Credit;PA
The backbench MP and Labour leadership hopeful set out her vision of Britain’s role in the world after exiting the EU.
Mr Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and is working to sever US ties to the key environmental pact, but the Wigan MP believes the Prime Minister’s trade negotiations could halt this.
“We should be clear now that we would refuse to agree any trade deal with a country that has not ratified the Paris Agreement,” she told the RSA in central London.
“We must use trade to support climate action, not hamper it.”
Ms Nandy, who was one of Labour’s prominent voices calling for a soft Brexit after the referendum, criticised Labour’s outgoing leader and others in the Cabinet for the failure on the issue.
“We’ve allowed the right to frame the debate into a series of false binaries and in doing so allowed a fully fledged cultural war to be unleashed,” she said.
“The trap was set: you can be for your country or you can be for the world. And senior Labour politicians rushed headlong into it – it was a serious failure of leadership.”
She set out her internationalist vision to win back power, saying Labour has to “think bigger” than the EU and look to nations across the world for trade agreements and co-operation.
“The focus on the EU – inevitable as it has been – has squeezed out that thinking. For all the talk of ‘global Britain’, we are at risk of retreating to an idea of a British Empire 2.0 not embracing the world and its challenges as they are now,” she said.
Labour should have defended free movement and the benefits it brings, Ms Nandy argued, while “recognising it has flaws” and not dismissing concerns “as simply racist anti-immigration sentiment”.
“I believe in free movement,” she said.
“If it were paired with renewed and radical investment that enabled opportunities for young people, decent jobs, training and skills – then I know that those concerns about freedom of movement would have fallen away.”
She also told the Daily Record she was “open minded” about the decriminalisation of drugs.
She said Mr Corbyn was “completely wrong” to call for dialogue after Dawn Sturgess was killed by the Novichok Russia is accused of using to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.
“At a crucial moment, we hesitated in condemning an authoritarian regime that supports Donald Trump, invades its neighbours, steals its country’s wealth, that interferes in elections in Europe and America, attacks minority communities and then used chemical weapons on the streets of the UK,” she said.
Related – ‘Red bridge’ must be built to unite support, says Nandy
