Chris Ward, who advised Starmer on the EU red lines and then served as a Cabinet Office minister in that ministry, has written in the Guardian that the red lines were only an electoral device for 2024:
“The red lines we drew up in the aftermath of the Labour leadership contest in 2020 – ruling out rejoining the EU, the single market, the customs union or restoring freedom of movement – were designed precisely to close down the debate and to narrow the target that Brexit had become for Labour.
They enabled us to fight the 2024 election on a manifesto that was both pro-EU, by advocating a closer relationship, but also clearly stopping short of anything that looked like rejoining the bloc or relitigating the 2016 referendum. Schrödinger’s Brexit.”
He added they should be scrapped: “By the next general election, however, those red lines will have served their purpose.” Apart from attacking the US for being unreliable Ward says the main argument hasn’t changed since 2016:
“The major reason for this is not, in my view, an economic one. The economic case for rejoining either the EU or the single market (I personally have never understood the argument for the latter without the former) is basically the same as it was in 2016.”
He added: “we need to be clear as to why now is the right time to reopen the Brexit debate, what we are seeking, and why it is so important to our national interest.” So Burnham is re-opening the debate, then?
Does anyone remember Angela Rayner claiming Labour would never seek to reverse Brexit in 2024? The reverse Brexit Labour outriders are working overtime…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”