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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.