Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised by remain supporters throughout Westminster after he stressed that Brexit would go ahead even if Labour won a snap general election in the new year.

In an interview with the Guardian on Friday, Corbyn left open the possibility that the party could campaign for Brexit if there was a second referendum on the UK’s membership of the bloc, but stressed that his focus was on seeking a refashioned exit deal with the European Union.

He also renewed his criticism of the EU’s economic policies on state aid, which he said blocked investment and would undermine attempts to regenerate the British economy and develop industry.

Labour’s former shadow business minister Chuka Umunna said the interview was “deeply depressing and disappointing”.

“Brexit is essentially a project of the hard right of British politics, who want to turn Britain into a lightly regulated, offshore tax haven for the super rich, devoid of proper protections for workers, and one which seeks to dump the blame for the UK’s problems on immigrants,” he wrote on Facebook.

“Labour should stop pretending there is ‘good’ Brexit deal and we should certainly not be sponsoring this project because Brexit is the problem – it solves nothing.”

Wes Streeting, a regular critic of Corbyn, also attacked the party leader’s remarks and cast doubt on the suggestion that a Labour government would be able to negotiate a better deal than the one proposed by Theresa May.

“Why peddle this myth that Labour would be able to renegotiate a Brexit deal at this 11th hour?” he said. “How would Labour’s Brexit be any better than remaining in the EU? Our members and voters are overwhelmingly pro-European. This lets them, and our country, down.”

Corbyn told the Guardian that if the parliamentary deadlock over May’s withdrawal agreement sparked a general election in the new year he would “go back and negotiate (with the EU) and see what the timetable would be”.

Asked about a second referendum, favoured by many of his MPs and Labour supporters, he added: “It would be a matter for the party to decide what the policy would be, but my proposal at this moment is that we go forward, trying to get a customs union with the EU in which we would be able to be proper trading partners.”

Labour passed a motion at its party conference in Liverpool in September that it would seek a general election as its first choice, but left open the option of supporting a second referendum.

Corbyn and other opposition frontbenchers have claimed that were Labour to somehow replace May’s government, they would be able to go back to Brussels to renegotiate her deal. However, shadow cabinet members have regularly contradicted each other, fuelling speculation that the party line remains contested privately.



The Scottish National party also rebuked Corbyn, with the party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, calling him “the midwife to the delivery of the [Tories’] Brexit plans”.

“Jeremy Corbyn has finally come off the fence he’s been sat on for the past two years,” he said. “But unfathomably he’s come down on the same side as Theresa May. The Labour party is incapable of providing opposition to the worst UK government that most people can remember.”

The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, added that Corbyn “refuses once again to take the blinkers off”, with the party’s policy indistinguishable from the Conservatives’.

“He is ignoring the concerns of his own supporters and the economic damage experts warn Brexit will do to the UK economy,” he said. “On Brexit, you simply cannot put a cigarette paper between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.”