{"id":460846,"date":"2025-09-29T16:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/460846\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:25:15","slug":"brexit-andy-burnham-says-he-hopes-britain-rejoins-eu-as-he-hits-back-at-reeves-and-starmer-on-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/460846\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit: Andy Burnham says he hopes Britain rejoins EU as he hits back at Reeves and Starmer on the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Andy Burnham<\/a> has said he wants to see the UK rejoin the EU in his lifetime as he hit back at Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer\u2019s attempt to compare him to Liz Truss<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Greater Manchester<\/a> mayor also urged his party to \u201ccall out\u201d the financial \u201cdisaster\u201d of Britain\u2019s departure from the bloc, as he insisted he would not be “hopeless” on the economy as prime minister.<\/p>\n

As speculation over his leadership ambitions erupted last week, Keir Starmer<\/a> seized on Mr Burnham\u2019s claim the UK should no longer be in hock to the bond markets to link him to Ms Truss and her disastrous mini-Budget.<\/p>\n

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open image in gallery<\/p>\n

(AP)<\/p>\n

Saying he was not going to comment on the mayor, he added: “It was three years ago this week that we had the Liz Truss<\/a> experiment where she abandoned fiscal rules, in her case for tax cuts, and the result was a disaster for working people.<\/p>\n

“The same would be true if you abandoned fiscal rules in favour of spending, and I’m not prepared to ever have that inflicted on working people again.”<\/p>\n

On Monday, Mr Burnham told a fringe event at Labour<\/a>\u2019s conference in Liverpool that the party leadership should \u201ccall out\u201d the disastrous effects of Brexit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think you call out what has put the country in this position,\u201d he said. \u201cThe growth is not there as it once was.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cLong term, I’m going to be honest, I’m going to say it… I hope in my lifetime I see this country rejoin.”<\/p>\n

He also criticised Sir Keir\u2019s flagship policy announcement going into this conference \u2013 compulsory digital IDs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In a quickfire round of questions, he was asked whether he backed digital ID and said: “Not now.”<\/p>\n

He also called on Labour<\/a> to cut rail fares, saying it was the \u201cnext stage\u2026 they need to go on to\u201d adding that the cost of travelling by train was \u201cway too high\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

(AP)<\/p>\n

And he refused to rule out a leadership challenge, as No 10 even as he tried to play down speculation about his ambitions. <\/p>\n

Despite saying he would have to be \u2018wrenched\u2019 out of Manchester, he added: \u201cI can\u2019t predict the future.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cYou would have to wrench me out of the place, I\u2019m so committed to what we are doing there\u201d. He insisted that the only thing he had launched at the conference was a debate about the direction of the party, but also suggested that if he was prime minister he would stick to \u201cfiscal rules\u201d, just not the same ones as Rachel Reeves. <\/p>\n

He also said he would “reject entirely” the suggestion that he is “hopeless” on the economy after both Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves compared him to Liz Truss<\/a>, after he said the UK should be less in \u201chock\u201d to the bond markets.<\/p>\n

“I reject entirely this idea that I’m sort of hopeless and I’ve no idea about how to make it add up. I’m doing it every day in Greater Manchester. No-one ever says Greater Manchester is run in a financially imprudent way.”<\/p>\n

On the economy he said “we overtax people’s work and we undertax wealth and assets” and should change that, starting at the Budget. <\/p>\n

The Greater Manchester Mayor said Rachel Reeves would not be able to do it all in the Budget but should “start a process” towards “getting that balance a bit more even”.<\/p>\n

He also suggested reform of land value taxation and council tax, adding: \u201cWe\u2019ve not looked at council tax since 1991. House prices are unrecognisable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-460846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115288521244268325","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460846","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=460846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}