Key points
Jeremy Corbyn joined Theresa May in paying tribute to the armed forces and said more should be done for veterans.
On Brexit, he said Greg Clark, the business secretary, thought business was entitled to be listened to with respect. Boris Johnson had taken a different view, using an Anglo-Saxon term. What was May’s view?
May said her government had always backed businesses. They were the backbone of UK prosperity. She said Corbyn must decide whether to back business or overthrow capitalism – he couldn’t do both.
Corbyn said he took that as May rejecting Johnson’s approach. Airbus supported 110,000 jobs in the UK, many well-paid and unionised. The company had said leaving the EU without a deal would make it reconsider its UK investments. Would May take the phoney threat of no deal off the table?
May said if Corbyn was that bothered about the aerospace industry, he should have backed Heathrow expansion. She said she did not normally agree with Len McCluskey, the Unite leader, but on this she did. McCluskey had said backing Heathrow expansion would ensure the UK remains a world leader in aerospace.
Corbyn said Johnson did not back Heathrow either. But he had done his bit for the industry by spending 14 hours on a plane for a 10-minute meeting.
He quoted the head of BMW, which employs 8,000 people in Britain, who said that without clarity on the customs plan, the company would have to implement contingency plans. Corbyn asked May how many more firms were telling her in private what Airbus and BMW were saying publicly?
May said she was meeting business leaders. She wanted to ensure that trade with the EU is as frictionless as possible, while the UK can trade freely too. She said Labour would not back business, it would raise corporation tax by 7%.
Corbyn said Jacob Rees-Mogg was relocating his hedge fund to Dublin, while John Redwood was advising people not to invest in the UK. Would May ignore Johnson, listen to workers and get an agreement that safeguarded jobs?
May said she was putting jobs at the heart of what she was doing. She said Corbyn had been a Brexiter himself for most of his career, so why was he trying to frustrate Brexit?
Corbyn said Labour’s priority was protecting jobs. He quoted a Honda employee as saying May would be responsible if his job was put at risk. Did Andrea Leadsom speak for the government when she said the customs partnership plan was unwieldy?
May said the government was looking at the customs partnership as well as maximum facilitation. Corbyn had said Labour’s priority was delivering jobs, so why did every Labour government leave office with higher unemployment?
Corbyn said that was rich from someone presiding over an economy with 1 million people on zero-hours contracts. He said the only customs option acceptable to the government was a no deal. He said May continued to promote the fallacy that no deal was better than a bad deal. But no deal was a bad deal, he said. The real risk to jobs was a prime minister who was having to negotiate with her cabinet to stop it falling apart instead of negotiating for jobs.
May said she could summarise what the government was achieving, and she rattled off a list. Britain would leave the EU on 29 March 2019, she said.
Wasn’t the real risk to jobs in the UK a prime minister who had to negotiate around the clock with her own cabinet, Corbyn asked.
May offered a list: successor to Trident, stamp duty cuts, fairer schools funding, record levels of employment, falling borrowing, rising real wages …
Snap verdict
Often at PMQs, as David Cameron explains well in a recent book, the open goals turn out to be the hardest ones. Corbyn arrived in the chamber after an abundance of headlines about government disarray. But despite some perfectly good questions, he never really threw May off her stride and it felt very much like an uninspiring draw.
As usual, Corbyn’s problem was his failure to come back with a good follow-up. It was obvious that May would respond to his first question by saying she backed business, but instead of coming back with evidence to rubbish this, he moved on to another (in itself, perfectly sound) question, about a no-deal Brexit.
She sidestepped that question completely, but Corbyn did not pursue the topic. He had a good line on no deal at the end – no deal is a bad deal – but at no point did his line of questioning ever particularly discomfort May. Later, Labour’s Mary Creagh gave a good example of how it can be done, telling May that Johnson’s comment expressed pithily what Brexit would do for business.
May was uninspiring, and eager to change the subject at every opportunity. Her claim that Labour was doing everything it could in the Commons to frustrate Brexit will be a mystery to some who have followed the votes. But she stumbled through it all with the usual stolid fortitude. It was all very forgettable.
Memorable lines
Theresa May:
He has raised the question of Airbus; if he is so concerned about our aerospace and aviation industry, why did he not back the expansion of Heathrow?
Jeremy Corbyn, in response:
Well, the foreign secretary did not back it either, but in his own way was helping the aviation industry by spending 14 hours in a plane for a 10-minute meeting in Afghanistan.
