Corbyn: May demeaned her office by pulling Brexit vote

Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of “demeaning her office” by delaying the crucial vote on her Brexit deal to instead seek new concessions from the EU, saying the paralysis of government meant other pressing problems were being ignored.

The prime minister was condemned by MPs from all sides in the emergency House of Commons debate, taking place when the final day of discussions on the Brexit deal should have been happening, with one Conservative comparing the prime minister to Hitler in his bunker.

Responding on behalf of the government while May travelled across Europe, her de facto deputy, David Lidington, rejected the idea that May had snubbed parliament and said the vote had merely been “deferred”.

But this prompted condemnation from Tories on both the Brexiter and remainer wings of the party and calls for the vote to return well before the stated final deadline of 19 January.

Opening the debate, Corbyn said that he had never “witnessed such an abject mess” in 35 years in parliament as May’s handling of Brexit negotiations and the vote.

“Yesterday, the prime minister demeaned her office by unilaterally taking her discredited deal off the table and running away rather than face the verdict of this house,” the Labour leader said.

“This is no longer a functioning government and the prime minister must admit her deal is dead. Her shambolic negotiations have ended in failure and she no longer has the authority to negotiate for Britain when she doesn’t even have the authority of her own party.”

May called off the vote scheduled for Tuesday evening amid near-unanimous predictions she would lose heavily. She then cancelled the regular cabinet meeting and began a rapid tour of EU capitals in an attempt to seek clarifications on the deal, particularly the backstop intended to prevent a hard Irish border.

A backstop is required to ensure there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. Theresa May has proposed to the EU that the whole of the UK would remain in the customs union after Brexit, but Brussels has said it needs more time to evaluate the proposal.

As a result, the EU insists on having its own backstop - the backstop to the backstop - which would mean Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and customs union in the absence of a free trade deal, prompting fierce objections from Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, which props up her government.

That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the customs union after Brexit.

“The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs.

Raising the stakes, the prime minister said the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added.

Corbyn said the “runaway prime minister” was not even seeking to renegotiate the withdrawal deal. “Our prime minister is traipsing around the continent in pursuit of warm words,” he said.

He castigated May for sending ministers before the media to insist the vote would happen just hours before it was pulled and for spending £100,000 in a week on Facebook advertising trying to sell her plan to the public. “In the days when she and I served on local councils, council leaders would have been surcharged for wasting public money like that,” Corbyn said.

The emergency debate, known as a standing order 24 motion,stated only that the Commons had considered May’s “unprecedented decision not to proceed with the final two days of debate and the meaningful vote”.

Labour and other opposition MPs voted against the motion even though Corbyn had proposed it, to signal their displeasure at May’s decision. It was voted down by 299 votes to zero, with the government not asking its MPs to take part. The only Tory who did, Anna Soubry, voted with the opposition.

Corbyn argued that, as the government gridlock worsened, the NHS seemed likely to face a winter crisis, homelessness was on the rise and councils and police lacked funding.

“This isn’t strong and stable government; it’s weak leadership from a weak prime minister,” he said. “If she comes back with nothing more than warm words then she must immediately put her deal before this house. No more delays, no more tricks: let parliament take back control.”

Lidington, who is the Cabinet Office minister, said it was absurd to accuse the prime minister of running away whenshe had spent more than 22 hours in the Commons in the past two months debating Brexit and had made six statements. He said there was “no doubt about her commitment to parliamentary accountability, whatever the cost to her in terms of time”.

But Justine Greening, the former education secretary and one of relatively few Conservative MPs on the government benches for the debate, intervened to stress to Lidington that May’s endeavours were not the issue. “In the end, what matters to people outside of here isn’t effort, it’s results,” she said. “And this house ought to have the chance to vote on those results.”

With barely any Conservatives speaking in support of May, one pointed intervention came from Nadine Dorries, a Tory backbencher and a long-time critic. Dorries said the prime minister had been let down by “third-rate advisers” in Downing Street and compared her plight to the final days of Hitler. “It appears to me that the prime minister is in a bunker. She’s starring in her own Downfall and we all know how that story ends.”

Leading Conservative remainer Dominic Grieve said the government had “given itself very considerable latitude as to when this business might return to us”, and called for the rescheduled vote to happen soon. He said: “For this debate to resume on 19 January is simply not acceptable.”