Andy Burnham spoke about the UK’s future with the EU in his speech on Tuesday (Alamy)
4 min read02 October
Andy Burnham opening the door to rejoining the European Union has been well-received by large parts of the Labour Party. But starting a new debate about Brexit is not without risk.
Addressing Labour Party conference on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said he would return from a UK-EU summit later this year with a series of options for Britain’s long-term relationship with the bloc that he would then present to the public in a bid to find consensus. He later confirmed in interviews that the options could include rejoining.
The announcement was one of the stand-out elements of Burnham’s speech.
PoliticsHome understands that a previous draft was more explicit, specifically questioning the government’s long-standing red lines of staying out of the Single Market or Customs Union.
No 10 is now asking think tanks and pollsters for evidence on public opinion about the UK’s EU relationship, as reported by The Guardian. The Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, influential in Labour circles, plans to publish a paper setting out its stance on rejoining the EU in the coming weeks, PoliticsHome understands.
According to Anand Menon, Director of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank, there is a risk for Burnham in that his EU position shifts the political debate to “culture and identity” and away from the economic issues that he put at the forefront of his conference speech, like public ownership and reforming the triple lock to fund social care.
It could be “all-consuming and drown out the stuff that Labour should be doing”, he said.
“What you don’t want to be doing is talking about immigration…
“There is a potential danger that you rejuvenate Reform and Reform voters, because this is the issue they really care about,” Menon told PoliticsHome.
Reform leader Nigel Farage has claimed since Burnham’s speech that the EU announcement “might just have given me the biggest boost in my career I’ve ever had”.
Will Jennings, politics professor at the University of Southampton, believes some MPs with memories of the Brexit referendum and polarised nature of the debate will be nervous about reopening the issue.
“I understand why members of the government, MPs probably on all sides, but particularly those who are on the receiving end of it would be rather nervous about re-entering another extremely destabilising period,” he said.
Former Labour leader Lord Kinnock, a strong advocate for rejoining the EU, acknowledged that ministers would need to spend time persuading voters about the merits of doing so.
“There is work to be done on further building trust and relationships [with EU countries], and on proving to the public that joining again would be the practical patriotic way to bring strong material advantages. I’m sure that the government can do that over the coming years,” he told PoliticsHome.
A YouGov poll published in recent days found that 59 per cent of people support rejoining the EU, while 32 per cent oppose it.
There was even greater support for closer ties with the bloc without rejoining or being part of the Single Market or Customs Union. Nearly three-quarters of respondents were in favour of this (73 per cent), while 15 per cent opposed it.
However, the same pollster notes that previous research has found net opposition to rejoining the EU if the UK cannot keep its previous opt-outs.
Speaking at a Labour Movement for Europe rally in Liverpool on Sunday, Menon warned that polling numbers are “soft” and would change in the event of a new Brexit debate because renegotiating with the bloc will be “very, very difficult” and “take a significant amount of time”.
“The whole thing is just a bit messier than it’s being made to sound,” he said.
“It is not a negotiation. The EU lays down a bunch of conditions and says, when you’ve ticked all the boxes, get back to us, and it works in a very bureaucratic way.”
Jennings agreed, telling PoliticsHome: “We’re far too obsessed with opinion polls in British politics as a means to what the public really want, because, actually, public attitudes can be influenced by the framing of questions, but also just actually the framing of debates.”
Labour MP Stella Creasy, chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, argued that the EU is actually showing “a huge level of flexibility and creativity” in its dealings with non-members.
However, when asked whether there should be another referendum, she told PoliticsHome that any move to rejoin the EU would need the public’s “consent”.
“I want the [next] manifesto to say what we know is the truth, that we are better off when we’re trying to face the challenge of the future being part of the EU, than outside. How we do that and how quickly we can rebuild some of that is a very open question.”