Andy Burnham has declared that Brexit has “done more harm than good” and that it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to examine every option for closer relations with Brussels, the Guardian reports.
Addressing the House of Commons on Monday, the prime minister said a long-delayed reset summit with the European Union will go ahead next month, with deals on food and drink and youth mobility to be negotiated.
He confirmed that he will honour the red lines set out in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto for the current parliament, but said all bets would be off after that.
In an editorial, the Guardian said the prime minister was right to judge that the moment had arrived to push for closer links with the EU, and that the political risk involved was far outweighed by the potential rewards. It cautioned, however, that reopening “the most divisive debate of recent British history” would be drawn out, obstacle-strewn and laden with political danger.
The Guardian noted that conference season had been dominated by competing Labour and Conservative readings of the 1970s and 1980s, and that a decade after the UK voted to leave the EU, Burnham had dropped all equivocation over the economic and strategic damage of that decision.
The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock told an Italian newspaper on Tuesday that the prime minister’s eventual goal — rejoining the bloc — was “obvious”. The Guardian said that reading might well be disputed in Downing Street, though it described the Commons statement as bracingly expansive and forthright, and correct in both its diagnosis and its prescription.
Labour’s long-standing caution about revisiting the EU relationship had increasingly sat awkwardly with polling that showed a substantial majority of the public backing closer ties, the editorial said. It added that the devil would be in the detail, and that much would hinge on the prime minister’s persuasive powers in the red wall. The need to undo the economic self-harm of Brexit was not something Burnham stressed while campaigning for his seat in the leave-voting constituency of Makerfield, it noted.
According to the Guardian, the EU is itself in flux and may have red lines of its own, with Brussels weighing deeper coordination on defence and economic policy in response to a more menacing geopolitical environment. It cited the “Made in Europe” strategy, which threatens to leave British-based car manufacturers out in the cold.
The editorial argued it was overwhelmingly in Britain’s interests to work in concert with the EU rather than flail on the sidelines in isolation. It said Sir Keir Starmer had restored a basic, if circumscribed, civility to UK-EU relations after the visceral mutual distrust of the Tory Brexit years, and that Burnham’s boldness could now open new possibilities for “a real reset” — a phrase it attributed to one EU diplomat.
The Guardian also suggested such a prospect would unite progressive Britain and could significantly lift Labour’s vote share. It said Burnham’s overriding early theme had been the need to correct the political “wrong turns” of past decades, and that starting that long task on Brexit was brave but promised significant dividends for his premiership and, more importantly, for the country.
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