vote to prevent crashing out or leaving on a bad deal.”
That fear will be tested now, with the nation’s political establishment bracing for a Conservative backlash, possibly in the form of mass cabinet resignations and a new round of calls for her to resign. Neither has happened yet.
The spotlight in the cross-party negotiations seemed for now to be falling on Mr. Corbyn, who has spent the last two years dodging it.
Yet, when Mrs. May answered questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, she heard more skepticism and outright opposition from her own Conservative ranks than from Mr. Corbyn’s Labour Party.
A left-wing critic of the European Union, he has played coy throughout the preparations for the withdrawal, known as Brexit.
Several Conservatives asked Mrs. May how she could justify working with Mr. Corbyn, whom some of them described as a Marxist.
Throughout the Brexit debate, Mr. Corbyn has ducked and weaved, trying to bridge the gap between the Remainers and Leavers in his own party while letting Mrs. May take the blame for the shambling effort to steer Britain’s departure.
“Last week in this chamber, the prime minister said the biggest threat to our standing in the world, to our defense and to our economy is the leader of the opposition,” said Lee Rowley, a Conservative member. “In her judgment, what now qualifies him for involvement in Brexit?”
His trick has been to oppose what Labour calls Mrs. May’s “Tory Brexit,” insisting that he could negotiate something better, while keeping alive the possibility of holding a second referendum, even if he has shown little enthusiasm for the idea.
She gamely replied, “I believe what the public want is for us to work across this house to find a solution that delivers on Brexit.”
Ahead of the 2016 referendum, he did the bare minimum for the pro-European campaign, and many believe he would be happy were Britain to leave the bloc — providing he is not seen as responsible for the exit.
And she noted with some exasperation that “the house has rejected every proposal that has gone before it so far,” including hers, leaving the government with few choices.
“His ideal scenario is that May gets her deal through, he votes against it and is not tainted,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.
While there were no major cabinet defections Wednesday morning, before Mrs. May faced a weekly questioning in Parliament, a junior minister in her government, Nigel Adams — an assistant Conservative whip and parliamentary under secretary for Wales — stepped down.
But after three large parliamentary defeats of the departure deal that Mrs. May negotiated with the bloc, that looks unlikely to happen.
Late in the afternoon a second junior minister, Chris Heaton-Harris, whose job it had been to help Britain prepare for a no-deal exit, also quit, saying he could not support delaying Brexit any further.
And now, Mrs. May’s cross-party initiative threatens to drag him into the Brexit maelstrom, threatening to tear apart the Labour Party, which, like the Conservatives, is internally divided on the stay/leave issue.
In a year that has already seen a remarkable breakdown in party discipline, the divisions over Brexit pose the gravest threat in recent years to the stability and unity of both major parties, and about a dozen lawmakers have recently quit them.
Clearly, for Mr. Corbyn, ducking and weaving is no longer an option.
If Parliament cannot approve any agreement with the European Union on Britain’s departure, then either Britain will leave on April 12 without a pact in place, or Mrs. May will have to ask the bloc to extend the deadline. A majority in Parliament has already voted to oppose leaving without a deal, which economists, business leaders and many politicians have warned would do severe economic harm.
“This is his moment of decision,” Mr. Fielding said. “His policy has been one of constructive ambiguity but now he has to decide. He has to act, he has to come to a decision.”
European leaders warned on Wednesday that whatever the state of talks between Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn, Parliament had nine days to get behind the core of Mrs. May’s plan if it wanted to leave the bloc with a deal in the coming months.
Getting there, however, will be devilishly tricky, requiring the balancing of several strong political currents in his party.
Without any agreement in Parliament by April 12, Britain faces either a no-deal exit or a long extension that would force it to join the European elections in late May.
Many of the new, mainly young, supporters Mr. Corbyn has attracted to Labour in recent years are passionate pro-Europeans and favor a second vote, where people would choose between the government’s Brexit plan and staying in the bloc. A big group of his lawmakers agree.
“Twelfth of April is the final date for possible approval,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, said. “If the House of Commons does not adopt a stance before that date, no extension — no short-term extension — will be possible.”
But a sizable number of Labour lawmakers, around 20 percent, represent working-class districts that voted to leave. Fearing a backlash among their constituents, many want to honor the referendum result and end freedom of movement from the European Union, primarily to cut immigration from Eastern Europe.
But Mr. Juncker said the door was open to continuing to negotiate the bloc’s future trading relationship with Britain. That part of the deal, known as the political declaration, is likely to be the main area of contention in Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn’s talks, with the Labour Party having committed to keeping Britain in the European customs union and close to the single market. Mrs. May has refused to do either, but on Tuesday said she was open to discussion.
Further complicating matters, some of Mr. Corbyn’s closest allies are left-wing Brexit — or “Lexit” — supporters who believe the bloc’s antitrust rules might prevent a socialist Corbyn government from enacting policies like subsidizing loss-making businesses or offering government contracts to local companies without opening them up to tendering.
The prime minister seems to be hoping to patch together a workable deal before a European Union summit meeting on April 10, where she would request a delay just until May 22, shortly before elections for the European Parliament that neither she nor the bloc want Britain to participate in.
So far Mr. Corbyn has managed to straddle the divide and keep to the letter, if not the spirit, of last year’s agreement at the Labour Party conference, which supported a second referendum in the absence of his preferred option: a general election.
Mrs. May has not been able to to win parliamentary passage of the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with the European Union, which would keep Britain closely aligned with the bloc until the end of 2020, when it would leave the customs union and single market.
The idea of a second referendum is gaining momentum among Labour lawmakers.
With neither her own party nor the Parliament so far able to unite around any approach, the prime minister announced on Tuesday night that she would try to reach agreement with Mr. Corbyn on a deal. She will meet with both him and the leaders of the Scottish National Party, the third-largest bloc in Parliament, which opposes Brexit.
On Wednesday, Emily Thornberry, who would be expected to have the foreign secretary post in a Labour government, endorsed the idea.
That would inevitably mean a “softer” Brexit than the one she negotiated, keeping Britain deeply enmeshed in the bloc’s customs and trade rules — a violation of the Conservative Party’s election promises.
But Mrs. May and her Conservative allies have adamantly opposed a second referendum, saying that in a closely divided nation it would yield another close result that would only make matters worse.
“I think actually there are a number of areas we can agree on with relation to Brexit,” Mrs. May said on Wednesday.
As the two sides continue their talks, one possible area of agreement is Labour’s proposal for Britain remaining in a customs union with the bloc, which eliminates tariffs on goods between member nations. But Mr. Corbyn says he wants a post-Brexit Britain to also be able to influence European Union trade policy and the deals the bloc strikes around the world that would apply to Britain too.
Before talking with Mrs. May on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Corbyn met with Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland and a fierce opponent of Brexit. After the meeting, Ms. Sturgeon said she would “be surprised and very disappointed” if Mr. Corbyn agreed to a Brexit deal that ruled out a second public referendum on leaving the bloc.
That negotiating point, however, would be hard if not impossible to get the bloc to agree to.
A soft Brexit without membership in the bloc — and thus no voice in its decision-making — is anathema to many if not most Conservatives, lawmakers and the rank-and-file party members alike, who support a more complete break from Europe, even to the point of a no-deal departure. To say the least, they did not welcome the prime minister’s strategic volte face on Tuesday.
Mr. Corbyn also wants to align British and European Union environmental and product standards, keeping close to Europe’s single market albeit from the outside. That is not as far from the deal Mrs. May has negotiated as it may appear.
Referring to Mr. Corbyn, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Conservative advocate of a “hard” Brexit, told reporters Tuesday night, “I think getting the support of a known Marxist is not likely to instill confidence in the Conservatives.”
Mrs. May’s proposal envisions keeping Britain in its current status until 2020, when it would leave the customs union and the single market, giving it control over immigration.
Boris Johnson, a former foreign secretary who quit the cabinet to protest a withdrawal he though was too soft, wrote on Twitter that the government had “concluded that any deal is better than no deal, and this is truly a very bad deal indeed — one that leaves us being run by the EU.”
But the plan, contained in a nonbinding political declaration that is separate from the withdrawal agreement, leaves open the possibility of staying quite close to those structures. And unlike the legally binding withdrawal treaty spelling out divorce terms, it remains a matter still open to negotiation with the bloc.
Mrs. May’s outreach to Labour followed a marathon cabinet meeting on Tuesday that was, according to British news media reports, very contentious.
Yet even if Mr. Corbyn could agree to a blueprint with Mrs. May, there would remain the problem of devising assurances to Labour that the government would stick to the plan. Given that Mrs. May has already announced she plans to step aside if she secures agreement for her Brexit plan, Labour worries that she will be succeeded by a hard-line Brexit supporter who could tear up any deal struck now.
“Cabinet was not in favor of this,” Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader and former cabinet member, told the BBC on Wednesday. If the government tries, successfully or not, to work with Mr. Corbyn, he said, “they’ve legitimized him and that’s a real fear for many, many of us in the party.”
Even if she were to remain in office, the complexity in trade negotiations is in the details, and those negotiations would be conducted by the government. So Labour would want any agreement reached written into British law, though even that could be repealed by a different Conservative government following an election.
Parliament has defeated Mrs. May’s proposed deal with the bloc three times, by large margins. But it has also rejected, in a series of nonbinding votes, several alternatives put forward by members, leaving it unclear what approach could command majority support.
But perhaps the biggest problem for Mr. Corbyn? If he refused to demand that any Brexit plan be put to a second referendum, that could provoke a huge backlash from pro-European Labour lawmakers.
Mrs. May even offered to step down, allowing her party to select a new prime minister, if her deal won approval, but that gambit failed, too.
Mr. Fielding believes Mr. Corbyn would like Brexit out of the way because he sees it as a distraction from his attacks on austerity. But like the rest of the Brexit riddle, the Labour leader’s next moves are impossible to predict, Mr. Fielding said.
“What one person does or doesn’t do at a certain point can shape the rest of British history for the foreseeable future,” said Mr. Fielding. “Isn’t that a scary thought.”
