LABOUR’S John Cryer believes the party is finally winning voters back in the Midlands and the North of England who turned their back on them over Brexit.

In an exclusive interview with GB News, the MP for Leyton and Wanstead, admitted Labour made a big mistake by pushing for a second referendum following the UK’s decision to exit the EU.

Lancashire-born Mr Cryer, 58, who backed the decision to Leave, told Gloria De Piero: “I was the only member of the shadow cabinet who voted for Brexit – well, the only one who’s admitted to it. I mean maybe there were one or two others, but they’ve never admitted it to me or anybody else – so I was the only one. And when the party shifted its position to for a second referendum, I did think we were going down the wrong path and we antagonised an awful lot of people in the North and in the Midlands.

“But, you know, you got to a critical mass where certain figures in the Shadow Cabinet switched to that position and it just became overwhelming, so I couldn’ do anything to stop that. Maybe momentum is the wrong word, but I couldn’t do anything to stop that momentum that was going in that direction, and I can remember there would be meetings where I went along and I thought: ‘This is it, we’re gonna go for a second referendum.’ And I think we made a mistake.

“In the sort of area where I grew up, which tended to be Brexit areas, that’s where we antagonised people. I think now we’re recovering from it, but it’s taken a long time.”

Mr Cryer, who is current Chair of the Labour Parliamentary Party, has also spoken about the horrific moment he discovered his father had died in a car crash.
His dad Bob, was also a Labour MP who sat in the House of Commons as the MP for Keighley from 1974 to until his defeat in 1983. He then served as the Member of the European Parliament for Sheffield from 1984 to 1989, and returned to the Commons as MP for Bradford South from 1987 until his death, aged 59, in 1994.
He died when the Rover he was driving to London overturned on the M1 motorway.
Recalling the moment he was told about the accident, Mr Cryer said: “The Chief Whip called me, who was then Derek Foster. I was at work, and I got this phone call, and the switchboard said the Chief Whip needs to talk to you now. I had no idea what happened, so obviously he told me. He said the car turned over – we never found out why. The police did their
own inquiry, and then there was a second inquiry. That’s a bit of a long story, but the car
turned over twice, and he was quite tall, so he died of head injuries. The back window was
smashed out, so my Mum crawled out of the back window, so it was all pretty traumatic.
Asked how he dealt with that trauma he said: “I mean, it’s not easy. Funnily enough he
was the same age that I am now when it happened. And for quite a long time afterwards, I
kept thinking, I’ll have to talk to my dad about that,’ and then I remembered ‘Oh no I can’t, he’s not here anymore,’ and you’ve got that sort of conditioned reflex that leads you to think he’s still around, and obviously he’s not.

“He went well before his time. I imagine he’d probably have lived well into his 80s/90s if it hadn’t been for that accident. And if you knew him, he was always such a livewire; he was like a force of nature, so it was difficult to accept that he was now no longer with us. You don’t get over something like that, you just come to terms with it.”