The majority of Britons agree with Andy Burnham that the country took a wrong turn by leaving the European Union, but they are split over his belief that Margaret Thatcher’s premiership set the country on the wrong path.
Addressing the House of Commons for the first time as prime minister on Tuesday, the former mayor of Greater Manchester took aim at deindustrialisation and privatisation of the 1980s, and the impact of austerity and Brexit on regions of the UK outside of England’s South East and London.
He listed the “series of wrong turns” the UK has made since over the past 40s years and warned that Brexit had embedded the problems in the last decade.
Mr Burnham told MPs: “From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised.”

“The country deindustrialised. Austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this, and then Brexit, compounding the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.”
According to new polling from YouGov, 55 per cent of British people agree with the prime minister that Brexit was a wrong turn, with 21 per cent disagreeing. 11 per cent said neither and 13 per cent said they did not know.
Among Labour voters at the 2024 general election, 78 per cent believed it to be a wrong turn, while 59 per cent of Reform voters claimed it was a right turn.
The Makerfield MP’s comments were welcomed by pro-EU campaigners just days after *The Independent* revealed the £11.7bn a year loss in exports Brexit has caused for British business as well as a survey showing 98.2 per cent of businesses want the UK to rejoin the single market.
Ya think? It was clearly wrong at the time if anyone cared to read facts instead of slogans on busses.
Because majority of britons have lived here for the last decade and have seen how much shitter things have gone.
The Dublin agreement going by itself has refined our national discussion on immigrations.
Most of the 52% seem never to have admitted this. Glad to see some are finally doing so.
We wont stop there, we will make sure we mess up more and keep blaming people we elect 🤡
At least part of that is cohort replacement.
Pro-EU voters have aged into the electorate, while some of the pro-brexit crowd have died off.
I think while there will be more cooperation with Europe I don’t see us rejoining in my life time though
Honestly how much do you get paid for all these incessant posts
In reality, we have problems that are nothing to do with Brexit for which Brexit will be blamed.
I’m fine with this, to be honest.
At this point, can’t we just hold another referendum then? It’s been 10 years. Surely enough time has passed to even start discussing it? Even if it takes until 2031, the ball could start rolling.
And if you asked those people “on what basis” they would raise issues that have nothing to do with being out of the EU
A clear mistake. Which many of us knew at the time. And it’s not like we got lucky with a guess – the data and reasoning was there at the time.
I think we need to release the evidence that Brexit was funded by a linked American and Russian regime to weaken Europe. The plan is very clearly in both Nations interests. The US weaken the Euro which is threat to the Dollars reserve currency status. Russia have a weakened Europe and NATO in order to invade Ukraine and ex Soviet territories.
Europe and the U.K. should openly admit this has happened and not be embarrassed by it. Then reform the relationship, better and stronger than before.
It was not Brexit, but the lack of foresight and missed planning afterwards!
If you think we would be in a better position either way then I have a bridge to sell you
What’s all this Majority all the time? Who says so?
Brexit isn’t to be blamed, it’s the useless politicians that are the problems
as a reminder Farage & Aaron Banks orchestrated it via Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, on behalf of Putin
Why is only one major political party talking openly about rejoining the EU as soon as possible?
Worth remembering that the majority of polls ahead of the referendum also said that people massively favoured remain.
We all know it. A large portion of leave voters are also dead by now.
Do they ? Only the underthinkers there are 208 countries in the world to trade with not just France and an ailing Germany in a below par EU
It was good for the Union tho. A lot of progress has been made without Britain constantly holding everything back.
Basically half of us who voted believed that at the time, and a fair portion of the public (in a vote that was “retain the status quo or change”) didn’t turn up to vote, which I would argue is a vote for the status quo.
Only a distraction. He should rather focus on things he can fix in the UK.
In less obvious news: You need air to live and fire burns.
Of course it was a wrong turn and we need to correct the course now by rejoining asap.
Brexit is a red herring – most European countries have similar problems EU or not
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Too little is said about the fact we ignored all the sensible guardrails and protections used with referendums because it was ‘advisory’ and then, once they’d got the result they wanted, codified it into law.
It’s like saying ‘We don’t have to write inside the lines, it’s only in pencil”, then going over it with a fat, black marker pen.
Same polls that said majority of Britain were going to vote remain, easy win 🥴
Whining about brexit won’t fix the economy. The UK spends more on debt interest then the MoD & Home Office combined, the last time the UK had a budget surplus was in 2001.
Rejoining the EU won’t solve the issues.
Vast majority of people don’t care about it either way.
It wasn’t about what was best, it was all about what people wanted. Quantifying it in terms of “we are worse off” doesn’t matter to somebody who isn’t thinking in those terms.
I would also say some of the “Brexit effects” are overblown, all of Europe is struggling more now than they were 10 years ago.
Only morons or racists would think otherwise – as this comment section proves nicely
Rather *interesting* that the majority of ‘nuh-uh!’ comments defending brexit in this thread are from our new adjective-noun-number friends.
Similar language as well.
I’m most certainly one of them who agrees with Burnham on that issue!
It was established right after the vote that there were plenty enough people in the 4% higher total that Leave received who only voted Brexit as an FU to the establishment, who didn’t think it would happen and had no concrete idea of what they wanted out of it, and that’s not to mention the amount of people who supported staying in the EU but didn’t bother to vote because they assumed Remain would easily win. This referendum result was just the sort of aberration you get from people being disillusioned and disengaged from politics, it was never representative of the popular will, and should never have been carried out.
In other breaking news, the Pope is Catholic and bears poop in the woods
37 comments
The majority of Britons agree with Andy Burnham that the country took a wrong turn by leaving the European Union, but they are split over his belief that Margaret Thatcher’s premiership set the country on the wrong path.
Addressing the House of Commons for the first time as prime minister on Tuesday, the former mayor of Greater Manchester took aim at deindustrialisation and privatisation of the 1980s, and the impact of austerity and Brexit on regions of the UK outside of England’s South East and London.
He listed the “series of wrong turns” the UK has made since over the past 40s years and warned that Brexit had embedded the problems in the last decade.
Mr Burnham told MPs: “From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns. Political power was centralised, economic power privatised.”

“The country deindustrialised. Austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this, and then Brexit, compounding the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.”
According to new polling from YouGov, 55 per cent of British people agree with the prime minister that Brexit was a wrong turn, with 21 per cent disagreeing. 11 per cent said neither and 13 per cent said they did not know.
Among Labour voters at the 2024 general election, 78 per cent believed it to be a wrong turn, while 59 per cent of Reform voters claimed it was a right turn.
The Makerfield MP’s comments were welcomed by pro-EU campaigners just days after *The Independent* revealed the £11.7bn a year loss in exports Brexit has caused for British business as well as a survey showing 98.2 per cent of businesses want the UK to rejoin the single market.
Ya think? It was clearly wrong at the time if anyone cared to read facts instead of slogans on busses.
Because majority of britons have lived here for the last decade and have seen how much shitter things have gone.
The Dublin agreement going by itself has refined our national discussion on immigrations.
Most of the 52% seem never to have admitted this. Glad to see some are finally doing so.
We wont stop there, we will make sure we mess up more and keep blaming people we elect 🤡
At least part of that is cohort replacement.
Pro-EU voters have aged into the electorate, while some of the pro-brexit crowd have died off.
I think while there will be more cooperation with Europe I don’t see us rejoining in my life time though
Honestly how much do you get paid for all these incessant posts
In reality, we have problems that are nothing to do with Brexit for which Brexit will be blamed.
I’m fine with this, to be honest.
At this point, can’t we just hold another referendum then? It’s been 10 years. Surely enough time has passed to even start discussing it? Even if it takes until 2031, the ball could start rolling.
And if you asked those people “on what basis” they would raise issues that have nothing to do with being out of the EU
A clear mistake. Which many of us knew at the time. And it’s not like we got lucky with a guess – the data and reasoning was there at the time.
I think we need to release the evidence that Brexit was funded by a linked American and Russian regime to weaken Europe. The plan is very clearly in both Nations interests. The US weaken the Euro which is threat to the Dollars reserve currency status. Russia have a weakened Europe and NATO in order to invade Ukraine and ex Soviet territories.
Europe and the U.K. should openly admit this has happened and not be embarrassed by it. Then reform the relationship, better and stronger than before.
It was not Brexit, but the lack of foresight and missed planning afterwards!
If you think we would be in a better position either way then I have a bridge to sell you
What’s all this Majority all the time? Who says so?
Brexit isn’t to be blamed, it’s the useless politicians that are the problems
as a reminder Farage & Aaron Banks orchestrated it via Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, on behalf of Putin
Why is only one major political party talking openly about rejoining the EU as soon as possible?
Worth remembering that the majority of polls ahead of the referendum also said that people massively favoured remain.
We all know it. A large portion of leave voters are also dead by now.
Do they ? Only the underthinkers there are 208 countries in the world to trade with not just France and an ailing Germany in a below par EU
It was good for the Union tho. A lot of progress has been made without Britain constantly holding everything back.
Basically half of us who voted believed that at the time, and a fair portion of the public (in a vote that was “retain the status quo or change”) didn’t turn up to vote, which I would argue is a vote for the status quo.
Only a distraction. He should rather focus on things he can fix in the UK.
In less obvious news: You need air to live and fire burns.
Of course it was a wrong turn and we need to correct the course now by rejoining asap.
Brexit is a red herring – most European countries have similar problems EU or not
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Too little is said about the fact we ignored all the sensible guardrails and protections used with referendums because it was ‘advisory’ and then, once they’d got the result they wanted, codified it into law.
It’s like saying ‘We don’t have to write inside the lines, it’s only in pencil”, then going over it with a fat, black marker pen.
Same polls that said majority of Britain were going to vote remain, easy win 🥴
Whining about brexit won’t fix the economy. The UK spends more on debt interest then the MoD & Home Office combined, the last time the UK had a budget surplus was in 2001.
Rejoining the EU won’t solve the issues.
Vast majority of people don’t care about it either way.
It wasn’t about what was best, it was all about what people wanted. Quantifying it in terms of “we are worse off” doesn’t matter to somebody who isn’t thinking in those terms.
I would also say some of the “Brexit effects” are overblown, all of Europe is struggling more now than they were 10 years ago.
Only morons or racists would think otherwise – as this comment section proves nicely
Rather *interesting* that the majority of ‘nuh-uh!’ comments defending brexit in this thread are from our new adjective-noun-number friends.
Similar language as well.
I’m most certainly one of them who agrees with Burnham on that issue!
It was established right after the vote that there were plenty enough people in the 4% higher total that Leave received who only voted Brexit as an FU to the establishment, who didn’t think it would happen and had no concrete idea of what they wanted out of it, and that’s not to mention the amount of people who supported staying in the EU but didn’t bother to vote because they assumed Remain would easily win. This referendum result was just the sort of aberration you get from people being disillusioned and disengaged from politics, it was never representative of the popular will, and should never have been carried out.
In other breaking news, the Pope is Catholic and bears poop in the woods