Tristram Hunt uses final speech to bash EU in dire warning to ‘out-of-touch’ Jeremy Corbyn

Mr Hunt plunged the Labour Party into further chaos last week as he announced he was quitting as MP for Stoke-upon-Trent, sparking a by-election in the Leave constituency.

Addressing Parliament on Wednesday, the left-wing politician said the opposition party’s official positions were out of touch with traditional voters over Brexit.

During the speech, he also lashed out against the European Union, despite having been an advocate of Brussels in the past.

Warning against a “divergence of priorities” between Labour’s policy positions and those of heartland voters, Mr Hunt said: “The division of opinion between the official Labour party position and many of our heartland voters has served only to highlight some of the deep-seated challenges which centre-left parties are facing.

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Tristram Hunt warned that the Labour Party was out of touch with its voters

“From Greece to the Netherlands, to Sweden to France, the combination of austerity, globalisation and EU policy has hammered social democratic politics.

“The challenge which my the leader of the Labour party faces, is not unique to him. All parties are coalitions.”

Continuing his address during a debate on Brexit and law enforcement, Mr Hunt said: “But what Brexit has done is exacerbate the divergence of priorities between what say the Labour voters of Cambridge want, and those in Redcar, Grimsby or Stoke-on-Trent.

“Keeping a metropolitan and post-industrial coalition together is no easy task.”

This was about the effects of large-scale migration on public services and wage levels

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Tristram Hunt

Turning to his constituency Mr Hunt said the vote to abandon the bigwigs in Brussels was not racist but a demand to return British supremacy.

The politician said voters had backed Brexit for three reasons: sovereignty, a reaction against globalisation they perceived had led to the collapse of local industries, and immigration.

“This wasn’t racism. This was about the effects of large-scale migration on public services and wage levels in an already low wage city,” Mr Hunt said.

“Now we need a Brexit that delivers for Stoke-upon-Trent and other communities feeling left behind by globalisation and rapid socioeconomic change.”

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In his resignation letter Mr Hunt, who is set to become director of the V&A Museum, insisted he was not seeking to “rock the boat” amid Mr Corbyn’s continued hard-left stranglehold on Labour.

He said: "The extraordinary privilege of serving in Parliament has proved both deeply rewarding and intensely frustrating.

"I am sorry to put you, the party and the people of Stoke-on-Trent through a by-election. I have no desire to rock the boat now and anyone who interprets my decision to leave in that way is just plain wrong."

He added: "The frustration, of course, came with the inability to address those factors and implement our policy programme following our defeat in 2015 – and, more broadly, about how the Labour Party should respond to the social, cultural and economic forces which have rocked mainstream social democratic and socialist parties from India to Greece to America."

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