Exclusive: Labour leader to meet key EU figures next week as he seeks to break impasse and get PM to back customs union

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Jeremy Corbyn will hold talks in Brussels next week with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, as he seeks to break the Brexit impasse and persuade Theresa May to sign up to a customs union.

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The visit is likely to be highly unwelcome in Downing Street, and risks accusations that Labour is pursuing its own shadow negotiations, undermining the prime minister’s hopes of fresh EU concessions.

May will be in Brussels in the same week to meet the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. The UK attorney-general, Geoffrey Cox, is expected to travel with her.

During a whistle-stop tour of the central figures in the Brexit talks on Thursday, Corbyn is also due to meet the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt.

He will also hold talks with senior figures in the socialist group in the European parliament, including Labour MEPs.

EU sources said Corbyn was expected to provide further details on his recent conditional offer of support for the prime minister’s deal along with an update on the cross-party talks.

Earlier this month, the Labour leader said his party would back the withdrawal agreement, containing the Irish backstop, if May renegotiated the accompanying political declaration on the future relationship.

Labour is seeking a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union, a close alignment with the single market and protection for standards and workers’ rights.

Corbyn also wants commitments on participation in EU agencies, funding programmes and security arrangements, such as the European arrest warrant, written into the deal.

The Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: “There are enough people in Brussels already dedicatedly working against British national interests without Corbyn and his circus joining them.”

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Barnier raised the Labour party’s ideas as a way to secure parliament’s support when he dined with the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, on Monday in Brussels, EU sources said.

Barclay is understood to have pointed to the UK’s determination to have an independent trade policy.

The government is still pursuing legally binding changes to the Irish backstop, in order to persuade the Democratic Unionist party and Brexiter MPs to back the prime minister’s deal, despite the EU’s refusal to reopen the deal.

May has insisted to the EU that a time limit on the backstop, a unilateral exit mechanism or its replacement with “alternative arrangements” would convince Brexiter MPs that the UK would not be trapped in the customs union envisaged as a way to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

But the EU’s most senior officials have said in turn that the bloc will not reopen the withdrawal agreement.

When the European council president, Donald Tusk, directly suggested to May last week that Corbyn’s Brexit plan might be a way out of the deadlock, sources said May did not respond.

Spokesmen for Corbyn, the European commission and Verhofstadt declined to comment on the scheduled visit.

The EU’s belief that there is little hope of the government winning over the most hardline Brexiters and the DUPwas strengthened on Thursday evening during a debate and vote on the next steps in the Brexit talks.

May had asked the Commons to approve a motion that “reiterates its support for the approach to leaving the EU expressed by this house on 29 January”.

But Tory MPs criticised the motion on the basis that the Commons had also voted to avoid a no-deal Brexit that day, leaving a host of those backbenchers that May would need to back her deal vowing to rebel again.

Meanwhile, the Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, announced “emergency” legislation as Ireland “ramped up” its preparations for no deal.

Earlier, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, also expressed the growing dismay in EU capitals over the Brexit talks, and claimed that the UK was a “waning country” and too small to stand alone on the global stage.

A Downing Street spokesman hit back, claiming that employment was “at a record high, exports are at a record high, companies are continuing to invest in the UK. Deloitte named the UK as Europe’s leading destination for foreign direct investment just last month.”