09:35

Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, told a fringe meeting at lunchtime that workers faced a “shock and awe” obliteration of their rights if a Tory Brexit succeeded. She cited holiday pay for part-time workers as an example of how the EU has helped British workers.

She also said the “humiliation” of workers in Britain had contributed to the leave vote. She said:

We didn’t do enough to acknowledge how much hurt there is in communities going way back, to the 1980s, people battered and bruised from the deindustrialisation of Thatcherism and people have never recovered. It’s not about people being racist, or caring about our future, very often they felt they had no power … when [they see] their kids are going into zero hours with low pay.

And Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, told the meeting that Theresa May was “deaf” to a series of warnings that her Chequers proposal was fundamentally unacceptable. He said: