Unite leader to pressure Labour on new Brexit vote

POWERFUL union leader Len McCluskey vowed yesterday to use his influence to get Labour to endorse a referendum on a Brexit deal, if his members back one.

Delegates at Unite’s policy conference in Brighton are set today to vote on Brexit.

Mr McCluskey’s team is expected to table a motion that does not explicitly call for a second referendum, although he insisted that delegates would have an opportunity to decide on the issue.

Remain campaigners published a poll last weekend suggesting a majority of Unite members back a Brexit deal referendum. Jeremy Corbyn has not ruled out supporting a new vote but says Labour is not advocating one.

Mr McCluskey, whose union is Labour’s biggest single financial backer, said the people’s vote to leave the EU must be respected.

But he told the BBC: “Whatever decision is taken tomorrow by our members, that becomes Unite’s policy. I will use all the influence I have to promote that policy.”

Pressed on whether he would use that power to change Labour policy, he said: “We always do.”

At the conference he told anti-Corbyn Labour MPs to “put a sock in it” and stop their “disloyal sniping and feral smearing” of the party leader. But he warned Mr Corbyn that the party leadership was out of touch with working class voters across the country.

“Extra seats in London will not get Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street,” he said. “So test every policy against how it is going to play in Walsall and Wakefield, Mansfield and Middlesbrough, Glasgow and Gateshead.”