Labour UK election launch stumbles over Brexit

Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn launched the party’s general election campaign on Tuesday but was quickly caught in a muddle over his position on Brexit.

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap general election for June 8 seeking a bigger mandate going into the Brexit negotiations with the European Union.

“This election isn’t about Brexit itself,” Corbyn said at the Labour campaign launch in Manchester, northwest England.

“That issue has been settled.

“The question now is what sort of Brexit do we want — and what sort of country do we want Britain to be after Brexit?”

The veteran socialist said Labour wanted a “jobs-first Brexit” that safeguarded industry and improved the economy.

But his position quickly became less clear when the BBC asked him five times if Britain would leave the EU if he was prime minister, and he did not answer directly.

A party source told AFP afterwards that there was no question that Britain was leaving the EU, stressing Corbyn had said in the past that he would respect the vote to leave and that there would be no referendum re-run.

Conservative Brexit minister David Davis said Corbyn was incapable of negotiating with Brussels.

“The chaotic incoherence of Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to Brexit means that the 27 other EU countries would make mincemeat of him in the negotiations,” he said.

“This morning he said he was settled on leaving the EU — this afternoon he can’t say whether he will do it.

“We simply cannot take the risk of Corbyn in Downing Street in four weeks’ time negotiating Britain’s future.”

In his campaign launch, Corbyn said the British economy was “rigged in favour of the rich and powerful”.

“To tax cheats, the rip-off bosses, the greedy bankers: enough is enough,” he declared.

“We have four weeks to ruin their party. We have four weeks to have a chance to take our wealth back.”

Corbyn insisted that he would stay on as party leader whatever the general election outcome.

“I was elected leader of this party and I’ll stay leader of this party,” he told Buzzfeed.

The latest poll, by ICM for The Guardian newspaper, put the Conservatives on 49 percent, Labour on 27 percent, the Liberal Democrats nine percent, UKIP six percent and the Greens three percent.

It is ICM’s biggest Conservative lead since 1983.

ICM interviewed 2,038 adults online from Friday to Sunday.

© Agence France-Presse