Sadiq Khan has urged Andy Burnham to take Britain back into the European Union, arguing Labour should go into the next general election explicitly promising to rejoin.
The Mayor of London said the government should move much faster on Europe during the current parliament by seeking to rejoin both the EU single market and customs union. He then wants Labour to go further at the next election, telling voters it intends to rejoin the EU after that vote, effectively turning the whole contest into a public referendum on reversing Brexit.
That goes significantly further than Burnham’s current position, which seeks a closer relationship with Brussels but hasn’t committed to rejoining either the single market or the EU itself. It also comes only days after former Conservative minister Nick Boles urged Burnham to seek single-market access under a new European arrangement. Khan is now arguing Labour should stop short of nothing in that debate.
‘We must rejoin the EU’
Writing in The Observer, Khan described Brexit as an act of economic self-harm, saying the argument against reversing it had weakened as evidence about the economic consequences piled up. He said Britain should seek to rejoin the customs union and single market during the current parliamentary term. Then, after the next election, he wants full EU membership back on the table: “The government should also say that we would rejoin the EU after the next general election.” He argued this would effectively let voters decide whether Britain should return.
Khan believes support for membership will keep growing before the country next goes to the polls. Recent London polling certainly points that way. A Savanta survey for Queen Mary University of London’s Mile End Institute found around two-thirds of Londoners would vote to rejoin the EU if another referendum were held. Among Londoners aged 18 to 34, support reached 85%.
London voted heavily for Remain in 2016, so those figures shouldn’t be treated as representative of Britain as a whole. But national polling has also repeatedly shown a substantial shift away from the original referendum result.
Khan wants single market return before full membership
Khan’s proposal would unfold in stages. First, Britain seeking renewed membership of both the EU single market and customs union before the next election, already much more ambitious than Burnham’s current approach. Labour’s existing position still rules out returning to the single market or customs union, though ministers are negotiating with Brussels over reducing trade barriers and building a closer economic relationship, including a youth mobility scheme and deeper cooperation on energy, food standards and defence.
Those negotiations haven’t always gone smoothly. The EU and UK remain divided over the size of a proposed youth mobility programme, with Brussels reportedly seeking a scheme covering more than 100,000 participants a year while British officials favour a limit closer to 50,000. Burnham has previously said he hopes Britain will rejoin the EU within his lifetime, but since entering Downing Street he’s stopped short of making reversing Brexit an immediate political objective. Khan wants him to go much further.
‘The debate is settled’
One argument Labour politicians reluctant to discuss rejoining keep making is that Britain shouldn’t reopen the divisions of the 2016 referendum. Khan rejected that outright, saying politicians wouldn’t need to repeat the 2016 arguments because, in his view, the economic evidence has already answered them: “The damage is there for all to see.” He also accused the Leave campaign of making claims that have since been disproved, and argued Brexit is contributing to the economic pressures households are currently feeling.
The political difficulty for Labour is that support for closer ties with Europe doesn’t automatically translate into support for reopening the membership question right now. Burnham built part of his path to Downing Street on appealing beyond Labour’s traditional metropolitan base, and during his campaign in the Leave-voting Makerfield constituency argued Britain could get stuck if politics simply returned to fighting the same Brexit arguments indefinitely. That makes Khan’s proposal a genuinely difficult strategic choice for No 10.
The economic argument moving back to centre stage
This lands as the economic impact of Brexit returns to Westminster. MPs are due to debate its economic consequences next month, while a new House of Commons Library briefing has assembled evidence on trade and growth effects. Economic estimates vary significantly depending on methodology. The Office for Budget Responsibility has previously estimated Brexit will reduce the UK’s long-run productivity by around 4% compared with remaining in the EU. Separate studies have produced larger estimates, research summarised by Euronews recently suggested Britain’s exports to the EU are around 12% to 16% lower as a result of leaving, with some estimates putting the overall economic impact at 4% to 6% of GDP.
Those figures remain disputed by Brexit supporters, who argue such models rely on hypothetical comparisons between the economy Britain has today and what might have happened had it stayed in the EU. The economic argument is nevertheless becoming increasingly central to the push for a closer relationship with Brussels.
Pressure building on Burnham
Khan isn’t the first senior political figure urging Burnham to reconsider Britain’s post-Brexit settlement. Nick Boles recently argued that returning to the single market could hand Labour a decisive electoral advantage over Reform and the Conservatives, though his proposal stopped short of full EU membership. Khan’s doesn’t. That leaves Burnham facing pressure from prominent pro-European voices on two separate fronts, one pushing Britain back into the structures around the single market, the other pushing to reverse Brexit altogether.
So far, the prime minister’s chosen a more cautious path. His government says it wants a deeper and more ambitious relationship with Europe while maintaining Labour’s existing red lines on EU membership, the single market and customs union. Khan’s intervention challenges that directly. Rather than treating Brexit as a settled constitutional question, he wants Labour to put the whole issue back before voters at the next election. If Burnham followed that advice, Britain’s relationship with Europe would once again become one of the defining dividing lines in British politics.
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