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WATCH: Gardiner on Brexit, US-UK trade deal and Amazon fires

Barry Gardiner, Shadow International Trade Secretary, talked about Brexit, a US-UK trade deal and the Amazon fires in an appearance on Sky’s Ridge on Sunday yesterday morning.

On Jo Swinson’s rejection of Corbyn’s plan to avert no deal:

  • “I think it was extremely petulant of Joe Swinson the other day to come out and dismiss this proposal in the way that she did. It sounded as if she couldn’t take yes for an answer because she’s been saying, and the Liberal Democrats and others have been saying for so long, look we need to have a second referendum and Remain needs to be on the ballot paper. They are now being offered a fail-safe Parliamentary procedural way of delivering that and they’re saying ‘oh we’re not going to cooperate if Jeremy Corbyn is going to be the person who does it.’”
  • “You know very well that the natural constitutional process is that the leader of the opposition is called on by Her Majesty to lead a new government when an old government fails. If Jo Swinson wants to propel Her Majesty into a constitutional crisis, where instead of inviting the leader of the opposition to form a new government she invites somebody else, who is not the leader of a political party, then that would be forcing the monarchy into a very embarrassing and difficult judgement call that they would have to make.”


On whether the NHS would be at risk in UK-US trade deal:

  • “What we have is a situation because of what the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives did in government in the Health and Social Care Act. Competition is now enshrined within the National Health Service.”
  • “And that means that any services in the NHS are open to competition and they are open in a trade deal to attack, even without the NHS being mentioned. And you don’t even have to specifically even mention the words NHS in that trade deal.”
  • “ISDS procedures allow foreign companies to sue our government if we introduce public health policies which they believe would damage their future profits.”


On future trade relationship with Brazil:

  • “I want to do trade [with Brazil], of course I do. I want to see Brazil develop. I want it to see it able to take care of the poor within Brazil. That’s absolutely vital. But what we must do is make sure that we are not saying is ‘oh well if we can get cheap beef that is produced on areas of deforested Amazon then we’re happy to do a deal on that basis.’ . . . You cannot sell off our enviroment – our global future – for cheap beef.”

James Kelly is editing LabourList while Sienna Rodgers is away.

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