(Bloomberg) — Boris Johnson’s Conservatives sought to put immigration at the center of the election campaign in a bid to regain the initiative, after the prime minister was heckled by residents for his slow response to flooding in the north of England on Wednesday.
The Tories claimed the Labour Party would push up net migration to 840,000 per year by allowing free movement of people after Brexit, as they seek to win the support of pro-Brexit vote in Labour heartlands. Jeremy Corbyn’s party called the figure an exaggeration, and said voters’ concerns about being undercut by immigrant labor could be met by better laws on pay and rights.
Key Developments:
Security minister Brandon Lewis pledges to publish report on Russia meddling after electionNigel Farage says Brexit Party won’t step down from Labour-held seats; the party holds campaign event at 11 a.m.Nominations for candidates close at 4 p.m.Voting in the Dark: U.K. Politicians Fight Rare Winter Election
EU Mulls Reaction to U.K. Commissioner Snub (10:45 a.m.)
The legal services of EU institutions are assessing the implications of the U.K’s refusal (see earlier) to nominate a candidate for the bloc’s executive arm, three diplomats said in Brussels. While European law dictates that the new EU Commission can’t be confirmed and sworn in until it has 28 members, European Parliament lawyers are of the opinion that a single member state can’t bloc the functioning of institutions, one of the officials said.
The second official said that at this stage, there are no concerns about complications in the functioning of the Commission, adding that the U.K. letter was expected. “The Council now has to reflect on this,” the third official said, after reminding that the U.K. is in breach of its commitment — under the Brexit extension deal — to nominate a commissioner.
A spokesman for the bloc’s executive arm declined to comment further than reiterating that the U.K. had committed to both nominating a commissioner and to not disrupting the functioning of EU institutions.
Hogan: Standards Key to EU-U.K. Trade Deal (10 a.m.)
Incoming European Union trade commissioner Phil Hogan said an agreement on regulations and standards will be central to EU-U.K. talks on a free trade deal, and that the bloc is “ready to go” on negotiations once the withdrawal agreement is ratified.
“I think the British public will demand and expect that their govt will sign on to EU standards, because we have the highest standards in the world,” Hogan said in an RTE radio interview.
Lewis: Tories Committed to Cutting Migration (8:30 a.m.)
Home Office minister Brandon Lewis said a Conservative government would be committed to reducing net migration using a points-based visa system — though he declined to say by how much — and said his party’s estimate that Labour’s policy would allow more than 800,000 migrants every year is an underestimate.
“We want to target net migration so that people can see that we’ve got control,” Lewis told BBC Radio 4. He also tried to shift the blame to the Liberal Democrats — the Conservative Party’s coalition partners from 2010 to 2015 — for the government’s failure to control immigration in those years.
Lewis also said the government will publish Parliament’s long-awaited report into Russian influence on U.K. democracy after the election. He was answering a question on Russian links to the Conservative Party; former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said this week she was “dumbfounded” the government would wait until after voters have already cast their ballots before releasing the report.
Labour Not Split on Immigration: Pidcock (7:30 a.m.)
It’s a “false flag” to say Labour is split over its immigration policy, the party’s employment spokeswoman Laura Pidcock said, emphasizing that stricter regulations would answer the concerns of workers that their pay and conditions are being undercut by immigrants.
Len McCluskey, leader of Unite, Labour’s biggest labor union backer, said on Wednesday that the Labour conference vote to retain free movement of people in the EU was not “a sensible approach” and that he would argue against it appearing in the party’s manifesto.
McCluskey “is the leader of the trade union that I am a member of, he talked very clearly about there not being an environment where national terms and conditions can be undermined by exploitative bosses,” Pidcock said. “The issue is not about migrant labor, the issue is about what kind of legislative environment we have for workers, and we will create one where all workers are protected.”
Brexit Party Will Help Tories: Farage (Earlier)
Nigel Farage said his Brexit Party’s role is to hold Boris Johnson to his promises and not soften his line on leaving the EU.
Johnson “has made a promise, the job of the Brexit Party is to hold him to account,” Farage said in an interview with the BBC. “If we trusted the Conservative Party we’d never have had a referendum,” he said. “All the change that’s happened in the Conservative Party” has been down to the Brexit Party and its predecessors, he said.
Farage said his party will continue to aggressively target Labour seats and he will be campaigning in the West Midlands and north of England in the coming days.
“This election will be decided by tactical voting decisions across the country,” Farage said. “In 2015 the effect of the UKIP vote helped the Conservatives,” he added. “We took more Conservative votes in the south and south east and more Labour votes in the north.”
Liberal Democrats Won’t Help Gauke (Earlier)
The Liberal Democrats won’t stand aside for former Conservative Cabinet minister David Gauke, who is standing as an independent, because he wants a “soft Brexit,” Luciana Berger told BBC radio.
Berger appeared not to be aware that Gauke, who asked on Wednesday for the Liberal Democrat candidate to stand down in his district, has shifted his position to favoring a second referendum and pledged to campaign for Remain.
Gauke repeated his pledge after Berger spoke: “Let me reiterate what I said yesterday about Brexit. My preference was for the country to come together behind a soft Brexit. But that’s not going to happen — it’s no longer an option,” Gauke wrote on Twitter. “The best option now is a confirmatory referendum on the PM’s deal. I would campaign to remain.”
The Liberal Democrats also won’t step down to help any candidates who “want to get Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street,” said Berger, who quit the Labour Party over Corbyn’s leadership. The deadline for nominations is 4 p.m. on Thursday.
U.K. Refuses to Nominate EU Commissioner (Earlier)
The U.K. formally told the European Union it won’t nominate anyone for the bloc’s executive arm, in what Brussels may see as a clear breach of the terms under which the Brexit extension was granted. Adding insult to injury, the U.K. only responded after EU Commission president-elect sent two letters to Boris Johnson, reminding him of the U.K’s legal obligations as a member state.
The development puts the EU in an awkward legal situation. The new EU Commission can’t be confirmed and sworn in unless it has 28 members, one from each state. Under the bloc’s treaty, a unanimous decision by member states is required to alter this clause, and the U.K signaled it won’t object.
Altering the composition of the Commission could land the EU in a difficult legal situation if the Tories don’t win the election, and the U.K doesn’t leave the EU at the end of January after it has been stripped of its commissioner. “It’s uncharted waters,” a senior official in Brussels said.
Earlier:
Voting in the Dark: U.K. Politicians Fight Rare Winter ElectionElection Adds to Woes for Sluggish U.K. Property MarketImmigration Row Reopens Old Brexit Scars: U.K. Campaign Trail
–With assistance from Stuart Biggs and Nikos Chrysoloras.
To contact the reporters on this story: Thomas Penny in London at [email protected];Peter Flanagan in Dublin at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Stuart Biggs
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