Andy Burnham said a new set of agreements with the European Union could add more to the UK economy than earlier estimates suggested, and accused critics of misreading public opinion on Brexit.
He said the Treasury had confirmed in recent days that deals under negotiation before a summit later this month could raise GDP by 0.4%, compared with a previous estimate of 0.3%. In an interview with The Economist he also responded to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who has warned against reopening arguments about Brexit while the government looks at the UK’s longer-term relationship with the bloc.
Burnham said he sensed, since conference, an appetite to discuss the issue. He said those arguing against opening up what he called this psychodrama were, in his view, misreading the public mood. He wants agreements on food and drink, emissions trading and a youth mobility scheme locked in at a Brussels summit on 20 November, and said an updated Treasury calculation showed a deal could add up to 0.4% to GDP, a figure he said could not be ignored.
The BBC reported that a draft text on food and agriculture has been circulated among the 27 EU members, together with similar documents on emissions trading and youth mobility, a sign that a food and farming agreement is close to being finished.
Burnham has told ministers that the period after the summit would be used to explore options for the long-term relationship, which would eventually be put to the public. Recent remarks have prompted questions about whether the UK might return to the EU or take on its freedom-of-movement rules. In a separate interview due to air on Tuesday he told ITV News that he had not proposed bringing freedom of movement back, and that voters would be the boss of any changes.
He said there should be an honest discussion of how immigration has changed since the Brexit vote, arguing that shorter-term movement of people coming from Europe and then going back has been replaced by long-term settlement in larger numbers, which he called the Boriswave.
Burnham, who won a by-election in Leave-voting Makerfield on a promise not to re-run Brexit arguments and then entered No 10, said he had noticed during the campaign that opinion in the constituency had shifted over the decade since the 2016 vote. He said he thought public opinion had changed nationally, but that he would not run ahead of it and that the public needed to be the boss of whatever happens with Brexit.
Questions grew after an interview last weekend in which he called for an honest discussion about a return to freedom of movement. In later interviews he first said there would be no shift in this Parliament and indicated he could fight the next general election on a promise to take the UK back into the bloc. In a second interview he answered no when asked whether he would allow EU freedom of movement to be restored without a referendum. Downing Street later said he was not leaning either way on how to proceed.
He told MPs in the Commons last week that there was no confusion at all about his position when asked if he wanted a referendum on rejoining. He said he would keep to Labour’s manifesto red lines, which rule out a return to the customs union, the single market or free movement, for the rest of this Parliament. He also wrote to the Cabinet asking ministers not to endorse particular options for the UK’s future relationship with the EU in public.
The Liberal Democrats again called for a return to the EU single market and customs union. Europe spokesman Al Pinkerton, responding to reports that a draft deal on food and farming checks has been agreed, said scrapping Brexit red tape affecting British food exporters was long overdue. He said unnecessary trade barriers had held back farmers and businesses while families faced higher food prices and less choice. He described the deal as a step in the right direction but a patch rather than a fix, and said the real solution was to rejoin the single market and establish a customs union. He urged ministers to drop their self-imposed red lines and accept that Britain’s economic future depends on rebuilding ties with its closest neighbours.