Anti-EU Labour frontbencher ‘threatened with the sack if he publicly backed Brexit’
Colleagues claim John Cryer has been gagged by Corbyn's crew but will be voting Out
A SENIOR Labour MP was threatened with sack if he publicly backed Brexit, The Sun can reveal.
Eurosceptic John Cryer was warned he would be booted out of the Shadow Cabinet if he endorsed the Leave camp.
As chairman of the powerful Parliamentary Labour Party group of MPs, Mr Cryer risked sparking uproar amongst his pro-EU colleagues.
It was claimed last night that he had backed out of plans to sign a letter backing Vote Leave after warning from his colleagues that he would be forced out of his role.
Last night his spokesman said: "Mr Cryer is not signing any letter."
But a fellow MP added: “He was told it would be career ending, but he’s definitely voting out.”
The lifelong lefty and MP for Leyton, East London describes himself as “a critic of the European Union because it is anti-democratic.”
In 2011 he attacked Brussels as “a tiny political elite at the apex of the European Union which says: ‘This doesn’t matter. We don’t want people having their views on Europe tested. We don’t want to have to go out to seek people’s opinions.’”
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The row came as Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer tore into his own party’s record on immigration, saying Labour “walked past a problem, walked round a problem, rather than confronted a problem”.
The Holborn MP told House magazine: “What we’re picking up as we go around the country is the public – rightly or wrongly, and in a sense it doesn’t matter whether they’re right or wrong – think that Labour doesn’t want to talk to them about immigration.”