Burnham was asked on GMB whether he would put Britain back into the EU:
“I’ve said I’m going to be honest and say in my lifetime I would like to see that happen, but I am not going to move ahead of the public. I am not going to dictate in terms of my my own opinions here. You have to make sure the the public the British public are the bosses. We have a decade of experience now looking back at Brexit and I don’t think it has played out as people said it would at the time.
We got a harder Brexit than was proposed in the referendum campaign. It’s weakened our economy. It’s also weakened our control of immigration and that might surprise people because that was the big issue but know the small boats crisis has arisen since and we have a different form of of migration now. However, I’m not proposing rejoining in this parliament. We’re way be way away from from that at this particular moment in time. What I am saying is we need to take some practical steps to make the arrangement work.”
Burnham also said there would not be an election until the European question was appropriately situated for him:
“There is no election coming anytime soon, people may as well put that out of their mind. Britain, in my view, is starting to regain its momentum, its sense of positivity, its direction. I’m trying to give this country a direction and there is no way I can do that without coming back to the relationship with Europe and saying: ‘here are some options on how we can do that.'”
The Brexit election beckons…
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”