PMQs verdict: Corbyn finally, but feebly, tackles May on Brexit

A more than usually noisy PMQs saw Jeremy Corbyn focus his questions on Brexit and the detail – or lack of it – of the government’s plan for it.

He started by saying David Davis promised in his Brexit speech on Tuesday that Britain would not turn into a “Mad Max-style dystopia”, before asking whether Theresa May couldn’t set the bar a bit higher than that? May says the only fiction around is from Labour, which cannot decide on its own Brexit policy.

Corbyn pressed on with the Davis speech – pointing out that the Brexit secretary said he did not want to deregulate. So why did his own department say there could be opportunities from deregulation on issues such as the environment? May rattles through a list of what she wants from Brexit but does not answer the question.

Corbyn said Boris Johnson briefed in December that the working-time directive would be scrapped. He added that May used to say she wanted tariff-free access to the EU. Now it is access “as tariff-free as possible”.

May said she wanted to enhance workers’ rights, not just protect them, listing as Conservative achievements the Matthew Taylor report into working practices, action on zero-hours contracts and workers’ voices on company boards. But Corbyn said if May had read Wednesday’s Telegraph, she would see that 62 Tories wanted to deregulate.

Corbyn moved on to fears of a hard border in Northern Ireland, asking how May hoped to avoid this. May said the government explained that in a paper published last year.

Corbyn said Johnson’s speech mentioned stag parties, carrots and a plague of boils but not Ireland. He added that we didn’t know from the government’s “road to Brexit” speeches where it was going, suggesting ministers were actually on a road to nowhere.

Source: theguardian