Burnham weighs up Brexit gamble that could define his premiership

Anyone who still thinks it possible to maintain the current Brexit settlement should have been at the Sheldonian in Oxford last Wednesday afternoon, where beneath a high ceiling painted with depictions of truth’s triumph over ignorance, William Hague was delivering a lecture. The former Conservative leader and foreign secretary – now chancellor of the university – set out a number of areas, from climate change and AI to defence, where he said it was in Britain’s national interest to have a much closer relationship with the European Union.

Asked for his views about withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a policy which Kemi Badenoch is making a purity test for anyone seeking to be one of the Tory party’s MPs after the next election, Hague joked that he had been trying to “avoid this question”. He added: “I’m a reformer, not a Leaver, so it’s just as well I’m not planning to be a candidate for parliament.” Hague’s acknowledgement that he would be banned from standing for the party which he himself led into a significantly more Eurosceptic position two decades earlier, with speeches about “waking up in a foreign land”, most obviously symbolises how far the dial has shifted on the right of politics.

But it also presents an opportunity for Andy Burnham, in his efforts at “rebuilding the progressive coalition”, to portray both Reform UK and the Conservatives as intent on delivering an even harder Brexit than that negotiated by Boris Johnson. Leaving the ECHR, which Britain helped draft after the Second World War, is likely to be considered by the EU as a breach of an “essential element” of Johnson’s deal and make it impossible to co-operate on some issues.

Related articles: Burnham says the public’s in charge of Bre-entry. So what does the boss think? Reigniting the Brexit debate At the same time, Downing Street believes that Badenoch’s “ideological promise” to rip up the limited reset with the EU, expected to be agreed at a much-delayed summit later this month, will help stifle any prospect of a Conservative revival among its traditional supporters in business and “blue wall” voters in the south who backed Labour or the Liberal Democrats at the last election.

“At the next election, we can say we are fixing the mistake of Brexit while Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage want to make it worse,” said a well-placed Labour source. But in the month that has passed since Burnham promised the Labour party conference he would lay out “different options” – from a customs union to full re-entry – for a new long-term relationship with the EU, there has been little sign of his hoped-for “consensus” emerging about what he might propose.

Instead, the issue of Europe is once more demonstrating it has an almost limitless capacity to roil politics and foment division within parties. One No 10 aide has noted that the only real heavyweight backing for re-entry so far has come from Rachel Reeves , the chancellor sacked by the prime minister in July. Instead, there has been more or less open resistance to the idea from John Healey, the chancellor he appointed in her place, as well as other senior cabinet colleagues, including home secretary Shabana Mahmood and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds.

Last week Burnham felt compelled to write a letter to his top team telling them to shut up and reminding them of their collective responsibility . The prime minister, however, appears undaunted and there have been hints he may be prepared to go the “whole way” and promise to negotiate terms for re-entry – subject to approval by a referendum – if Labour wins the next election, when the party will no longer be constrained by the “red lines” of Keir Starmer’s manifesto.

Such a decision would define Burnham’s premiership and dominate not only the remainder of this parliament but probably the next one as well. For all the political advantages, no one denies that such a route remains dangerous, not least with Europe experiencing its own populist convulsions on all-too-familiar issues such as immigration and asylum. Polling evidence suggests strong public support among Britain’s voters for re-entry begins to wane when people are told it would mean the return of uncontrolled immigration. ‘If the strategic insight of the last election campaign was to stop talking about Brexit, there is a sense that the way to win the next one is to start again’ ‘If the strategic insight of the last election campaign was to stop talking about Brexit, there is a sense that the way to win the next one is to start again’ Government source Although he has previously expressed sympathy with such views , Burnham now says he is open to “having a conversation” about restoring freedom of movement, which Brussels would almost certainly insist on as a condition of membership of the European single market or full re-entry.

Last week he suggested that even the Leave-voting red wall, such as his own seat of Makerfield, had moved on the issue. “We should have an honest discussion with people about how immigration has changed since the Brexit vote,” said Burnham. “I noticed in the middle of the byelection that public opinion had changed in the Makerfield constituency over those 10 years… public opinion has changed nationally.” A pro-Rejoin demonstration in central London, October 2026 Those close to Burnham’s thinking acknowledge that so far he has set a direction rather than a precise destination, but insist his position is motivated by a genuine desire to be honest with the voting public about the challenges that face Britain in the years to come.

They stress that the PM’s starting point is that Brexit has failed even in its own terms to deliver what people wanted. Thought is already going into constructing a national campaign for closer European co-operation which will reinforce other key parts of his agenda including “ good growth in every postcode ”, re-industrialisation and stopping irregular immigration. Burnham is writing a speech that will be aired around the time of this month’s summit in Brussels – before publication of the government’s 10-year plan – which will argue that he does not want to reopen battles from the past.

Instead, he is being urged by pro-European ministers to make a “patriotic case” that Britain will have more influence and sovereign control over future global challenges by cooperating with the EU rather than being a “bobbing cork on the tide of history”. One government source said: “If the strategic insight of the last election campaign was to stop talking about Brexit, there is a sense that the way to win the next one is to start again.”

Before such an ambition can be realised, however, Burnham still has to finalise negotiations for the summit which will include a youth mobility scheme for more than 80,000 young EU citizens each year and likely subsidies for EU students studying in the UK. In Oxford last week, Hague said his university would welcome any such deal but added that the time it had taken to agree this relatively modest measure suggested that talk of re-entry might be premature.

Hague, who these days is regarded as a wise old head in politics, had this advice for the prime minister on Europe: it might be prudent, he said, to “learn to walk before you run”. What are your thoughts on this? Email us at letters@observer.co.uk Photograph by Leon Neal / Getty Images, Henry Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images Conservatives Kemi Badenoch Labour European Union Politics Brexit Andy Burnham