Andy Burnham said he was not proposing the UK rejoining the European Union as he warned against getting stuck in a \u201cpermanent rut\u201d of Brexit arguments.<\/p>\n
Burnham, who hopes to return to Westminster in the Makerfield by-election, said Brexit had been \u201cdamaging\u201d but \u201cthe last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham has previously said he would like to see the UK back in the EU within his lifetime.<\/p>\n
If Mr Burnham returns to the House of Commons he could seek to challenge Sir Keir Starmer, with Brexit likely to be a key issue in any leadership contest.<\/p>\n
But first he has to win the Leave-voting Makerfield seat and he sought to play down the prospect of reversing the 2016 Brexit referendum.<\/p>\n
In a speech at a conference in Leeds he said: \u201cMy view is that Brexit has been damaging, but I also believe the last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments. Britain will be stuck in a permanent rut if we\u2019re just constantly arguing and people are pulling away from each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is time, surely, isn\u2019t it, to bring people back together, to focus on what we\u2019ve got in common, to get the growth coming to all places, so it\u2019s felt there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is what we need in this moment and it\u2019s really important that whatever comes out of this by-election there is a more unifying feeling about the change that we need to work towards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU. I respect the decision that was made at the referendum and it is going to undermine everything I have said about strengthening democracy if we don\u2019t respect that vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a fringe event at the Labour conference in September 2025 he said his \u201clong-term\u201d goal would be to seek to return to the EU.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople prosper more when they\u2019re part of unions,\u201d he told the audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham said he was not proposing the UK rejoining the European Union as he warned against getting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19306,59,57,58,202473,50,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-591803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-andy-burnham","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-makerfield-by-election-2026","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}