Jeremy Corbyn attacked ministers’ on Wednesday for contradicting one another over whether Britain could “have its cake and eat it” - minutes after Article 50 was triggered.
Responding to a statement by Theresa May declaring the two year countdown to Brexit had officially begun, Corbyn skewered the different lines peddled by Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond.
The Foreign Secretary had said back in October of the upcoming EU negotiations:
“Our policy is having our cake and eating it."”
- Boris Johnson
But Corbyn played up the division between Johnson and Hammond after the Chancellor’s appearance on Radio 4 this morning.
Speaking on the ‘Today’ programme ahead of Article 50 being triggered, Hammond had said:
“We can't cherry pick - we can't have our cake and eat it."”
Corbyn used the opposing quotes to round on May, tackling her ministers’ inability to “make up their minds about the real objective”.
He blasted: “The Foreign Secretary - he’s here today - said in October ‘our policy is having our cake and eating it’ - how apposite from the Foreign Secretary.
“Today, the Chancellor, on BBC Radio 4 said ‘we can’t have our cake and eat it’. Maybe they should get together and talk about it.”
Just minutes before, May informed MPs that she had officially triggered Article 50 by delivering a letter to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council.
“Today the government acts on the democratic will of the British people,” she wrote.
“The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. This is an historic moment form which there can be no turning back, Britain is leaving the European Union.”
May signed the Article 50 letter in the Cabinet room on Tuesday afternoon while sitting next to a Union flag and under a portrait of Britain’s first prime minister, Robert Walpole.