TUC claims that Brexit would end paid holiday for workers make a mockery of the In campaign

In the middle of a national steel crisis, unions should start talking about reforming Europe’s sluggish economy rather than thinking about the nearest beach

Woman sunbathing on a beach

Even the most devoted supporter of the European cause would have to admit that some of the arguments deployed in favour of Britain’s continuing membership have moved from 'project fear' to 'project silly'.

The TUC’s claim that a Brexit could lead to a cut in paid holidays for millions of British workers shouldn’t is one such. Perhaps someone should remind Frances O’Grady and the TUC that paid holidays in Britain date back to 1938, when they were introduced by Neville Chamberlain who, until Margaret Thatcher came along, enjoyed the distinction of being the most reviled of prime ministers so far as the brothers and sisters were concerned.

If the UK were to leave the EU, the laws about holiday pay, like much else, would devolve once again to Parliament, and , thus, whichever party or coalition was in power. If it was one closely aligned to the TUC’s tastes, then, presumably, Brexit would not be disastrous for the two decent foreign breaks a year every free born Briton now apparently regard as birthright. If it were to be, as the TUC might describe it, “another wicked Tory government at war with working people”, then maybe things might not be so sunny. But that seems unlikely.

The TUC’s intervention betrays a fundamental flaw in its approach to the EU – that of expedience.

In the long decades before President of the EU Commission, Jacques Delors, invented the worker-friendly “social chapter”, the British unions were, on the whole, bitterly opposed to Europe because it deprived a British socialist administration of the levers of nationalisation, trade barriers and inflation to protect their members’ jobs. Now they see the EU as, to recall a phrase of an earlier era, socialism by the back Delors. If the EU were to revert back to being what was called a “bosses’ club” they would, presumably, switch sides yet again.

Looking after workers’ holidays is arguably what the TUC is there for. But at a time when the steel crisis demonstrates a much wider competitive challenge for British industry and manufacturing, it would have been more appropriate for the unions to start talking about reforming Europe’s sluggish economy, rather than thinking about the nearest beach.