by Dominic Penna
The Prime Minister has promised that he will set out his plans for a closer relationship with the EU after a trade summit in Brussels next month.
Mr Burnham opened the door to freedom of movement with the EU over the weekend and said rejoining the bloc would be an option following the next general election.
On Tuesday, Jo Stevens, a Cabinet minister under Sir Keir Starmer, urged Mr Burnham to reverse Brexit and told The Telegraph: “I want the UK to be an EU member again.”
But current Labour frontbenchers told The Telegraph the Prime Minister’s pivot towards Europe would backfire with the public and could hurt Labour at the next election.
One minister, whose constituency backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum, said: “It concerns me and my patch. I’m worried about it reopening old wounds.”
Another Labour frontbencher said the party must not include rejoining the EU – with or without a referendum – in its next general election manifesto.
“I don’t think we necessarily want to be committing to that at this stage,” he said. “More trade and more opportunity for young people – I think that’s all a good thing and we can do lots of that, more cooperation on the boats.
“But I think it should be everything up to the line of a commitment to rejoin. The public aren’t in that space yet. I don’t think we want to be making the case to rejoin next time.”
In Ms Stevens’s first intervention on the EU since she left the Cabinet in July, she called on Mr Burnham to take Britain back into the bloc.
She said: “I welcome any move that brings our relationship closer so we can properly mitigate the harm Boris Johnson’s bad Brexit deal has inflicted on our country.”
Ms Stevens is a close ally of Sir Keir and spent four years in his shadow cabinet before serving as Welsh secretary from July 2024 until July this year.
She returned to the back benches when Mr Burnham took power and purged Sir Keir’s loyalists from the Cabinet in favour of his own supporters.
Ms Stevens is the first of Sir Keir’s former Cabinet ministers to call for Britain to rejoin the EU and her remarks are likely to deepen a Labour split on the Europe question.
On Monday, Mr Burnham declared that he wanted to see Britain rejoin the EU during his lifetime, and Downing Street has kept the door open to rejoining without a second referendum.
After the UK-EU summit in Brussels on Nov 20, the Prime Minister will set out a range of options for the future British relationship with the bloc.
He has pledged to stick to the “red lines” in the 2024 general election manifesto, which means Labour will not rejoin the EU or its single market, or form a new customs union, in this parliament.
However, Mr Burnham is expected to include Britain going “all the way” and rejoining in the next parliament in his list of options, with speculation that he plans to call an early election.
Rejoining the single market and forming a new customs union will also be on the table. Free movement is one of the EU’s four “fundamental freedoms,” and returning to full membership or participating in the single market would not be possible without it.
Concern about the Prime Minister’s comments is also growing among Red Wall Labour MPs who represent Leave-supporting constituencies in the North and the Midlands.
One Red Wall MP said: “I will be guided by my constituents on this, and I have not had anyone other than one guy who has a flat in Cyprus ever mention they support it.”
Another Labour backbencher, whose constituency was a Labour-Tory marginal at the last election, said: “In seats like mine, it will be a mixed view – so any public conversation needs to be done very carefully.”
Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South and one of a handful in the party who backed Brexit in 2016, said Mr Burnham was “completely wrong to reopen the most toxic debate in our democratic history”.
“Some of the economic statistics he’s using to justify it are inaccurate, and it’s an attack on young people who are finding it very difficult to get employment,” Mr Stringer said.
The number of Neets – young people not in education, employment or training – has risen to almost one million. Business chiefs have warned that a return to freedom of movement would worsen the worklessness crisis further by bringing in more migrant workers to compete for British jobs.
Mr Stringer added: “He has no mandate for this. I don’t think people want to revisit the Brexit debate. One of the things Andy isn’t doing is pointing out that even if we went back into the EU, it would be on completely different terms to the ones we left.”
On Sunday, Mr Burnham said Britain needed an “evidence-based debate” about freedom of movement, which would allow every EU citizen to move to the UK and vice versa.
The following day, however, he appeared to backtrack, with his official deputy spokesman saying: “The Prime Minister isn’t proposing a return to freedom of movement or any option.”
Mr Burnham’s decision to make the EU one of his top political priorities could extend the existing backbench split to his Cabinet in the coming months.
Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, is among members of Labour’s top team to have declared that Britain must eventually rejoin.
However, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, and Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, have both insisted that undoing Brexit would not solve Britain’s problems.
Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, was reportedly “furious” after Mr Burnham kept the Cabinet in the dark about the interview on Sunday in which he opened the door to freedom of movement.
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, and Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, have both opposed Mr Burnham’s efforts to move closer to the EU.
On Tuesday, Mr Farage said that Mr Burnham must put any return to EU membership or freedom of movement to the public at a general election.
Labour fell to a historic postwar defeat at the 2019 general election under Jeremy Corbyn. In its manifesto, it committed to a second referendum on Brexit following three years of parliamentary deadlock over withdrawal from the EU.
Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide after fighting the election on a pledge to “get Brexit done”. Dozens of traditionally Labour-supporting seats in the Red Wall lent the Tories their vote, having backed Leave in 2016.
A Government spokesman said: “The Prime Minister believes that a stronger relationship with our closest neighbours is in our national interest, and the Brexit deal we inherited is clearly not good enough.
“We must be prepared to look clearly at the evidence and act in our national interest.”
*Published first on The Telegraph
By: N. Peter Kramer
