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Chuka Umunna today urged Remain campaigners to abandon calls for a second referendum or risk being seen as a metropolitan elite “who think they know best”.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, the influential Labour backbencher urged fellow pro-EU campaigners to show more respect for the 17 mil- lion who voted for Brexit. He also:

Said there are now “no safe Labour seats” after the rise of Ukip, whose new leader Paul Nuttall has vowed to target Labour’s heartlands.

Blamed the Blair government’s decision to allow free migration from Poland and Bulgaria for the discontent that led to Brexit.

Revealed that he is touring Brexit-backing areas from Dagenham to Halifax in West Yorkshire, to learn “with humility” what drove voters.

Urged the public to back tomorrow’s Small Business Saturday, the day that urges people to “shop local” and support small firms.

For the Streatham MP, the June 23 vote was a traumatic defeat after months of campaigning. But he says fellow Remainers must now stop complaining and start listening. “Remain didn’t lose by a landslide but was clearly defeated at the ballot box on June 23,” he said.

“I think it’s really important we listen and more deeply understand why people took a different view to us.”

He added: “The 52 per cent are no more a bunch of racists and bigots than the 48 per cent are a well-heeled metropolitan elite. I have no time for either characterisation.”

In a personal crusade to understand what happened, he visited Boston, Lincolnshire, which could not be more different to his multicultural London constituency. Although many problems were identical, only the Lincolnshire town was stressed about immigration, seeing it as unmanaged.

Tony Blair’s government, he said, lost trust by underplaying the numbers who would come from the EU accession countries and the pressures on public services in some communities.

“That one mistake, among all the many good things that the last Labour government did, may I think have been the biggest driver of why we left the European Union,” said Mr Umunna.

In the New Year he will spend time in Dagenham with Labour MP Jon Cruddas, learning from the people of Essex. He urged Remainers, such as the Lib-Dems’ Nick Clegg, who have threatened to delay Article 50 unless given a second referendum on the exit deal to show the poll verdict more respect.

“I really have no time for calls for a second referendum because I think it comes across as disrespectful to those who voted to leave,” he said.

“Those calls reinforce what I feel is a false stereotype — of a bunch of people in London who think they know best.”

He went on: “We are going to leave — it hurts me to say that — but we have got to move forward and work out how to get the best possible deal.”

We met in his constituency at Fizz DJ & Pro Audio, where Mr Umunna, an ex-amateur disc jockey, spun some vinyl with owner Roland Boakye — exactly the kind of small trader he wants to promote through tomorrow’s Small Business Saturday.

The event, an idea the MP imported from the US while he was shadow business secretary, is now worth about half a billion pounds in extra revenues for small traders.

“Small businesses are vital,” he said. “Not just because they provide two-thirds of private sector jobs but they make every high street unique and are meeting points for the community.”

Mr Umunna had his own taste of small business working on his mother’s market stall, which sold Nigerian jewellery and textiles, from the age of 11.

“This time of year was our busiest season — but it was freezing cold in those early mornings,” he recalled.

Although he predicted that voters will recoil from Mr Nuttall’s “Tory” policies such as privatisation, he saw Ukip as “a danger to the Labour Party, not just in the North but in the South as well”.

And he warned: “There are no safe seats for Labour any more.”

He described Labour’s leadership as “a settled issue at the moment”.

Jeremy Corbyn, he said, should now be given “the chance to show what he can do”.