Politics

The most important statement by Jeremy Corbyn in today’s Sunday Mirror interview is not that Labour’s leader will embrace a so-called People’s Vote if that were what Labour’s conference backs this week. It is that Labour is “not happy” with the PM’s Chequers Brexit plan “and we would vote against it”. This is Labour's strongest and least ambiguous attack on Chequers. And – as if that were needed – it underwrites the view of many Tory MPs and ministers that the PM’s attempt to sell Chequers to Brussels is even more fatuous than dead-horse flogging, given that some 50 odd True Brexit Conservative backbenchers are adamant that they would vote against it.

When the Labour manifesto was leaked ahead of the 2017 general election, critics said that a win for Jeremy Corbyn would drag the country back into the 1970s. Today, shadow equalities minister Dawn Butler proved them wrong - and showed that Labour would actually like to drag us back to the 80s instead. At Labour’s women’s conference in Liverpool, the Corbynite MP took the extraordinary step of praising the Militant-run Liverpool council of the 1980s, which protested new Conservative local spending caps by setting an illegal budget. The decision to break the law caused such chaos in the city that auditors had to be called in, Labour's reputation for fiscal responsibility lay in tatters, and the council had to deliver redundancy notices to its own workers by taxi.

Just as Theresa May's Chequers plan for Brexit was being savaged in Salzburg, EU leaders also found time to engage in their usual response when it comes to the question of migration: a lot of talk, glad-handing, and pats on the back, but very little concrete action. The summit was a two-day affair that encapsulates all of the negative connotations of the EU as an institution: slow, cumbersome, ineffective, and increasingly detached from reality. Hours were devoted to the migration issue, that perennial crisis that has hovered over Brussels over the last five years.

As Labour gathers for its conference in Liverpool this weekend, the Conservatives will be watching with trepidation, rather than the schadenfreude with which they initially treated the rise of the hard left. Underestimating the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn was one of the biggest mistakes the Tories have made in the past two years, and the party has had plenty of time to ask why Labour ended up doing so well. James Cleverly, the party’s deputy chairman, believes that he has the answer. ‘A big, big chunk of that was our fault,’ he says when we meet at Conservative Campaign Headquarters. ‘The Prime Minister, as we know from all the time she’s been in parliament, is a grafter. She is focused on detail.

What to make of Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council’s latest tweet? Ahead of tonight’s dinner in Salzburg, he says: ‘Today there is perhaps more hope but there is surely less and less time. On the Irish question and the framework for economic cooperation the UK’s proposal needs to be reworked’ The first sentence is classic Tusk; he has a fondness for statements that are meant to sound profound. His comments on the Irish border are also to be expected. The UK and the EU are still 48 kilometres apart on this question and playing a dangerous game of chicken. Theresa May will use tonight’s dinner to try and persuade the 27 EU heads of government to back away from trying to impose a customs border in the Irish sea.

Theresa May heads to Salzburg tomorrow to try and persuade the leaders of the EU27 of the merits of her Brexit plan. But there’ll be an unwelcome distraction for her in the morning. I understand that the European Commission will issue a reasoned opinion in the Olaf case, where the Commission accuses the UK of failing to prevent customs fraud on shoes and textiles imported from China and is demanding over two billion euros in lost revenue. The UK continues to contest this case, and I understand it has asked the Commission for more information on various points. But the timing of this reasoned opinion has raised eyebrows in government circles. It seems more than a coincidence that it is appearing on the day that May sits down with the leaders of the EU 27.