Senior Labour MP breaks cover and calls for working-class Brits to vote Brexit
John Mann said staying in the EU could destroy chances of jobs, homes or school places for Brits
WORKING-CLASS voters are today told to proudly lead Britain out of the European Union – by a senior Labour MP declaring for the Brexit campaign.
Blue-collar champion John Mann said the EU was “fundamentally broken” and that only leaving could end the mass immigration destroying hard-working people’s chances of getting homes, jobs and school places.
In a sensational intervention, Mr Mann also told The Sun “quite a number” of Labour MPs secretly feel the same way but are refusing to speak out.
He urged them to be “bold” and come out of the Brexit closet as he became just the ninth of Labour’s 229 MPs to publicly declare he wants to quit.
It lays bare a massive split on the left because 40 per cent of Labour voters are in favour of Britain leaving the EU on June 23.
And Mr Mann, a member of the Commons Treasury Select Committee and MP for the coalfield community of Bassetlaw, urged supporters ignore the party’s official pro-EU line and join a “people’s revolution”.
In an interview and open letter for The Sun, Mr Mann said: “If you are a Labour voter you can proudly vote on Labour values to the leave the European Union.
“You are voting for fairness, you are voting for rights at work, you are voting for the NHS.
“And you are voting for a country that is not increasingly run by big businesses in co-operation with the European Commission.”
Former union official Mr Mann, who has also driven trucks across Europe for a living, said Labour was “nothing if it can’t represent working class interests” as he destroyed his party’s case for staying in.
Senior figures like leader Jeremy Corbyn and ex Home Secretary Alan Johnson have argued the poorest would be hardest hit by Brexit and that the EU is vital to protecting workers’ rights.
But Mr Mann shot both of those arguments down, insisting open door immigration had “two kinds of people” – the rich in London who benefit from cheap nannies and gardeners, and the working classes who lose out as immigrants’ kids fill classrooms and families put the health service under strain.
He also argued that far from helping workers’ rights, the EU had left them at the mercy of imported agency workers and zero-hours contracts.
But neither could be fixed from within the EU because it leaves Britain with “one arm tied behind our back”.
Mr Mann agonised over his decision but plumped for Brexit after hearing a clear message on the doorstep.
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And in a chilling warning to the party, he called on colleagues to realise the pressures on working-class people or losing votes to UKIP – in an echo of the rise of the far right in Austria.
Mr Mann said: “The Labour party in Austria did nothing, sat on its hands, and has paid a terrible political consequence for that.
“That doesn’t help the working class in Austria and that has just happened.
“We are not ceding ground to Nigel Farage and the Margaret Thatcher fan club when in fact our values could be perfectly advanced by voting to leave the European Union.”
'The EU is impossible to change from the inside'
Dear Sun readers,
THE Labour Party is nothing if it can’t represent working class interests.
But too few Labour MPs are campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union on June 23.
Why? Because in Westminster people are inculcated into Establishment politics too much.
And people have been terrified about talking about immigration.
But on polling day they are going to get a big shock across the country.
They are going to get a big shock about how Labour councillors vote. They will get a big shock about how Labour members vote. And it shouldn’t come as a shock how many Labour voters will vote.
Because a people’s revolution is under way. This is about returning power to the people.
At the heart of our problems, we have at all times one arm tied behind our back by the European Union and there is nothing we can do about it.
Nowhere is that clearer than with the free movement of people, which has, is, and will continue to undermine pay and conditions in working class communities. It is not sustainable to have 300,000 new people added to the population every year.
It has created two kinds of people in this country — the people who gain from this and the people who lose out. If you live in London and you want a cheap nanny and a gardener and a cheaper plumber you can get really nice, really good people cheaper than you could before and you can go to a different restaurant every night and eat a different kind of food.
In the North of England, in the Midlands, in South Wales, people do not get those benefits. They get the problems.
In areas like mine the schools have got huge numbers of new children coming in. They do an absolutely brilliant job, as does the Health Service dealing with new people.
But it costs them money, it shifts their expertise and resources. It has an impact — and the impact is huge. So the speed of change is worsening inequality in the country.
And that is not going to change unless we leave the EU.
I don’t want to live in a country with 80million to 90million people living in it.
I don’t want everything to be one big city. And the only way you can deal with that is by controlling borders.
There is another side to it. Many Labour colleagues say we should stay in the EU to protect workers’ rights. But the poorest in society are the ones who have been hit by agency workers and zero hours contracts already.
They are the ones who have been hit by labour flexibility with so many workers coming into the country.
The reason I’ve concluded that we have to come out is it’s impossible to change the EU from the inside.
David Cameron couldn’t even get agreement on child benefit being stopped for people here with children abroad. Even something as absurd as that cannot be changed because EU structures won’t allow it.
People want control over their own lives. They don’t want people at a distance controlling their lives any more.
Labour MPs also say they don’t want to campaign to leave because they don’t want to be on the same side as Nigel Farage and John Redwood.
But this is about each family in Britain. It’s about you. It’s not about me, Farage or David Cameron. It’s about what kind of country we want to live in, in 20 or 30 years’ time.
Do we want to live in a country with another 10million to 20million people living in it?
Do we want to live in a country where big business can do a deal with the European Commission and we just have to deal with it?
Or do we want to live in a country where power is shifted back to Britain and our Parliament and, beyond that, back to local people? So if you are a Labour voter you can proudly vote on Labour values to leave the European Union.
You are voting for fairness, you are voting for rights at work, you are voting for the NHS.
And you are voting for a country that is not increasingly run by big business in co-operation with the European Commission.
Take others along to the polling station with you.
Let’s see a record turnout in working class communities.
John Mann, MP