This week Andy Burnham told the Labour conference in Liverpool that Brexit has done ‘more harm than good’. In a broadcast interview the next day he said that an in-out referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) in Labour’s next manifesto is ‘possible’, as The Times reports. For Labour that is a dramatic shift. For Liberal Democrats it is something more familiar as here we see a Prime Minister arriving, a decade late, at an argument we have been making since at least the summer of 2016. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
In Brighton in September 2016, barely three months after the vote, Tim Farron committed our party to giving the public the final say on the terms of any Brexit deal and that pledge went into our 2017 manifesto. In May 2019 we fought the European Parliament elections under a slogan nobody could misunderstand: ‘Bollocks to Brexit’. We came second across Great Britain with a fifth of the vote and went from one Member of the European Parliament to sixteen. Labour, facing both ways at once, slumped to about 14 per cent. Only that autumn did Labour finally back a public vote, and then under a leader who promised to stay neutral in it. Welcome to the debate Mr Burnham!
Then came the long silence as, after 2019, Labour decided that the safest thing to say about Europe was to say nothing at all. Keir Starmer promised to make Brexit work and took into government red lines against the single market, the customs union and freedom of movement. As recently as June, Mr Burnham assured the voters of Makerfield that he would not re-run the Brexit arguments.
I firmly believe that silence on Brexit is what lost Labour the May 2024 elections. The party shed almost 1,500 councillors, and the detail of where its voters went is striking. YouGov found that fewer than half of Labour’s 2024 voters who turned out stayed loyal with 22 per cent lost to the Greens, 16 per cent to us, and only 6 per cent went to Reform UK. Research for the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that the voters Labour has lost to the Greens, to the Liberal Democrats and to staying at home are at least as pro-European as those who remain. Labour spent two years courting the voters it was not losing and ignoring the ones it was, with the price being Keir’s premiership.
Our own record is one of consistent direction, but I will not pretend that the volume has always been the same. After the bruising of 2019 we spoke of rejoining as a longer-term objective and set out a staged route back, beginning with rebuilding trust and removing barriers to trade. But every step has pointed the same way and our 2024 manifesto committed us to seeking to join the single market. In January 2025 Ed Davey called for a new customs union. In June of this year he launched our Growth and Defence Partnership with Europe: the single market and a customs union now, with membership of the EU as our long-term goal.
The case rests on evidence, not nostalgia. The Office for Budget Responsibility still assumes that Brexit will leave long-run productivity 4 per cent lower than if we had stayed, with exports and imports around 15 per cent lower. No Chancellor can tax or cut their way around a loss of that size. The numbers demonstrate that Brexit was directly responsible for the small boats immigration mess that we find ourselves in today and continues to be a major factor in our energy crisis.
So let us welcome the Prime Minister’s damascene conversion while reminding him that we were here first. If Burnham is looking for what is ‘possible’ then he could start tomorrow by dropping the red lines he inherited and opening talks on the single market and a customs union. If he does, he will find Liberal Democrats ready to help. If he does not, then voters who want a European future know which party has never needed persuading. After all, it was originally our idea!
* Dr Anthony Harris was registered party treasurer of the Liberal Democrats from 2018 to 2021. For some years he was treasurer of Newbury local party before moving to Cambridge with his wife Karen and is currently treasurer of Cambridge C4.
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15 Comments
Interesting polling by YouGov last week had a massive 91pc of LibDem voters drawn to a closer relationship with the EU short of full membership or CU or SM. It even had most RUK potential voters supporting the same. It seems to me that defence is the area where we need the most urgency in aligning with Europe. It was disappointing that SirEd ignored this to concentrate on tax cuts.
“I firmly believe that silence on Brexit is what lost Labour the May 2024 elections.”
Presumably you mean the May 2026 elections?
Only a Lib Dem could think this! 🙂
Most would put it down to a series, of very unpopular policies, over two years, from a very unpopular government. In addition there were other difficulties that any government would have struggled with.
Factors that most would place way above Brexit would include: Cutting the winter fuel allowance, high cost of living, inflation, strained public services, Peter Mandelson, Palestine, illegal migration.
Mainly it was the unpopularity of Keir Starmer himself who came across as wooden and technocratic in his approach. There was no clear sense of direction and a complete lack of anything like an inspiring and optimistic narrative.
Let’s not start with a party political infight about who played Remain best. The answer is, nobody.
We framed the debate as being between us – intelligent, cosmopolitan, comfortably-off Remainers, versus them – ignorant working-class bigots. And do you know what those “bigots” chose to do? Gave us a slap in our well-fed faces, and saddled us with Brexit, of course!
So let’s all help Burnham toward rejoining, which means thinking hard about the obstacles. The EU – still smarting after Brexit and in no mood for over-generosity – will want to be quite sure that if they let us back, we will never again seek to leave. There is one obvious weapon they can deploy to achieve that end – The insistence that we join the Euro.
That will be a hard pill for Britain to swallow. I think the best strategy may be: Don’t hold a referendum first. Promise one, as and if negotiation has been successfully completed, and the shape of a rejoin agreement finalised. Promise that if the referendum answers No, that’s the end of it. Promise that if it answers Yes, that is binding for a generation. Hope that makes sense to AB!
@David Allen: The “promises” you suggest would be worthless. The simple fact is that one parliament cannot bind any future parliament — that’s how parliamentary democracy works. So there is no way of stopping anyone from revisiting the question of UK membership of the EU in the future, whichever way a future referendum goes.
We might be able to make an EU referendum legally binding (i.e. a Yes vote would lead automatically to membership; a No vote would lead automatically to formal retraction of the application for membership), but even that could be overridden at any time by another Act of Parliament.
So please, NO promises about what a future government may or may not do in relation to the EU in any referendum or election campaign.
Alex Macfie: In principle, of course you are right. However, the EU will be unlikely to give us the time of day unless we find a way to make a Yes vote effectively binding for a generation. Insisting the UK adopts the Euro is one option. A clever wheeze might also be for the EU to demand we store half our gold reserves in Brussels, to be repatriated in 20 years time provided the UK has not by then left the EU again. If we don’t like that idea, we may be forced to think of a better option that satisfies the EU’s reasonable demand for guaranteed stability.
Of course, these ideas will not make it easier to win a referendum! But, what do we actually want? Do we want to rejoin in 2030, knowing that the Right might very well pull us out again in 2040? I think not.
So, I think our least bad option would be to agree terms that just can’t readily be overturned by any future government.
@David Allen do we have any gold reserves left? I thought that Gordon Brown sold them all at the bottom of the market? 🙂
He sold so many that he caused a shift in the price of gold in a downwards direction! The holding was about 715 tonnes until the Treasury auctioned roughly 395 tonnes between 1999 and 2002 and it has been static ever since. Value at today’s prices would be around £40bn so not that much actually.
” A clever wheeze might also be for the EU to demand we store half our gold reserves in Brussels, to be repatriated in 20 years time provided the UK has not by then left the EU again.”
Good luck with getting anyone to vote for that in a referendum
The easiest way to demonstrate stability around joining the EU would be to get through the ~ten/twenty year accession process without any UK government pulling us out of it again. All they need to do is not fast-track us and see if it falls apart on its own.
If we can manage ten years and the inevitable changes of government in that time without any of them deciding to withdraw the application, and get it to the point of being approved, they can probably at that point be reasonably confident of future stability. If we can’t, no big deal for them, they’ve got lots of applications which aren’t moving very fast.
I’m not convinced as regards to Labours drubbing in Mays local elections were due to Brexit ! Also the economic benefits look a little exaggerated given the performance of the big three economies in the EU. Under the Dublin agreement the UK was a net recipient – you only need to look at Ireland returns requests to see that cooperation in action !
The ONLY reason that Cameron agreed to a referendum was because of his fear of further alienating his party’s traditionalist and Eurosceptic right wing. His coalition with this party had already forced a dilution of what the right believed were ‘traditional Conservative values’..
He just gave in to the bullies hoping that would save his skin; such actions are seen, by bullies, as weakness not strength….
“The easiest way to demonstrate stability around joining the EU would be to get through the ~ten/twenty year accession process without any UK government pulling us out of it again. All they need to do is not fast-track us and see if it falls apart on its own.”
I fear that if we were placed on hold in an accession process for twenty years, then long before that time was up, not only the Brexiters but also the Remainers and also our EU interlocutors would have given up in frustration. Not to go all jingoist, but, we’re not another Montenegro. Our defence and economic relationships with the EU countries need to evolve, much faster than in 20 years, to meet pressing needs both in the EU and the UK.
The EU also can’t risk “in by 2030, out again in 2040”. So we must either find a way to guarantee that won’t happen, or just give up on the “rejoin” idea. If you aren’t sold on the “gold reserves” idea, please think of something better!
@David Allen
Given that we haven’t drifted that far out of regulatory alignment we could probably do it in 5-10 rather than 10-20, but that’s still a “needs to survive two changes of government” timescale which should be enough to be convincing.
Other alternatives would be the Conservative party switching back to being pro-European, or the long-hoped-for replacement of it as the British Centre Right Party by the Lib Dems actually working.
(Ultimately it needs more than a bare majority of the British public to be convinced it’s a good idea, and we’re probably not there yet looking at Con+Ref+RB combined polling)
“the long-hoped-for replacement of (the Conservative Party) as the British Centre Right Party by the Lib Dems”
Hoped for by whom, pray?
Hoped for by those who would like to undermine Burnham, scupper reforms to social care / the electoral system / action against climate change, cut taxes, and let public services go hang?
And to what end? In what way would the Lib Dems replacing the Tories on the Right improve anything? Pre Cameron, one might have said getting rid of anti-gay prejudice, but the Tories have largely done that for themselves now. So, in what ways might a Cleggite centre-right party actually differ usefully from Badenoch?
As someone who first joined the Liberal Party way back in 1961, I have to say, “well said”, David Allen. If the Lib Dems give up on being .a radical reforming party that appeals to all parts of the UK ……… of which there are a number of warning signs ……. then they are nothing.
The recent political events in France have come at an unfortunate time for those involved in a renewed push for the UK to rejoin the EU.
France has been in increasing economic trouble for several years now. There is a French Presidential election due in April next year and it looks quite possible that the final choice of candidates will be between Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the radical left and Marine le Pen on the right.
This will be causing the EU ruling class some concern to say the least!
There is some concern that France is too big to bail out. Trouble on the streets has caused investors to be even more jittery than usual and depress French bond prices. It isn’t too big, though. The ECB could do it but there will be lots of pressure for them to refuse. This would likely force the French out of the euro system. The danger will inevitably create pressure in the opposite direction. My guess is that the PTB in the EU will be forced to acquiesce to save the euro.
This will of course be a price, which will come at a huge cost to the French people. There will be more austerity and more neoliberalism prescribed as a cure for an illness caused by austerity and neoliberalism.