Prime Minister Andy Burnham has opened the door to rejoining the European Union after the next general election. In comments to the BBC, he gave more detail on the “new relationship” with the bloc that he sketched at the Labour Party’s annual conference.
Every option is on the table, Burnham said, from “stay as we are” to “all the way.” He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that staying put was definitely one of them, if people think that is the right place to be. Others included the customs union idea raised by former Chancellor George Osborne, and the single market approach the Liberal Democrats discussed at their conference. “There are clearly options that need to be considered,” he said, “and we have to look at what is doable and what would be the pros and cons of each.”
He plans to find consensus on one of them, though he gave no detail on how that would be measured. He told the conference on Tuesday that he would lay out the choices later this year, around a summit with EU leaders. That meeting had been set for July but was postponed after Keir Starmer resigned, and no new date has been fixed. Burnham, in office just over two months, confirmed it would happen before the year is out.
“More harm than good”
Burnham told party members the 2016 Brexit vote left the country weaker and failed to deliver the control over borders and rules the Leave campaign promised. “Brexit has done more harm than good,” he said, citing a decade of low growth and lost control over immigration. He also hit the right, including the Conservatives, over Brexit, the privatisations of the 1980s and the austerity of the 2010s. “The British right talk about taking back control,” he said. “Never let them forget. They are the ones that gave it away in the first place.”
Neither he nor his spokesman set out what the options would be, though they are likely to include rejoining the single market, the customs union, or both. Canada may offer another model: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed earlier this month that it could become the bloc’s first associate member.
Cost and criticism
Bloomberg Economics found that Brexit may have cost the UK between 2% and 4% of GDP, with a central case of 2.5%, equal to £30 billion in lost tax revenue. Closer ties, it estimated, could win back between 0.4 and 1.2 percentage points of output.
Reopening the debate carries risk. It could derail talks to improve the current trade relationship, and Brussels officials have shown reluctance to engage in detail while London lacks a settled policy. The commitment may help win back centrist and left-leaning voters who drifted to the Greens or Liberal Democrats. It drew fire from Reform UK, which until recently led Labour in the polls. Deputy leader Richard Tice said Burnham had “barely been prime minister five minutes and he’s already trying to sneak us back into Brussels via the back door.”
