Another EU referendum could rip UK society apart, warns biggest union

Reuters
A workers counts ballots after polling stations closed in the Referendum on the European Union in Islington, London, Britain, June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall/Files

LONDON (Reuters) - Another referendum on European Union membership risks tearing British society apart and would undermine support for a possible future Labour government, the leader of Unite, Britain's biggest trade union, Len McCluskey said on Wednesday.

McCluskey said the working class in 2016 had "voted above all against an out-of-touch elite whose neoliberal policies had taken from them much of what they once had and left them with nothing in its place."

"Their world is no different today to what it was in 2016, a fact no amount of metropolitan moralising can get over," McCluskey said in the New Statesman magazine.

Another referendum, he said, "risks tearing our society further apart, as the ignored majority believe their views have been scorned once again."

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Costas Pitas)