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Theresa May wants to have her cake and eat it on Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn said today.

In response to the Prime Minsiter's keynote speech on her priorities for negotiating Britain's future outside the EU, the Labour leader vowed to hold the government to account every step of the way.

He promised Labour would unveil their vision for Brexit Britain soon.

And he questioned why Mrs May outlined her plan at a press conference rather than in a speech to parliament.

In an interview with Sky News, he asked: "Why wasn’t it made to parliament? Why isn’t she answering questions from MPs on it? If she believes in parliamentary sovereignty, surely she should have been there.

"The other question is that throughout the speech there seemed to be an implied threat somewhere along the line that if all her optimism of a deal with the European Union didn’t work we’d move into a low tax - corporate taxation - bargain basement economy on the shores of Europe and I think she needs to be a bit clearer about what the long term objectives are."

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Asked if Labour would vote for Britain to leave the Single Market, he said: “We have said all along that we will not block Article 50 coming in and that’s going to be very soon within Parliament. We’ll be putting a case for market access within Parliament. We’ll be putting a case for regulation of the labour market and all the issues that go with that. We’ll be putting a very strong case to the British People and to Parliament.

“This is two years away and it’s quite nice that at last we’ve got confirmation that 27 member state parliaments will get a vote, including ours. And of course the European Parliament also gets a vote in this.”

He added: “She has said ‘leave the single market’ then at the same time ‘we want access to the single market.’ I’m not quite sure how that’s going to go down in Europe.

“I think we need to have a deal that ensures we have access to the market. We have British Jobs dependent on that market. That we’ll be pushing for.

“Whether it’s this specifically the single market I don’t know. She seems to be wanting to have her cake and eat it.”

Mr Corbyn said Mrs May had conceded that Single Market membership brings with freedom of movement along with it.

“She concedes that we depend a great deal on people who come to work in this country. And also she makes the correct point that indeed parliament has already voted on, that EU nationals living in Britain should be allowed to remain here just as much as British nationals - of which there are probably about one and a half million - living across Europe are able to to continue living there. So there’s going to have to be a close relationship with Europe in the future.

“We’re going to hold them to account on all this because I think there are enormous dangers in this. And when she talks about trade arrangements, all she said was that Donald Trump said we’d be first in the queue. First in the queue for an investor protection type trade treaty? I don’t know exactly what she has in mind in that.

Asked if Labour would now produce its blueprint for Brexit , he said: “We’ll be obviously responding to the statement in Parliament today. Kier Starmer will be doing that.

“Emily [Thornberry, Shadow Foreign Secretary] and Kier have been making the point all along that there has to be proper parliamentary scrutiny of that. We will be doing all of that and of course when the major debate comes up, which I hope will be very soon, we’ll be setting out our idea of future relationships with Europe, but also about future trading relationships with the rest of the world.

“We want to ensure that jobs and markets are protected in this country. We want to ensure that the British manufacturing industry has a chance to export.

“But she makes all these optimistic statements - every economic indicator in Britain is going in the wrong direction at the present time.”