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

Corbyn to hold Brexit talks with Barnier and Verhofstadt next week

Jeremy Corbyn is set to 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.

During a whistle-stop tour of the central figures in the Brexit talks, the Labour leader is also due to meet the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, EU sources have disclosed.

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He is expected by officials in Brussels to offer further detail on his recent conditional offer of support for the prime minister’s deal, and to provide an update on the cross-party talks.

Earlier this month, Corbyn said he 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.

During his visit to Brussels next Thursday, Corbyn is also expected to meet senior figures in the socialist group in the European parliament, including Labour MEPs.

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

The development is likely to be highly unwelcome in Downing Street. It comes as the government is separately seeking to negotiate 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.

May is due to meet with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, in the same week, the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, told the Commons on Thursday.

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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 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.

They have instead welcomed Corbyn’s recent offer to throw his party’s support behind the Brexit deal.

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.

The government, however, insists that while there was “a lot of common ground” with the Labour frontbench it would not support a future customs union.

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

May has 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 in the Eurosceptic European Research Group, chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg, are threatening to rebel as the Commons had expressed both its support for “alternative arrangements” to the backstop and for no deal to be avoided.

It has been reported that up to 50 Tory MPs could abstain or vote against the motion, delivering another defeat for the prime minister, and weakening even further the government’s argument that she can persuade Brexiters to back the deal.

Earlier on Thursday, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, expressed the growing dismay in EU capitals about 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.”