McDonnell and Brown join forces in appeal to Britain’s industrial heartlands

John McDonnell and Gordon Brown will team up today for a highly unusual joint appeal to Labour voters to vote Remain and receive a £1,300 boost to their family finances.

McDonnell is expected to offer hope to the “hard-hit” industrial regions, which have been neglected under the Tories and would benefit most from European Investment Bank funding, if they vote for a social Europe next week.

British households could be £1,300 better off if they vote to stay and the Government agrees funding for key infrastructure projects, the pair will say. They will outline how the Tories’ lukewarm approach to Europe – not seen in the devolved administrations where they are in opposition – has meant England has not seen the investment it could do from Europe because. The heavyweights – usually opposed within the party – will deliver a joint assessment of how the Conservatives’ policies have instead made us less effective in capitalising on EU funds in Manchester later today.

Offering a positive Labour case to Remain, the pair are expected to urge the Government to make the reforms to infrastructure planning England needs in order to unlock the additional funding like that from the upcoming Junker project, which will see €320bn invested in infrastructure across Europe.

If the Government were to make the necessary changes, the UK would see an additional £35bn in infrastructure funding, the equivalent of £1,320 per household.

 Brown urged Labour voters in the North of England to embrace EU money as the remedy to Conservatives’ attacks on UK manufacturing.  

“In the 1980s the Tories turned our industrial heartlands into industrial wastelands. Their ideology was that there was no such thing as society and everyone was on their own.

“What stood between our communities and further devastation was the European structural funds, regional funds and social funds that Tory Brexiteers would now cut.

“European money is necessary for renovation, renewal and regeneration – and right across the North, Scotland and Wales it is still vitally needed now.

“We need to send our exports to where we sell most – the European Union. I estimate that 500,000 more jobs can be created in Britain in the next ten years from reform of the single market, the European infrastructure program and co-operation in the energy and environmental industries.

“And I ask everyone who works in the car industry, the aviation industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the food and drink industry in the North, to tell their fellow citizens of the importance they attach to the jobs that come from their exports to Europe – and the risks of losing these jobs to Tory Brexit in the future.”

The pair were joined by former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who delivered a variation on his famous 1983 “I warn you” election speech, saying “I warn you not to be on low or middle incomes as the disruption brought by Brexit pushes up interest rates and prices, slashes benefits, and causes slump. I warn you not to expect work, as uncertainty causes investment to move to the single market which we would be leaving.”