Author Archives: Blaise Baquiche

By trying to ‘out-Europe’ us, Burnham will fall into a trap on immigration.

At the last general election, hustings for the Chelsea & Fulham seat were like no other. Eventual Labour winner Ben Coleman, incumbent Tory minister Greg Hands and I were all trying to ‘out-Europe’ each other on a church stage, by declaring our commitment to the Remain campaign eight years earlier.

This tripartite agreement on the calamity of Brexit made sense in Europhile central London, just off the King’s Road. But in Starmer’s successful McSweeneyist campaign, the Labour red lines of no to Rejoin, let alone free movement or the single market were critical to winning back the Red Wall lost to the Tories.

How shocking two years later under Burnham it’s Labour party policy to ‘re-open the debate’ on EU free movement. Some strategists including Mark Pack, believe this is a ploy for the PM to win over Lib Dem voters still devastated by Brexit and passionately in favour of rejoining.

With Burnham unveiling trade deals with the EU potentially worth billions, voices from senior Labour MPs to Rejoin are growing louder. Rachel Reeves and Emily Thornberry claim ‘Full-on Rejoin’ could boost our anaemic growth by reversing the 6% hit on GDP caused by Brexit.

Now that the Greens are in freefall after the vociferous reaction to the passing of their ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion, Labour see their chance to ‘unite the left’ ahead of a snap election, win over Greens and steal our lunch by going further on Europe than the passionately pro-European Liberal Democrats.

Our current policy is not to rejoin the EU in its entirety, but rather just rejoin the single market and the customs union. Justifications at Conference for not simply rejoining ranged from ‘it’s too politically toxic’, to ‘it’s not democratic’ and ‘we’ve learned our lessons from Jo Swinson in 2019’.