Tory bid to celebrate Brexit anniversary marred by spat between Badenoch and Patel over party’s migration record – UK politics live

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has used the fifth anniversary of Brexit to restate his party’s call for the UK to rejoin the EU customs unions. In an overnight statement he said:

We must repair the trading relationship with our neighbours that was so badly ruined under the Conservatives. Their deal has been an utter disaster for our country – for farmers, fishers and small businesses – caught up in red tape.

So far the Labour government has failed to show the urgency and ambition needed to fix our relationship with Europe. Ministers must be in a parallel universe if they think we can grow the economy without boosting trade with our nearest neighbours.

A new UK-EU customs union deal will unlock growth, demonstrate British leadership and give us the best possible hand to play against President Trump.

Good morning. It is five years to the day since the UK left the European Union. Despite complaints from some of the pro-Brexit papers, Keir Starmer and the government are not planning anything today to mark the occasion – which is not surprising because polling suggests only 11% of the population believe that it has been a success, and most people know think that, when voters followed the advice of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage, they made a mistake.

Still, in some parts of British politics Brexit has long ceased being a policy option, and become more of a cult, and some supporters of Brexit have been marking the anniversary with statements defending the policy. But, in the Conservative party, that has all gone a bit haywire.

Yesterday afternoon the Conservative party released an embargoed press release from Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, saying Tories were celebrating the fifth anniversary. She said:

Five years ago today, the Conservatives honoured the democratic will of the British people and Got Brexit Done.

Since then, our country has reaped the benefits—securing new trade deals with dynamic, fast-growing markets across the world and reclaiming sovereignty from Brussels. This has allowed us to reform or revoke 2,500 EU laws, ensuring Britain’s future is shaped by our own parliament.

But Patel was also recording an interview with Harry Cole, political editor of the Sun, for his Never Mind the Ballots TV show, and she got into trouble when asked by Cole why immigration had soared since the UK left the EU. Cole confronted her with this graph and said that, while the Tories had ended free movement for Europeans, they “threw the borders open for the rest of the world”. He said net migration was going up to 1.2m a year, and claimed the new arrivals were going to “take jobs that you promised were going to go to Sun readers and people who voted for Brexit”.

Patel said at one point she was “not fine” with those figures. But, generally, she defended the rise in net migration, saying that Brexit was always about having a new immigration policy and that, with a points-based system, the UK was now able to take in “the brightest and the best”.

To compound her error (in CCHQ terms), when asked if she would apologise to Brexit voters “for the fact that you misled them [about what would happen to migration numbers]”, Patel refused, saying the question was “totally disortionary”.

Here is the key exchange.

Patel was home secretary for three years during this period and was concerned to defend her record. She was right to say that, while some people were voting for Brexit in 2016 for lower immigration, others were less concerned about numbers and more interested in just having a migration system over which the UK government had full control. But her line was at odds with what Kemi Badenoch has been saying about the Tories’ immigration policy, and she was quickly rebuked by her leader. As Kevin Schofield reports for HuffPost UK, Badenoch’s spokesperson issued a statement saying in effect that Patel was wrong.

As Kemi said when she committed to a hard cap on visas in November, under her leadership the Conservative party will tell the truth about the mistakes we made.

While the last Conservative government may have tried to control numbers, we did not deliver.

Patel also ended up issuing a clarification statement on social media that was almost as embarrassing as Peter Mandelson’s recent kowtow.

So, it’s not a happy Brexit day so far in Toryland.

The Commons is not sitting this morning, and the political diary is relatively empty. There is more comment about Brexit to report. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is on a visit this morning, and Steve Reed, the environment secretary, is also doing a press event this morning to promote a policy on land use.

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