Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan has said the Prime Minister’s draft withdrawal agreement is “a miserable failure after two years of botched negotiations”
Theresa May’s government is now in chaos because of their failings and inability to negotiate a deal in the national interest, with resignation after resignation from the Cabinet and Ministerial team.
Responding after attending the Prime Minister’s Statement in the House of Commons today, Stephen Morgan MP said:
“Whether people voted leave or remain – nobody voted for this offer from the Government.
Theresa May’s ‘deal’ is in two parts – a withdrawal agreement that includes half-baked proposals for a backstop, and a political declaration that is incredibly vague and opens the gate to a hard Tory Brexit.
The deal does not secure frictionless trade, nor a single market or customs union, contains no commitment to workers’ rights and regulation, nor our environment, no European Arrest Warrant, no retainment of Europol arrangements, no collaboration with key agencies like EASA and Erasmus. This is a hard Brexit by any other name.
It doesn’t protect jobs, rights and living standards in Portsmouth. It’s asking me as a city MP to leap into the unknown. And it won’t reassure anyone in Portsmouth. Taken together, this deal fails tests Labour has set out months ago and I will vote against it in Parliament.
If a general election isn’t triggered soon, we need a people’s vote”.
Labour does not accept the choice is between Theresa May’s deal or no deal.
The party has set out a new comprehensive and permanent customs union, with a British say in future trade deals.
That would support businesses, jobs and the manufacturing supply chains they depend on; a strong single market relationship that allows British business continued access to vital European markets for both goods and services; and; a guarantee that our country doesn’t fall behind the EU in workers’ rights, or protections for consumers and the environment.
If the government’s half-baked Brexit deal is voted down, Labour will work across Parliament to block ‘no deal’.
