Keir Starmer warns Theresa May 'parliament will intervene'

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has claimed no deal or the prime minister's deal is not the only option Photo: PA / Peter Byrne - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images

Sir Keir Starmer has sent Theresa May a stark message: ‘We are not going off a cliff just because you have brought back a bad deal.’

'It doesn't have to be that way'

Labour Shadow Brexit Secretary @Keir_Starmer rejects the notion that Parliament will have a choice between the deal Theresa May negotiates or no deal #VictoriaLIVE pic.twitter.com/9nfcQd0za6
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) October 15, 2018

As Theresa May’s Brexit omnishambles spirals ever further out of control, Labour’s Brexit chief said parliament must not accept the final choice on Brexit will either be the prime minister’s deal or no deal.

Speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show, he said: ‘We have never accepted the proposition that we either support whatever the prime minister cobbles together or you get no deal. In other words you have a choice between bad and really bad.

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‘She has chosen at every step to push parliament away from her, she could have said: ‘Let’s have parliament decide the objective, let’s have some buy-in across the House of Commons … let’s put some of this to a vote.’ She has never done that.

‘The majority in parliament do not accept that no deal is the consequence of voting against a bad deal. Parliament will have to do something about it.

‘Under the legislation already passed, if the deal fails because it is not voted through, or she doesn’t get a deal, the prime minister must make a statement to parliament telling parliament what she is going to do and then there has to be a vote on a motion to decide whether we agree with that.

‘We have built in a mechanism saying ‘we are not going off a cliff just because you have brought back a bad deal’. And it is not really a fair proposition to say to parliament ‘you’ve got a vote but your vote is either my deal or something much worse’ – that is hardly a meaningful vote.’

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