Corbyn tells May ‘let Labour govern Britain’

Bloomberg ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn closed his party’s conference in Brighton with a call to Prime Minister Theresa May to step aside and an appeal to his followers to prepare to take over the government of Britain.
After a four-day conference that has cemented his position as leader of a socialist revival in the UK, Corbyn promised a radical left-wing agenda that would seize state control of railways, energy companies and water suppliers.
“We meet here this week as a united party advancing in every part of Britain,” Corbyn told cheering opposition activists in the southern seaside city on Wednesday, after an entrance to a hip-hop soundtrack and chants of “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” to a now familiar beat. “We’ve become the government in waiting,” he said. “The Labour campaign machine is primed and ready to roll.”
Labour’s stronger-than-expected showing in the June election, in which the party erased May’s majority, is the springboard to an election victory whenever the next vote comes, Corbyn says. May, beset by splits among Conservatives over Brexit and weakened by her failure to win a parliamentary majority, must call an election by 2022 but may not be able to hold her government together that long.
“They’re hanging on by their fingertips,” Corbyn said in his address to delegates. “This is a weak and divided government with no purpose but clinging to power.”

‘We Are Ready’
He described May’s administration as a “coalition of chaos,” borrowing the wording of her pre-election warning against a Labour-led government. “We are ready and the Tories are clearly not. They’re clearly not strong and they’re definitely not stable.”
Having steered clear of splits in his own party over Brexit by dodging a vote at the conference, Corbyn highlighted divisions in May’s negotiating team as he pledged to negotiate a “jobs first” break from the EU.
“Respecting a democratic decision doesn’t mean giving the green light to recklessness,” Corbyn said. “We’re not going to be passive spectators to a hopelessly inept negotiating team putting at risk people’s jobs, rights and living standards. A team more interested in posturing for personal advantage than in getting the best deal for our country.” Corbyn reiterated Labour’s pledges to stay in the single market during a transition period and guarantee the rights of EU citizens in Britain. Labour’s Brexit approach would “guarantee unimpeded access to the single market” while giving state support to industry that is not permitted under EU rules, Corbyn said.
Corbyn promised to tackle inequality, invest in the state-run National Health Service, improve opportunities for young people and support for the elderly, as his speech was received with rapturous applause at the end of a conference marked by evangelical fervor. He pledged to introduce rent controls and a tax on and compulsory purchase of unused housing land. The convention hall and meeting rooms have repeatedly echoed with chants of his name as scarves, T-shirts and comic books for sale celebrated the politician-cum-pop-icon and his completion of the project to wrest back left-wing control of the 117-year-old party after its shift to the center under Tony Blair.
Corbyn has now been embraced as the future of a party that had struggled to forge an identity after it lost power in 2010. Policy detail this week has been light and Brexit largely swept under the rug. Yet the mood is one of revival and of belief that Labour’s time has come.
“It feels like one of those mega-churches in the US, it’s a kind of evangelical enthusiasm that does seem to have overtaken the party,” Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said after attending a session in the hall. “They’re on a high.”
In an address broken by applause and standing ovations, Corbyn attacked US President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate-change accord and his UN speech in which he threatened military action against N Korea.

EU Parliament set to draw Brexit red lines
Bloomberg

The European Parliament is set to demand that the European Union’s top court retains its powers on British soil after 2019, in a resolution that could test the limits of UK PM Theresa May’s room for maneuver in Brexit talks.
The resolution by the EU’s legislative body, which has veto power over any Brexit accord, will be put to a vote in Strasbourg next week and will seek to ensure that the European Court of Justice’s “jurisprudence is directly applicable and enforceable in the UK in order to guarantee the coherence and integrity of the EU legal order,” according to a document. “ECJ must remain the sole and competent authority for interpreting EU law and the withdrawal agreement,” according to the paper.
Continuing application of EU law in the UK after 2019, when the country is set to leave the bloc, is among the thorniest separation issues negotiators must resolve before talks on a future relationship between the two sides can begin.

Brexit transition may take longer than two years: Ireland
Bloomberg

Britain’s Brexit transition may extend beyond the two-year time line suggested by UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Ireland’s foreign minister said.
“It may well prove necessary for the UK to seek a longer transition phase than the two-years, considering the amount of work involved preparing adequately for Brexit,” Simon Coveney said in parliament in Dublin.
The so-called implementation period after the UK exits the European Union laid out by May in her Florence speech last week could take as long as five years, according to person familiar with the Irish government’s preparations for Brexit, who asked not to be named as the deliberations are private.
Ireland, the EU economy most vulnerable to Brexit, is seeking as long a transition as possible. The EU has made clear that any transition should be time-limited, and the pro-Brexit members of May’s government were reluctant to accept even a two-year bridging deal.
“The difficulty for the UK to bear in mind is that the EU27 would need to agree to a longer transition period of more than three years, and that’s not a given,” said Katy Hayward, a political sociologist at Queen’s University Belfast.
“What they don’t want is a period of indecision, and the EC is very wary about the UK using the transition period to buy more time.”