Sun, Nov 24, 2019 page5

• UK Labour’s Corbyn pledges to stay neutral in a new Brexit referendum

  • Bloomberg
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  The UK’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn on Friday tried to shut down questions about his Brexit position by saying he would stay neutral in a second referendum on whether to leave the EU.

  Corbyn has previously refused to say what he would do, something that has dogged him in the campaign for the Dec. 12 general election.

  His remarks came in a BBC question-and-answer show featuring the leaders of the UK’s four main political parties, in which all of them came under hostile questioning from a studio audience in Sheffield, England.

  “My role as prime minister will be to adopt a neutral stance so I can credibly carry out the result,” the Labour leader said. “My role and the role of our government will be to ensure that that referendum will be held in a fair atmosphere, and we will abide by the result.”

  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has focused his fire on Corbyn’s previous refusal to say which side he would take in a second referendum, and Labour’s decision to shift position on such a critical issue midway through the campaign suggests the attacks were hitting their mark.

  The Labour leader argued the public should be given a final say on whether to back any new deal he agrees with the EU, or to remain in the bloc.

  The position reflects the way his party has found itself caught between its advocates, who mostly oppose Brexit, and the large section of its voters who support it.

  The new position might not solve the problem.

  Johnson, speaking last, said Labour’s stance “seems to have mutated tonight.”

  He said being “neutral or indifferent” would make it harder for Corbyn to negotiate the new agreement with the EU he has said he wants.

  Johnson had his most difficult moments when he was asked about offensive language he had used in his career as a journalist.

  He also appeared uncomfortable when he came under attack for his party’s record on welfare and public services, in particular the British National Health Service.

  He tried to distance himself from the Conservatives’ period in government since 2010 by arguing he had been mayor of London for much of that time, and only became prime minister a few months ago.

  “For most of that time I was running London,” he said.

  Johnson was challenged repeatedly about the issue of trust and honesty — his first questioner asked how important it was for someone in his position to “always stay on the truth,” provoking laughter and applause from the audience.

  Later, he struggled to defend newspaper columns he wrote describing women in Muslim dress as looking like “letterboxes,” gay men as “bumboys,” and black people as “piccaninnies.”

  “If you go through all my articles with a fine tooth comb, you can take out individual phrases. There is no doubt that you can find things that can be made to seem offensive,” Johnson said, to ridicule from the audience.

  Another questioner said the Conservative government was characterized by “carelessness and callousness.”

  In an intervention that was loudly applauded by the audience, the questioner talked about the government’s treatment of immigrants, of people on benefits and of the victims of a tower block fire in London.

  The issue of trust came up again when talking about the health service when a junior doctor asked why people should trust Johnson’s promises of more money for the service when “we’ve got years of cuts and people are dying.”

  Johnson responded again by talking about his time running London.
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