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’.

Leading light of the party Josh Babarinde witnessed the perils of this position first hand on Question Time. Both Labour and Tory panellists, led by a typically irate Andrew Neil, ganged up to say it’s the worst of all worlds as we’d be following EU rules without having a say in how they’re made. And they’d be right, assuming you ignore the 1.5-2% increase in GDP Josh mentioned.

Burnham knows the economic case for EU membership didn’t work a decade ago. Instead, he laments non-EU ‘longer-term permanent migration’ replacing freedom of movement. A confused message sounding like we’ve had the ‘wrong sort’ of immigration since Brexit. When Starmer accused the Tories of ‘experimenting in open borders’, he was really talking about an influx of South Asian migrants.

Liberal Democrats need to be aware of and alive to this worrying segue. Britain will always need immigration. Yet framing the case for Rejoin as a way to control non-white non-EU migration is a trap that will do us no favours, especially given our poor performance among ethnic minorities (worse than the Tories). The party must avoid being outplayed on our ambition to Rejoin, but more importantly we must stay well clear of this ‘immigration trap’.

* Blaise Baquiche stood as a candidate in the 2023 Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election followed by the 2024 general election in Chelsea & Fulham. He is currently the secretary of the Lib Dem European Group.