Cameron hails cross-party anti-Brexit alliance

LONDON

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has hailed the “extraordinary alliance” of parties and trade unions that is fighting to keep Britain within the European Union.

In a rare joint appearance Thursday with the former head of the U.K.’s largest trade union, TUC, Cameron said politicians of all backgrounds had put aside their differences to campaign against Brexit.

He told factory workers in the eastern English city of Peterborough: “It's not often you find a Conservative prime minister and the leader of a trade union movement standing together.

“But we both think this issue about Britain and Europe is so important that we put aside our own disagreements, put aside party political arguments to say Britain should stay in a united European Union.”

Speaking alongside Brendan Barber, TUC's former general secretary, Cameron said figures in the U.K.’s main political parties -- the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens -- all supported British membership of the EU.

Barber told the BBC: “This cause is so important. It’s going to define the place of our country for decades to come and it has such huge implications for millions of working people that I was privileged to represent for so many years in terms of the prices they paid or the wages they get, security of their jobs and security of their rights at work -- all of that is under threat.”

It is unusual for a British center-right politician like Cameron to share a platform with a trade union leader.

Their event at the Caterpillar engine factory came on the day they jointly published an article in The Guardian newspaper calling for a vote to remain in the EU.

But a spokesman for the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign dismissed the joint appearance, telling the Daily Mail: “Two members of the political establishment doing down the British economy is nothing to be proud of.”