News / Politics

Corbyn rules out second referendum on final deal with EU

Thursday, 20 April 2017 6:33 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 20 April 2017 6:40 PM ]

British opposition Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn delivers his first campaign speech of the 2017 election in central London on April 20, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The UK Labour Party will not support a second referendum on the terms of Prime Minster Theresa May's Brexit deal, a party spokesman has said.

UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was considering including a pledge to hold a second referendum in the Labour manifesto for the upcoming general election, reports on Wednesday suggested.

"A second referendum is not our policy and it won't be in our manifesto,” a spokesman Corbyn pointed out on Thursday.

Corbyn also dodged a question on the issue in his first keynote speech of the election campaign during a rally in central London, and referred back to Labour’s established policy on retaining “tariff-free access to the European market.”

The Labour leader pitched himself as the anti-establishment candidate in his passionate speech on Thursday who is determined to take on the “cozy cartels” of multinational corporations that run a “rigged system” and establish a government that puts the interests of the majority first.

Corbyn claimed that he could still win a snap election in June despite bad poll ratings, which put his party 24 points behind Prime Minister May's Conservatives.

The Labour leader rejected the notion that a Conservative victory was a "foregone conclusion,” in the election which was called by May in order to bolster her position going into negotiations on Brexit.

Corbyn said in the vote the debate should be about the battle between "the Conservatives, the party of privilege and the richest, versus the Labour party, the party that is standing up for working people,” not on pulling Britain out of the EU.

He went on to say that he would not play by the rules "set by failed political and corporate elites.”

"It is a rigged system set up by the wealth extractors, for the wealth extractors. But things can, and they will, change," Corbyn declared.

Members of UK Parliament take part in Prime Minister's questions in the House of Commons in London, April 19, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

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Lawmakers in the UK Parliament’s House of Commons voted 522 to 13 on Wednesday in favor of a motion put forward by May for a “snap” election.

The election will be held on June 8, nearly a year after 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the European Union. The current Parliament will dissolve on June 3.

May said an early election will bolster the UK’s position in talks over Brexit and is in the country’s national interest. Despite this, she had repeatedly said in the past that she would not seek a new election before 2020.

Influential figures like former Prime Minister Tony Blair argue that May made the call because she knew the Labour Party is in a disadvantaged situation.

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