A less cuddly EU may not welcome Andy Burnham back with open arms

I t is December 2027 and Andy Burnham is on his way to Brussels. He has won a hugely significant general election victory in Britain, with a totemic policy in the manifesto: opening talks to rejoin the European Union. We’re actually doing this, it seems — reversing Brexit. The serried ranks of Europhilic Britain are united behind him in an Ode to Joy coalition: Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Alastair Campbell, Gina Miller, Steve Bray. One day, the sundered agonies of the Brexit years will seem like little more than a blip. Burnham reaches Brussels, ready to restore liberal Britain to the ranks of the European elect. There’s just one problem: the people waiting to meet him at the negotiating table. First there’s Marine Le Pen, the newish president of France: pro-Russia, nationalist, locked in a brutal fight with the European Commission over money. Next to her is a newly re-elected Giorgia Meloni, natural ally of the Tories, inclined to respect the result of the Brexit referendum. Most commented 1 Starlink deliberately slowed in Ukraine, says Zelensky Russia-Ukraine war 1,130 comments 2 Katie Zacharia departs as Trump’s press secretary after less than a week US politics 699 comments 3 Hundreds of British troops to rehearse Ukraine mission Politics 317 comments 4 Scotland plane crash: boy, 16, and flight instructor, 80, killed Scotland 52 comments 5 All Blacks leave Australia chasing shadows in dazzling first half Rugby union 31 comments The Poles, meanwhile, have kicked out Donald Tusk and swung back towards the right-wing Law and Justice party. An unpopular Friedrich Merz is still hanging on in Germany, but with the hard-right AfD breathing ever more fiercely down his neck and poised to take control nationally in 2029. Spain, meanwhile, is now being run by a coalition that includes the hard-right Vox party , ideological successor to General Franco, advocating mass deportations of migrants and the abolition of same-sex marriage. Friedrich Merz, who has struggled for support within his party, is under pressure from the hard-right AfD News Agency Germany/Shutterstock Editorial This is not the cuddly EU that Britain left in 2016. Open-borders Angela Merkel is but a distant memory. Across the continent, Labour’s natural allies on the centre-left have been routed in a series of elections. Would Burnham’s coalition of Be Kind progressives even want to share power with this gang of populist hardliners? Top stories 1 US inflation hotter than expected as Iran war stokes fuel costs Economics As the prime minister reopens the Brexit debate in Britain, the changing nature of the Europe he seeks to embrace is becoming increasingly apparent. Not all of the scenarios posited above may come to pass, but each is distinctly possible. Scaling the walls of this new Fortress EU, nationalist, nativist, ever more protectionist, may prove a task that Burnham is unable or even unwilling to complete. Advertisement “The big difference is that the EU is much more protectionist now,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. “It’s more French, partly because the British aren’t there to argue against it, but partly because the world has changed. Everyone’s concerned with economic security these days, more than free trade.” The result, he believes, will be a trade war with China. A European Council with Marine Le Pen in it looks less welcoming Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters The EU’s backlash against immigration was heightened in July, when 80,000 people, mainly young men from Morocco, crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in north Africa. European leaders turned their ire on Pedro Sánchez , the only remaining left-of-centre leader of a major EU member. Top stories 1 Will Lyons: my vintage wine tour of South Australia Inspiration Sánchez may well be gone by the end of next month, replaced by a right-wing coalition that will enthusiastically support Meloni’s quest to find third-party countries to host asylum seekers for processing. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it bears a striking similarity to the despised Rwanda plan that was immediately cancelled by Sir Keir Starmer when Labour came to power. Migrants from Morocco crossed into Ceuta in July Abdel Majid BZIOUAT/AFP/Getty Images But whatever happens in Madrid or Warsaw, the important shift will be in Paris, if Le Pen and her National Rally party take power in May’s presidential election, as seems entirely plausible. Le Pen has long since ditched plans for leaving the Eurozone, “Frexit”, and is campaigning more from the centre-right than the hard right. Clearly Brexit and the potential for the UK to rejoin is not a top priority in Paris. But could Le Pen rebuff our advances with a Gaullist “non”? Advertisement “A European Council with Marine Le Pen in it is less welcoming than one that has Emmanuel Macron in it,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College, London. “She will be more hostile to a British bid to join. Her party is quite Gaullist.” The signals from her camp have been mixed thus far. In May, Charles-Henri Gallois, an economic adviser to her deputy, Jordan Bardella, said the party opposed any further enlargement and could veto Britain’s return, especially if it failed to hold another referendum first. Bardella has struck up a good relationship with Nigel Farage and Reform UK, the arch-Brexiteers, and appeared at the party’s conference in September. Jordan Bardella, president of France’s far-right National Rally, has solidified an alliance with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage TOLGA AKMEN/EPA But Brexit rejectionism is not party policy and appears to contradict past utterances from Le Pen herself, who has spoken about Britain rejoining. This remains an open question. If she wins the French election, Le Pen may end up in her own fight with Brussels that could easily crowd out any focus on Britain. She plans to hold a referendum to change the French constitution, ending the primacy of EU laws over the country’s own. In an echo of Margaret Thatcher’s stand-off with Brussels in the 1980s, Le Pen has also vowed to cap France’s contribution to the EU budget at €5bn a year, down from the current level of about €8bn. She also wants to pull the plug on aid to Ukraine. Advertisement A President Le Pen would be in a far weaker position than Thatcher though, thanks to the poor state of the public finances. France may well be heading for a financial crisis. “The markets are going to go to work on France, there is no doubt about it,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank. “Le Pen will have an urgent fiscal problem and no strategy with which to deal with it.” A more protectionist, hard-bordered, illiberal EU might make rejoining an easier sell in Makerfield, Andy Burnham’s constituency Rachel Adams for the sunday Times Yet there are also plenty of reasons why EU countries might want Britain back and the idea has been warmly received since Burnham restarted the debate. Having Britain’s considerable — if diminished — military power back inside the union would appeal greatly to Poland, among others. But the real incentive is pecuniary: unlike the poorer Balkan countries queuing to join, Britain would be a net contributor to the Brussels budget. “Yes, of course we need more money,” quipped Andrej Babis, the populist Czech leader, when asked for his views on the issue. If Le Pen wants to slim down France’s own contributions, an influx of British sterling would be an unexpected boon. In fact, if the colour of our money is right, Europe’s right-populist turn may not be of huge consequence for Britain’s putative rejoin ambitions. “Membership would come with a hefty bill,” said Menon. “Whenever we do something with the EU, it is expensive. We paid half a billion just for a year’s access to the Erasmus scheme. Every time they think of us, they think about the financial opportunities.” Burnham will have to convince his constituents of the case for rejoining — Makerfield voted 65 per cent Leave in 2016 Christopher Furlong/Getty Images It’s also the case that a more protectionist, hard-bordered, illiberal EU might actually make Rejoin an easier sell for Burnham. Britain has changed too since 2016. If the prime minister wants to sell Rejoin or a single market entry to Makerfield, his pitch will be that Britain would be re-entering a changed Europe with much tougher borders, that they were sold a pup on Brexit and in order to reindustrialise and find a profitable market for their goods, the only way is Brussels. Complications abound because, of course, the EU is comprised not just of its constituent nations, but also the powerful commission in Brussels. The current commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, is an Anglophile, but there is understandable wariness towards Britain in Brussels. They’ve seen this film before and won’t trust a drive for re-entry unless it is backed by a firmly entrenched pro-EU government wielding a stable majority. Advertisement No one wants more years of Brexit hokey-cokey. “Much would depend on the state of the Tory party and how strong Burnham looks,” said Grant. “And whether or not the result could be overturned [again] in five years’ time.”