PM says talking about changing the relationship with the bloc would not be divisive but ‘can start to bring people together’
Good morning. Andy Burnham started budget week with an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain with Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley. There were plenty of decent lines in it, but some of his most intriguing comments were about Brexit. Yesterday opposition parties (and even in private some Labour MPs ) were criticising the PM for saying in a Sunday Times interview that he would be willing to consider going into the next election proposing accepting EU free movement rules. This was treated as if it was a novel outrage – even though at Labour conference Burnham announced that rejoining the EU could end up as the best option to emerge from his proposed renegotiation of the Brexit settlement, which of course would automatically involve accepting free movement.
Neil Kinnock said recently he thought Burnham was determined to take Britain back in the EU, but in his interview this morning Burnham insisted that he was not dogmatic in that way. When Madeley asked him if he saw himself as someone “destined” to be the PM would take Britain back in, Burnham replied:
double quotation mark Honestly, I don’t.
I see it as my job to be pragmatic about the whole situation. Can I make it work better? Can I add growth to the British economy?
And when Reid asked him bluntly to be honest and say if he wanted the UK to rejoin, Burnham replied:
double quotation mark I’ve said – I’m going to be honest – in my lifetime I would like to see that happen, but I am not going to move ahead of the public. I am not going to dictate in terms of my own opinions here. You have to make sure that the British public are the bosses here.
When it was put to him that he had broken a promise he made during the Makerfield byelection campaign not to reopen the Brexit referendum campaign, Burnham said that was not what he was doing.
He repeated the argument he made in his Labour conference speech – that it was worth revising the relationship with the EU because the current, post-Brexit settlement was not working.
But he also claimed that, rather than being divisive, this new debate could bring people together. Later in the interview, he returned to Brexit unprompted.
double quotation mark And [to] go back to Brexit, by just talking about it in a more practical way, by being honest about it … that can start to bring people together who voted in different ways.
The divides that we’ve lived through in the last decade really do need to end, and we need to pull people together …
I’m trying to give the country a direction and there is no way I can do that without coming back to the relationship with Europe and saying, ‘Look, here are some options as to how we got this right.’
Not for the first time, Burnham categorically ruled out trying to rejoin the EU before the election.
And, on the timing of the election, Burnham also insisted that it would be “no time soon”. He went on:
double quotation mark My mind is not on that [an early election]. I don’t know if that is coming over here, but it genuinely is not on that. There is no election coming anytime soon. People may as well just put that out of their mind.
I will post more from the interview soon.
Morning: Andy Burnham is on a visit in London ahead of attending a summit on rough sleeping in Downing Street.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2pm: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Robert Jenrick, his Treasury spokesperson, hold a press conference to present what they call their “economic rescue plan”.
2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood , the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
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