Why Brexit is back on the table under Burnham

Andy Burnham’s new European affairs minister Hamish Falconer had the look of someone who has been asked to talk at a polite dinner about religion, death or some other equally taboo subject when he was asked about Brexit by Sky News on Monday morning.

But for all his awkwardness on the subject, the man who the prime minister has asked to negotiate with the European Union (EU) over a reset could not help but confirm what we all suspected to be true – Mr Burnham does not think Keir Starmer’s reset was good enough.

What is more, he has left the door open to the UK rejoining the EU at a future point – something Sir Keir’s government had tried to close firmly shut.

For all his kind words about the work of his predecessor Nick Thomas-Symonds – who was handed a very tight brief to negotiate a reset on with near impossible red lines – Mr Falconer has already indicated, just days into the job, that he wants to do much more.

While listing the areas on importing food and drink, border controls, electricity cooperation and more, Mr Falconer admitted that “this is a changed world” and “I want to do more”.

The summit where a deal was supposed to be signed was postponed this month because of the change of prime minister. But obviously there are now new talks to be carried out. Maybe greater defence integration and that long awaited deal on youth mobility could be on the cards.

When Mr Burnham appointed a new minister for Brexit talks who had been a professional diplomat before entering parliament as an MP, we knew there was a chance for a bolder approach. And that seems to be what we are getting.

What is not clear, though, is how and when we might rejoin. It is obviously not something that will happen immediately, as Mr Falconer was at pains to say.

But he did leave the option open as a manifesto commitment in the next election – something Sir Keir’s government had avoided doing.

Added to that, we know Mr Burnham himself said last September that he wants the UK to rejoin the EU.

This was not a repeat of the infamous red lines of 2024 which laid out that Labour would not rejoin the EU, its single market or its customs union. Those red lines would later be used to rule out even joining an ad hoc customs union.

Yet we know that a majority of Labour MPs want to, at the least, rejoin the customs union – and probably want us to rejoin the entire bloc.

The significance of what Mr Falconer is saying is that times have changed and electoral mathematics has changed with it.

The older voters who supported Brexit are fewer in number and the younger ones who opposed it are greater in number than a decade ago. That is why rejoin has a clear majority in every poll that asks the question.

But the interesting question would be whether another referendum would even be necessary. If a government were to win an election with a pledge to rejoin in its manifesto then that would be, in theory, a strong enough mandate to just do it.

Even so, it would take some political courage and a willingness to use a lot of political capital to do that.

We can see that other parts of the government quite like Brexit freedoms – which is why new chancellor John Healey was talking up buying British at the weekend.

However, the numbers do not lie. The loss of £100bn in trade each year and £40bn in tax revenue, as pointed out by former prime minister Sir John Major in a major interview with The Independent, simply cannot be ignored.

The further we go on with Brexit, the less we can afford to stay out of the EU.

For now, the door has been opened a chink to suggest that rejoining is a distant possibility. We will have to see if Mr Burnham is willing to throw it wide open in 2029 – or whenever he calls the next general election.

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