The first of the BBC’s series of prime-time EU referendum events took place this evening, with Andrew Neil interviewing Hilary Benn. The programme highlighted both the uneasy relationship between Benn and his leader Jeremy Corbyn and the Remain campaign’s difficulty in dealing with the immigration issue.
Andrew Neil began by putting to Hilary Benn a very Eurosceptic quote from Jeremy Corbyn about the EU from the Maastricht debate of the 1990s and asking Benn what Corbyn got wrong. To which Benn replied, rather uncomfortably, that the ‘Jeremy of today’ supports Britain staying in the EU. The Benn / Corbyn tensions were a feature of the interview as the shadow foreign secretary failed to agree with his leader that George Osborne’s Brexit economic forecasts are worthless and also wouldn’t echo Corbyn’s line that Labour would veto the proposed EU-US trade deal, TTIP, as it stands.
But the most difficult part of the interview for Benn was on immigration.
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