Burnham's EU reset splits Labour as rivals scramble to respond

Andy Burnham's European charm offensive goes into overdrive this week. On Thursday he heads to Dublin, where a gathering of European leaders will give him his first chance to press flesh with the people who matter most to his plan. Then comes a foreign policy speech with Europe at its centre, before a trip to Brussels for a UK-EU summit where he'll sign new agreements on food, energy and youth mobility. His message to Cabinet: take the opportunities that make people better off, because there is a significant prize.

The prime minister has already opened the door to a much bigger conversation — rejoining the EU single market, accepting freedom of movement, even membership itself. He told his Cabinet earlier this week he firmly believes the country ended up with a harder Brexit than people voted for, adding that no sensible person thinks the deal negotiated by the Conservatives is working. That framing is now rippling through his own party, and beyond it.

Labour's fault lines don't run where you'd expect. Housing secretary Angela Rayner is understood to have been pressing former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to be bolder on Brexit since at least autumn 2022, while insisting Labour stick to its manifesto red lines on the single market, customs union and free movement — and staying open-minded about shifting them at the next election. One cabinet minister said the truth is Brexit has been hugely damaging, and that politicians are no longer leading the public conversation but racing to catch up with it. Others aren't so sure: a former minister called the strategy high risk, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has warned about the costs and consequences at both ends of the argument, and Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds backs closer ties but has cautioned against the customs union and flagged uncertainty over what terms the UK would get — and what the bloc itself looks like with nationalist parties rising across Europe.

Lord Cameron arrived to pour cold water on it. The former prime minister told Bloomberg's Mishal Husain that starting a conversation about rejoining would be very long and painful, and warned that flirting with the idea could backfire by convincing EU capitals that Britain will rejoin anyway, so why hand over a good partnership deal. Producing the impression of a path back to membership, he said, risks getting a worse deal instead.

Backbench unease hasn't boiled over into open revolt yet. Gareth Snell, MP for Stoke-on-Trent where the Leave vote hit 69.4%, told the BBC's Westminster Hour that reopening the debate would monopolise an awful lot of time inside parliament and government. One Scottish Labour MP, personally anti-Brexit and representing a heavily Remain constituency, called it a real problem — asking how to tell voters that 2014 settled independence for a generation while 2016 isn't settled, and concluding you accept democracy. Two of the unhappiest Labour MPs insisted there are no plans for organised criticism, describing their stance as wait and see — a truce likely to fracture if the prime minister's polling lead starts to slide.

Rival parties are scrambling. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch calls any future alignment with EU rules a red line that would actually take the country backwards, yet some Tory MPs privately fret that the issue will split their voters again — especially the affluent southerners the party has been courting, one noting they are only just giving the Conservatives a hearing again after Brexit and now keep being reminded of it. The Lib Dems, long the most pro-European of the big Westminster parties, fear being drowned out. Reform UK, by contrast, is very bullish: a strategist said if Burnham wants an election fight over a £40bn rejoin bill, open-door immigration and less control over laws and courts, they are very up for it.