Jeremy Corbyn says Labour would not stop Brexit if the party won snap general election
3 min read
Jeremy Corbyn has said he would "go back and negotiate" with Brussels rather than stop Brexit from happening if Labour wins a snap election next year.
Speaking to The Guardian, the Labour leader said his party was still committed to voting down Theresa May's deal when it comes before the Commons next month.
But in comments which risked a backlash from pro-EU Labour supporters, Mr Corbyn insisted that his party would not try to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum.
He said: "You’d have to go back and negotiate, and see what the timetable would be.
"I think we should vote down this deal; we should then go back to the EU with a discussion about a customs union."
Acknowledging Labour's own splits on Brexit, Mr Corbyn said: "About 60% of Labour voters voted Remain; about 40% voted Leave. We have to recognise why people voted in those directions."
Elsewhere in the interview, Mr Corbyn - who was a lifelong eurosceptic before the EU referendum - also reiterated some of his concerns about how the bloc is run.
"I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country," he said.
His comments on renegotiating rather than scrapping Brexit sparked an angry reaction from some Labour MPs on Twitter.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
