LLANDUDNO (The Thursday Times) — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Saturday that the United Kingdom has “lost more than we’ve gained” in the decade since it voted to leave the European Union, days before he travels to Brussels to seek closer ties with the bloc.
“I think the Conservatives gave Britain a harsher and harder Brexit than people thought they were getting when they voted in 2016, because they burned all of our bridges in the aftermath, with the EU,” Burnham told the Welsh Labour conference in Llandudno.
He said a new agreement on food and farming that he hopes to reach at a UK-EU summit next week would “get food prices down” and help exporters such as Welsh farmers and shellfish producers. “We need to be willing to take difficult decisions to get the cost of living down,” he said.
Summit in Brussels on Friday
Burnham, who became prime minister in July, is due to meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa in Brussels on 20 November. Deals on food and drink standards, emissions trading, and a youth mobility scheme could be signed there.
The government says the agreements could add 0.4% to the economy, or about £17 billion, and Burnham has said he will “explore options” for a different long-term relationship with the EU.
He has recently said he is open to rejoining the single market or the customs union, or to going “all the way” and rejoining the EU. On Saturday he struck a more careful note. He said he would respect Labour’s manifesto “red lines”, which rule out returning to the single market, the customs union, or free movement, as well as the 2016 referendum result, and that voters would be “the boss” of any bigger change.
No cherry-picking, says Barnier
Senior EU figures have warned that Britain will have to pay for access to the programmes it wants to rejoin. Michel Barnier, the bloc’s former Brexit negotiator, said last week that the UK could not rejoin the single market “à la carte”. “There is no cherry-picking,” he said.
Burnham’s visit to Llandudno was his first Welsh Labour conference since the party lost power in Wales in May, ending 27 years in government. Plaid Cymru now runs the Welsh government. He told members the party may have “lost sight of some of the principles that drove devolution in the first place” and promised it would “come back stronger”.
