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Today’s the big one. This morning Jeremy Corbyn will set out Labour’s updated Brexit position, confirming the line shadow cabinet ministers have been articulating over the last few days. Labour would stay in a customs union (“a” not “the”) with the EU and form a “new and strong relationship with the single market”.
Corbyn’s Coventry speech is expected to apply further pressure on May, who is caught between a rock (backbench Remainer Tories who won’t budge) and a hard place (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Yesterday Keir Starmer all but confirmed Labour would back Anna Soubry and Ken Clarke’s rebel amendments to the upcoming key trade bill, which could see May lose a vote and her patchwork of a government fall. Squabbles over definite and indefinite articles might be boring, but the potential consequences here are exciting.
Starmer recently paid a visit to Dover, where he heard of the effects WTO rules could have on the south-east, like over a hundred miles of lorries queuing. Such details are largely being ignored – partly because that’s the way the Tories want it, as shown by the Road Haulage bill delays – but they are important. Corbyn is being accused by some of cynicism for his Brexit shift, yet it’s these very real and practical problems (not to mention the small matter of a hard Irish border) that have informed the shadow cabinet’s unanimous support for the recent policy change. As Fabian Society general secretary Andrew Harrop writes for LabourList today, “Labour’s new position is good economics and good politics”.
It feels like old news now but on Friday evening it was announced Iain McNicol is stepping down from his role as Labour’s general secretary. At a “hugely exciting time”, McNicol says he will “pursue new challenges” after a “tumultuous seven years”. He will be remembered by some for controversial decisions during the 2016 leadership election, but by others for keeping the party on an even keel before the Corbyn surge swelled the coffers.
Finally, if you’re on Twitter remember to retweet Tory MP Ben Bradley’s apology, slyly posted on Saturday night, in which he admits publishing a defamatory statement about Corbyn. We wouldn’t want anyone to miss it.
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