Andy Burnham has set out a UK household living standards forecast debate by saying the government will explore options for the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU after the 20 November UK-EU summit. He said the public will then be shown the merits and drawbacks of the choices, with any fundamental change left to the next parliament.
Burnham said he had written to ministers yesterday because he did not want them to advocate for specific options or predict how the process would end. He also said there was already a clear approach for the summit, which is three weeks away, and that the government had an agreed mandate for it.
Andy Burnham letter to ministers
Burnham’s letter went further than a general call for discipline. He wrote that ministers should not argue for one option over another, or state what they thought the outcome would be, while the government worked through its approach to Europe. Patrick Butler is the social policy editor named on the piece carrying those details.
He told ministers that the Brexit deal negotiated by the Conservative government was not good enough for Britain, saying it had led to a decade of low growth, more red tape for businesses and weaker control over immigration. He added that it was a harder Brexit than had been promised at the EU referendum.
20 November UK-EU summit
Burnham said the government wanted to use the UK-EU summit on 20 November to lock in deals on food and drink, emissions trading and a youth mobility scheme. He said both the UK and the EU had changed considerably in the 10 years since the Brexit vote, and that any future relationship had to rest on practical arrangements that worked for both sides.
In the period after the summit, he said government policy would be to explore options for the long-term relationship with the EU for consideration in the next parliament. At the end of that process, he said, the government would set out the respective merits and drawbacks of the various options to the country.
Next parliament EU debate
That timetable leaves the current step focused on the summit and the next step focused on the political choice. Burnham said any fundamental change to the direction of the relationship would be for the public to decide and a matter for the next parliament, not the one now sitting.
For readers watching the government’s EU policy, the immediate change is not a final decision but a formal process: ministers have been told to stay aligned, the summit is the near-term test, and the wider argument is being pushed into the next parliament.
