Corbyn must choose unity government PM – Jo Swinson
The Lib Dem leader won’t back an interim government with Jeremy Corbyn as leader, as talks continue. …
Image copyright EPA Jeremy Corbyn must step aside in favour of another leader to save a cross-party deal to remove Boris Johnson, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson has said.
Talks are continuing about preventing a no-deal Brexit, including a possible “government of national unity”.
But there is deadlock over who should lead it.
Labour wants Mr Corbyn – the official leader of the opposition – but Ms Swinson said he should throw his weight behind someone else.
She told the BBC the Labour leader “is a man who isn’t going to be prime minister, he can’t command that majority”.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said Brexit will go ahead with or without a deal – despite MPs passing a law last month forcing him to ask for an extension from the EU if Parliament hasn’t voted in favour of a specific deal or leaving without one.
The UK is set to leave the EU on 31 October.
Ms Swinson said: “The ball is now really in Jeremy Corbyn’s court. Given he can’t command the support of a majority, which candidate is he willing to support if we need an emergency government?
“Because if he insists it has to be him, that will make no-deal more likely.”
She has said Mr Corbyn “simply does not have the numbers”, referencing the 21 MPs expelled from the Conservative Party and the five within the Independent Group for Change.
Ms Swinson denied that Mr Corbyn had rejected suggestions that senior Labour MPs Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett, or former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke, could lead a unity government – something that she has described as an “insurance policy”.
“We are going to be looking at, through the channels of the whips’ offices, who those people might be,” she said.
“It is about being a figure who is well respected and above the everyday party politics.”
Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Green Party and Plaid Cymru remained split after talks on Monday on who should be installed as a caretaker prime minister if they were to form an emergency government.
However, the group say they are united in their aim to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
SNP sources have expressed frustration that the cross-party talks are becoming little more than “tea and biscuits” meetings.
Discussions between party whips will take place later. Their request to have a debate over the release of the government’s no-deal Brexit planning papers was rejected by the Speaker John Bercow on Monday.
The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, said opposition MPs who supported the law requiring the PM to seek a Brexit delay should have the “courage of their convictions” and back a no-confidence vote to remove the “toxic” Mr Johnson from Downing Street.
“That would be real leadership, if the opposition parties were prepared to do that,” he told BBC 2’s Politics Live programme.
“We’ve got a prime minister that may be prepared to break the law and crash us out at the end of October,” he added.
“If we want to guarantee that we’re staying in Europe at the end of October, if we want to stop this prime minister, then we have to stand up and be counted – and that means a motion of no confidence”.
But this was rejected on Monday by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said he will back a motion “at a point we can win it and take no-deal off the table”.
Ms Swinson also said a “precipitous” vote of no confidence motion could “increase the risk” of a no-deal Brexit and “play into Boris Johnson’s hands”.
Mr Blackford also rejected suggestions an interim government could hold a further Brexit referendum before an election, adding it would be “extremely challenging”.
He said this would require any such administration to be in place for “at least six months”, but there was not “anything like a majority” in Parliament for such an idea.
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