Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has threatened to vote down the Queen’s Speech, saying the Labour Party would “put down a substantial amendment”, focusing on austerity and a “jobs-first Brexit”.
Despite being 64 MPs short of the number of seats needed to form a majority government, the Labour leader also told the Sunday Mirror: “I can still be Prime Minister.”
“We will – obviously – amend the Queen’s Speech. There’s a possibility of voting it down and we’re going to push that all the way,” he told the newspaper.
Speaking to Andrew Marr on BBC One on Sunday, Corbyn insisted the Labour Party did not lose the election but rather “didn’t win the election”.
He told Marr: “We are going to put down a substantial amendment to the Queen’s Speech which will contain in it the main points of our manifesto. So we will invite the House to consider all the issues we put forward” highlighting specifically a “jobs-first Brexit” to be “negotiated as quickly as possible”.
Asking for clarity on the statement by Kier Starmer, the Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, that Labour’s position on staying in the Single Market and Customs Union was an “open question”, Corbyn obliquely answered: “The position we have is fundamentally protecting jobs and industry in Britain and maintaining that trading relation.”
The Labour leader also asserted his party’s position of “absolutely remain[ing] members of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights”.
Eight seats shy of a majority, the Conservative Party is currently in negotiations with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, who won 10 seats in Parliament, on a “confidence and supply” deal which would see the DUP support the Conservatives on key votes.
Amidst rumours the prime minister may face a leadership challenge, Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, the parliamentary group for the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, told Sky News: “Most colleagues expect the public will not be impressed if we spend the next two months in eternal party debate on a leadership election. We need to fall in behind the prime minister and work as best we can.”
Mrs. May is due to meet with the 1922 Committee on Tuesday evening after meeting with DUP leader Arlene Foster.
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