{"id":45291,"date":"2026-05-17T14:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T14:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/45291\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T14:20:09","slug":"hopeful-next-labour-leader-commits-to-british-eu-membership-%e2%94%81-the-european-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/45291\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopeful Next Labour Leader Commits to British EU Membership \u2501 The European Conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the increasingly likely replacement<\/a> of British prime minister Keir Starmer as the leader of the Labour Party, calls from the likely candidates to rejoin the European Union are growing stronger.<\/p>\n

Such sentiments were most clearly expressed by former health secretary Wes Streeting, who resigned from cabinet to announce his candidacy for the top job. Without a general election, the next Labour leader would automatically become PM.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, May 16th while announcing his candidature, Streeting told<\/a> a London audience that \u201cleaving the European Union was a catastrophic mistake.\u201d The claim echoes the policy advice of\u00a0 Labour-friendly think tank The Resolution Foundation, which proposes<\/a> negotiating a UK return to the single market for EU goods.<\/p>\n

Streeting\u2014seen as close to the \u201cBlairite\u201d wing of the Labour Party and, damagingly, to disgraced \u2018New Labour\u2019 functionary Peter Mandelson<\/a>\u2014may not yet have the support of Labour MPs needed to trigger a leadership contest. Other prospective challengers to Starmer could include his former deputy, Angela Rayner, and energy secretary Ed Miliband<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The prospective contest is further complicated by the projected return to parliament of Andy Burnham<\/a>, currently Mayor of Greater Manchester, who would also scrap<\/a> Brexit. Labour rules require that leadership challengers are sitting MPs, meaning that Burnham would need to secure candidate selection by a parliamentary constituency\u2019s Labour party and then win a seat in parliament at a by-election. At present, Burnham has met neither of these criteria but to facilitate his candidacy an MP named Josh Simons has announced he will vacate a previously safe Labour seat in Makerfield, part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In response to Streeting\u2019s comment, Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake seized, saying \u201cwhilst Labour relitigate Brexit, Britain is not being governed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollinrake called the remarks \u201cyet another distraction \u2026 at a time when families and businesses want the government focused on the cost of living, the economy, public services and Britain\u2019s defence\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the increasingly likely replacement of British prime minister Keir Starmer as the leader of the Labour Party,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-45291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-european-union"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}