{"id":1098475,"date":"2026-07-19T09:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1098475\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T09:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:35:17","slug":"boris-fury-over-burnham-plot-to-bring-back-freedom-of-movement-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1098475\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris fury over Burnham ‘plot to bring back freedom of movement’ | Politics | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boris Johnson<\/a> accused Andy Burnham<\/a> of plotting to reverse Brexit by bringing back freedom of movement. The former Conservative Prime Minister said the new Burnham-led Labour government<\/a> would start by claiming it just wanted to make it easier for students to study across Europe, and would then scrap border controls for EU nationals entirely.<\/p>\n

He told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: \u201cI\u2019m not actually anti-immigrants. I\u2019m, you know, I think I\u2019m lucky that, you know, my own family was allowed to immigrate to this country, all parts of my family years ago. But I think, you know, what people want to see is full legal democratic accountability. And that\u2019s what they have now got.”<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so when, Andy Burnham says he wants to go closer to the European Union<\/a> or whatever, whatever he\u2019s saying when he says he wants to, have a new relationship or a reset, what they want is a return to free movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019ll start with students and all that nonsense, and then it\u2019ll become absolutely unstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keir Starmer<\/a> had been planning a summer summit with EU leaders to press ahead with his planned \u201creset\u201d with Brussels. This has been postponed because of Sir Keir\u2019s resignation but Andy Burnham, who officially becomes Prime Minister Monday, is to press ahead with it later in the year.<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham has also said he wants to go further in building even closer links with the EU than his predecessor.<\/p>\n

On the agenda is a \u201cyouth mobility scheme\u201d making it easier for young people from the EU to live and work in the UK without restrictions, with the same right for British young people who want to live in the EU.<\/p>\n

Mr Johnson also said Britain needs to insist immigrants adopt our culture, as he slammed immigration failures that he suggested allowed the grooming scandal.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cOver decades we\u2019ve been far too limp wristed in insisting the people conform to our ideals, norms of our society … the grooming gangs, all this sort of stuff. You know, these we haven\u2019t been tough enough in insisting on basic British norms of behaviour … it is totally unacceptable that you should have populations of women, who don\u2019t speak English\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson accused Andy Burnham of plotting to reverse Brexit by bringing back freedom of movement. The former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1098476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5226],"tags":[8916,5109,802,43667,748,2000,299,5187,1699,26786,4884,11508,16,15],"class_list":["post-1098475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","tag-andy-burnham","tag-boris-johnson","tag-brexit","tag-brexit-reversal","tag-britain","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-freedom-of-movement","tag-great-britain","tag-politics-section","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116945965947260562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1098476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}