Tories’ “Eton mess” over EU threatens workers’ rights – Ashworth

Shadow Cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth has ridiculed the Tory splits on the EU referendum as an “Eton mess” and made an impassioned case for the bloc based on protecting jobs, employment rights and equality.

Ashworth poured scorn on the In/Out split between David Cameron and Boris Johnson and condemned George Osborne’s “game of fear and smear”.

He also drew a comparison between the founding of the Labour Party to champion the rights of working people and the EU’s role today legislating on safety at work, employment rights and measures to combat discrimination.

Ashworth, shadow Cabinet minister without portfolio, today told the Midlands TUC that a vote to leave the EU would trigger a “race to the bottom” on the protection of workers’ rights.

“The stakes are so high. We can’t allow the national debate about our future in the EU to just be a public squabble between two old boys from the same public school. We can’t have this referendum reduced to an Eton Mess.

“Cameron has spent years trying to save his job by playing up to the Euro-phobes and Little Englanders in his party. Boris Johnson now wants to take his job by doing the same.

“Neither has put the national interest ahead of their political interests. Neither deserve to lecture anybody in this movement about patriotism.

“This referendum could be lost by the Tories but it won’t be won by them.”

Ashworth, a former Labour staffer and advisor to Gordon Brown, recalled the party’s“historic mission” to allow working class men and women to “throw off the shackles” that held them back.

He went on to list the employment rights which are guaranteed through the EU:

• Paid holiday entitlement.
• Maximum working hours, on health and safety grounds, with provisions for those working in road, rail and air transport and at sea.
• Laws to ensure part-time, fixed-term and agency workers enjoy rights including full-time permanent employees and that workers sent by their employers to work in another EU country don’t lose out through inferior working conditions.
• Measures to provide employees with rights if firms plan collective redundancies, go bust or are transferred to new ownership.
• The prohibition to discriminate in the workplace on the grounds of gender, age, ethnic or racial origin, religion or belief, disability or sexual orientation
• Equal opportunities, particularly for women, in the workplace and the legal entitlement to at least 14 weeks’ maternity leave, and to protect against being fired for being pregnant.