Keir Starmer has warned that Theresa May is running down the clock in the Brexit talks with the EU, following his private discussions with the prime minister’s counterparts in the negotiations.

During his visit to Brussels, the shadow Brexit secretary said conversations with key EU officials confirmed his fears that May intends to wait until the last moment “to put a binary choice to parliament: her deal versus no deal”.
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Starmer’s comments in an interview with the Guardian came as the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said he was not optimistic about the chances of avoiding a no-deal Brexit, just 12 hours after his latest talks with the prime minister.
“If no deal were to happen, and I cannot exclude this, this would have terrible economic and social consequences in Britain and on the continent, so my efforts are oriented in a way that the worst can be avoided,” Juncker told a session of the European Economic and Social Committee on Thursday.
“But I am not very optimistic when it comes to this issue. Because in the British parliament every time they are voting, there is a majority against something, there is no majority in favour of something.”
The prime minister had emerged from her talks with Juncker on Wednesday claiming that both sides had agreed to work “at pace” on breaking the impasse over the Irish backstop.
A joint statement suggested the two sides were looking at what legal guarantees could be brokered to reassure MPs that the backstop was temporary.
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, and the attorney general, Geoffery Cox, are to meet with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, later on Thursday.
But Starmer, who held a day of meetings with EU officials on Wednesday, and is joining Jeremy Corbyn for talks with Barnier, and Juncker’s most senior aide, Martin Selmayr, on Thursday, said the prime minister’s strategy was evident in London and Brussels.
He said: “It has appeared in the past few weeks that the prime minister is not really making progress in the negotiations but she is in truth seeking to run down the clock with the intention to put a binary choice to parliament: a deal versus a no deal.
“My discussions in Brussels confirm to me that this appears to be the position. There seems to be no prospect of a breakthrough with just 36 days to go. The prime minister should seriously engage with the proposal that Jeremy Corbyn put in his letter to her and shift her red lines.”
In a letter to the prime minister two weeks ago Corbyn offered to support May’s Brexit deal if she were to renegotiate the political declaration on the future relationship to back a permanent customs union with the UK, a suggestion she has rejected.
“The only credible way forward is either the close economic relationship that was proposed in the letter to the prime minister or the option of a public vote,” Starmer said. “And the sooner we are able to move forward with these options the better.”
Earlier this week the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, exploited a meeting of his European counterparts in Brussels to warn the EU’s capitals that the Labour party’s split on Monday, and the emergence of the Independent Group of MPs, showed that Downing Street could not rely on Corbyn to deliver votes even if it did take up his proposal.
Starmer said Hunt was being disingenuous in his lobbying with EU foreign ministers. “The close economic relationship that we support in the letter to the prime minister has been seen as a credible position across the UK by the business community and trade unions and by the EU,” he said.
“It is a proposition that can command a majority in the House of Commons. But, necessarily, it would be a cross-party majority. And I don’t think, sad though it is that members of my party have left, that the establishment of the Independent Group affects those numbers.”
Starmer said he understood Downing Street had failed to put any new proposals to Brussels in recent days, and it now appeared highly unlikely that the prime minister would be able to put a revised deal to parliament next Wednesday, as she had previously suggested was her aim.