Daily Briefing: Corbyn flip-flops on single market

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If you think the government’s position is confused on Brexit, don’t look to the opposition benches for answers – Corbyn has just gestured towards a U-turn on the single market.

He shifted his blanket opposition to remaining in an arrangement that looks close to the EEA, but slightly different to the Norway model. The EEA offers “currently in existence don’t meet the priorities that we have set out.” Not currently, but maybe.

Corbyn has problems but they are nothing compared to the increasingly baroque character of the difficulties May faces over the next week on Brexit. Absurdly, there is still no white paper. And the Withdrawal Bill is coming back to the Commons in the next week. And not a squeak from the PM. As Andrew Lilico forcefully argued in Reaction today (read below) it may be preferable to have a little chaos than to continue with a ‘do nothing’ PM.

Britain’s infrastructure, particularly between cities and rural areas and throughout the North, is not good enough. That’s a failure of investment, strategic ambition and just crude acts of vandalism, like the Beeching report which stripped out large parts of the UK out of the rail network.

So what have the government done? Brought back a fifty-year-old plan to add another run way in the populous, prosperous South-East, which is, as far as I can see, pretty well-endowed with transport hubs. Heathrow expansion was scrapped by Cameron in 2010 – now it’s seen as a solution.

The new runway will increase Heathrow’s capacity from 85.5 million passengers a year to 130 million. God help people who live under the flight paths.

When it comes to parliament, the voting dynamics are quite interesting. Labour are hedging their bets specifying ‘four tests’ on noise, air quality, carbon emissions and regional connectivity. Corbyn opposes it but worries that his party would vote against the whip in a free vote. The SNP will almost certainly go for it, given lots of Scottish industry backs the move, but there’s always the temptation to give the May administration another kick in the ghoulies.

Several MPs, both on the Labour and Tory benches, are likely to vote against the bill for local reasons. Justine Greening is MP for Putney, right underneath the flight path.

Chaotic leadership is historically something the Italians have done well, but some consistency is emerging from the new administration first’s moves – it rejects the orthodoxies of European policy making on several profound levels.

Matteo Salvini, the new interior minister, met persona non grata Hungarian leader Viktor Orban today to discuss joint measures to challenge Brussels on the issue of migration.

Guiseppe Conte called for closer ties with Russia, criticizing heavy economic sanctions on the country: “We will be the advocates of an opening towards Russia – a Russia which has consolidated its international role in recent years in various geopolitical crises.”

That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.
Alastair Benn

News and Features editor