Burnham wants UK to rejoin EU in his lifetime

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he hopes the United Kingdom will rejoin the European Union in his lifetime, while ruling out changes to the relationship during the current Parliament and saying any move must not get ahead of public opinion. In an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on October 26, Burnham said the public must decide the country’s future relationship with the bloc. He said he did not consider himself destined to take Britain back into the EU, but argued that the existing post-Brexit arrangements were not good enough and that he would lead a discussion on how to improve them. Burnham said he would respect the red lines in Labour’s 2024 manifesto during this Parliament. Those commitments rule out rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union. He also said he was not proposing changes now, and rejected suggestions that an early general election was imminent. The prime minister linked closer ties with Europe to immigration, arguing that the UK’s inability to return people to Europe in the same way as before Brexit had contributed to the small-boats crisis. That explanation is disputed. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told a parliamentary...