Brexit has already brought one 'benefit' proclaims Jeremy Corbyn
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Loading... - Daisy Chapman
- 24 Jul 2021
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Brexit has already brought one "benefit", Jeremy Corbyn will declare today.
The Labour leader will say the plummeting value of the pound was a chance to help British exports - but the Tories squandered it.
Mr Corbyn's remark risks a row with hard Remain-backers in his own party. In February they criticised his vow to spend "funds returned from Brussels".
Labour's leader will make the comments in a major speech today unveiling a party plan to boost British manufacturing.
Speaking to manufacturers' body the EEF in Birmingham, he will slam Tory "chaos" over Brexit and warn it has "real and damaging effects".
But Mr Corbyn is also set to point out how the pound, worth $1.50 days before the EU referendum, fell to $1.32 overnight when the Brexit vote became clear.
He will add: "Our exporters should be able to take proper advantage of the one benefit to them that Brexit has already brought - a more competitive pound.
"After the EU referendum result, the pound became more competitive and that should have helped our exporters.
"But they are being sold out by a lack of a Conservative Government industrial plan, which has left our economy far too reliant on imports."
Mr Corbyn will hit back at Tory claims he wants a "magic money tree" by claiming "magical thinking" about the economy has dominated 40 years of government.
And he will vow to build more in the UK in what appears to be a left-wing echo of Donald Trump's right-wing 'America First' mantra.
He will complain the NHS, Ministry of Defence and Network Rail together awarded more than £2.5billion in contracts to firms outside the UK between 2014 and 2017.
He will say: "We’ve been told that it’s good - advanced even - for our country to manufacture less and less and instead rely on cheap labour from abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector.
“A lack of support for manufacturing is sucking the dynamism out of our economy, pay from the pockets of our workers and any hope of secure well-paid jobs from a generation of our young people.
"It must be our job in government to reprogramme our economy so that it stops working for the few and begins working for the many.
"That is why we will build things here again that for too long have been built abroad because we have failed to invest."
Mr Corbyn will also renew calls on Theresa May to back Labour's plan for a "brand new" customs union - which would lead to a softer Brexit than her Facilitated Customs Partnership.
"This decision doesn’t need to be a matter of ideology, or a result of divisions in the Tory Party," he will say. "It’s a matter of practical common sense.
“A botched Tory Brexit will sell our manufacturers short with the fantasy of a free trading buccaneering future, which in reality would be a nightmare of chlorinated chicken, public services sold to multinational companies and our country in hock to Donald Trump."
