Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake has claimed that the Labour government wants to re-join the EU “at all costs”.
He told GB News: “I think you see the Labour Party really wanting to get back into the EU at all costs. I think that’s a reality. Various senior Labour figures have been calling for it for years.
“It’s just going to open up these arguments that have divided families, divided communities. We’ve got to move on from those arguments.
“And I think the reality is, if you try to rejoin the EU now, what kind of deal you’re going to get? We know it would be really in a difficult negotiating position, I think it’s fair to say. So I don’t think that’s the right thing.
“Much as I voted to remain in the Brexit referendum, I never ever argued in all those debates that we, if we weren’t a member at the time back in 2016, that we should join. I think it’s a much better idea to be able to make your own decisions in your own parliament in the best interest of the country.
“That’s a reality, and you can criticise decisions about how Brexit has been done or whatever, but there’ll always be compromises because it was always going to be a thorny problem, but I don’t think the solution now is to rejoin the EU. Far from it.”
On the government’s plan to allow councils to seize property, he said: “We’ve built a lot more houses than Labour’s doing right now. There are wonderful plans to build a lot more homes. We’ve argued about this in the in the past, but the reality is the numbers of houses have dropped considerably in terms of starts and completions.
“It’s absolutely wrong. We have some fundamental pillars of our society, one of which is property rights. To think a council can effectively confiscate your property because you’ve been left open, left empty for six months is outrageous.
“Angela Rayner came into office saying she’s going to build one and a half million homes. She’s probably not going to do half of that.
“The reality is, you cannot jump to the classic socialist authoritarianism lever of simply grabbing other people’s dwellings, other people’s homes. It’s totally wrong.”