Burnham hints at EU return for UK

The United Kingdom's Prime Minister Andy Burnham has opened the door to the country rejoining the European Union sooner, rather than later, after saying that Brexit, the process of leaving the 27-member bloc following a referendum in 2016, had "done more harm than good" and that he did not want to leave the issue of the nation's relationship with its neighbors "hanging".

Burnham made the initial comment about Brexit not working on Tuesday, during his first Labour Party conference speech since taking over as party leader and prime minister in the summer. He followed up on the remark during a BBC interview the next day.

The UK voted in the 2016 referendum by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the EU. The fall-out from that decision was the overwhelmingly dominant issue in British politics until the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, which coincidentally began a matter of weeks after the long, drawn-out process of Brexit was formally signed off.

A decade later, the social and economic consequences of the decision to leave the EU still provoke strong opinions on both sides of the debate and Burnham said he wanted clarity on "where we want Britain to go in the next decade". When pushed specifically on whether he wanted the UK to rejoin, a position he has previously publicly backed, he said he wanted to "look at the options".

"We could stay as we are. That's definitely an option, if people think this is the right place to stay," he said. "We could look at what (former Conservative Party chancellor of the exchequer) George Osborne has said about a customs union, we could look at what the Liberal Democrats said at their conference about the single market, or we could go all the way. So, there are clearly options that need to be considered, and we have to look at what is doable and what would be the pros and cons of each."

Alex Burghart, the Conservative Party's shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, accused Burnham of going back on his word, adding "just a few weeks ago, he said he wanted to move on from the Brexit arguments and now he is dragging Britain back into them by floating the prospect of rejoining the EU… while (Labour) look backwards, the Conservatives will look forwards".

Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, urged Burnham to take bolder action, saying: "Talk is cheap. Burnham must stop with all the 'maybes' and get negotiating that better deal for Britain today."

Writing in The New World newspaper in December 2025, Peter Kellner, founder of the YouGov polling service, said that if a referendum were to be held again, the demographic change — including people who have died since 2016 and newly-eligible voters, plus those who would vote differently — would see the majority decision to leave wiped out.

"The combined impact of demographics and changed minds is to convert a 1.3 million majority for leaving the EU into an 8.1 million majority for rejoining it," he said. "Even the greatest landslide election victories have come nowhere close to this lead in the popular vote."