Andy Burnham with Emmanuel Macron at 10 Downing Street on 3 September 2026. The prime minister told the BBC on 30 September that rejoining the EU should be among the options Britain considers for its future relationship with the bloc. (File photograph, not from the interview.)

Burnham Says Britain Should Weigh EU Options, Including Rejoining

Andy Burnham has put rejoining the European Union on the table as a genuine option for Britain's future. Speaking to the BBC on Wednesday morning, the prime minister said the country should weigh up the different models for its long-term relationship with Europe and decide which one offered the best way forward. Then he named them: staying as Britain is, a customs union, the single market, or going all the way back into the bloc.

It is the first time since the 2016 referendum that a sitting prime minister has raised rejoin as a live possibility. The remarks came a day after Burnham used his first Labour conference speech as leader to declare that Brexit had done more harm than good.

Key facts

• Who: Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
• What: said Britain should weigh EU options, including rejoining the bloc, in a BBC Radio 4 Today programme interview broadcast on Wednesday morning.
• When: Wednesday 30 September 2026, a day after his Labour conference speech in Liverpool.
• The four options he named: stay as Britain is; a customs union, as proposed by George Osborne; the single market, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats; or rejoining the EU, "go all the way".
• The timetable: Burnham wants the options assessed on "what is doable" and the pros and cons of each, with a UK-EU summit later this year as the first staging post.

What he said

Burnham did not shy away from the question. Asked directly on the Today programme whether he wanted Britain to rejoin, he said he wanted to "look at the options". He acknowledged that he had previously said he wanted Britain back in the EU within his lifetime, before he became prime minister, while adding that it was "not necessarily the case that that is now" his recommendation.

Then he set out the menu, exactly as he framed it:

"We could stay as we are. That's definitely an option, if people think this is the right place to stay," he told the programme. "We could look at what George Osborne has said about a customs union, we could look at what the Liberal Democrats said at their conference about the single market, or we could go all the way."

Pressed further, he said the question could not be left hanging. Britain needed to be clear about where it wanted to go in the next decade. "There are clearly options that need to be considered, and we have to look at what is doable and what would be the pros and cons of each," he said.

The build-up: "more harm than good"

The interview landed the day after Burnham's keynote speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool, his first as leader. He told delegates that Brexit had done "more harm than good" and blamed it for a loss of control over both immigration and the economy, arguing that the current settlement with Brussels was simply not good enough.

The conference speech announced the process: Burnham would use a rescheduled UK-EU summit, expected at the end of November, to lay out "different options" for the long-term relationship. The summit had originally been due in July but was shelved when Keir Starmer stood down and Burnham replaced him that month. He promised delegates he would seek to "find consensus" on a single option to clarify Britain's position, though he offered no detail on how that consensus would be measured. Immigration, he said, would feature on the summit agenda.

What the speech did not do was name rejoin. Wednesday's interview did. That is why the two days amount to an escalation: a general promise of a review has become a specific list of models, with full membership among them.

How far the government is actually going

There is a careful line being walked here. Burnham has said the government will keep to Labour's 2024 manifesto position during this parliament. That manifesto ruled out joining a customs union, re-entering the single market, or allowing the return of freedom of movement. Starmer's red lines, in other words, stay in place for now.

So Wednesday's remarks do not signal an imminent policy change. They signal intent beyond the current parliament. As one analysis put it, the move has teed up a post-election push to reboot the relationship, a decade on from the Brexit referendum. Burnham himself has said he will make the case for a new direction at the next general election, which must be held by mid-2029.

The distinction matters. This is not a government preparing to rejoin. It is a prime minister telling voters, months into his tenure, that rejoining is on the menu for the future.

The opposition's response

The Conservatives wasted no time. Deputy leader Alex Burghart accused Burnham of contradicting his own campaign promises, pointing out that during his Makerfield by-election campaign he had said he did not want to rerun the Brexit debate.

"You cannot trust a word Andy Burnham says," Burghart said. "Just a few weeks ago he said he wanted to move on from the Brexit arguments and now he is dragging Britain back into them by floating the prospect of rejoining the EU."

He added: "Labour cannot pin the blame for their disastrous economic decisions on a vote that happened over a decade ago. While they look backwards, the Conservatives will look forwards." The party also accused the prime minister of trying to "reopen old wounds by restarting the battles of the Brexit years".

Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice accused Burnham of "trying to sneak us back into Brussels via the back door", while his party's wider response echoed the Conservative line: Labour was already dragging Britain toward the EU with its reset.

Why this matters

British politics has operated for nearly a decade on a simple assumption: rejoining the EU was not a position any prime minister could hold. Both major parties treated it as settled. Burnham has broken that consensus, and he has done it from Downing Street.

The politics are delicate. Polling has long suggested a shift in public opinion on Brexit's outcome, but the electoral arithmetic is less forgiving. Seats in the north and midlands that Labour needs to hold voted heavily to leave. Telling them that rejoin is a serious option is a gamble, and the Conservatives and Reform UK clearly intend to make Burnham pay for it.

There is also the question of what Brussels would want. Rejoining is not a decision Britain can make alone, and the terms on offer now would almost certainly differ from the ones Britain left behind in 2020. None of that was addressed in the interview.

What happens next

The immediate test is the November UK-EU summit, where Burnham has promised to set out the options in full. Hamish Falconer, a minister in his team, is leading negotiations with the EU toward food and energy deals designed to bring down prices. Those narrower agreements are expected to be the summit's concrete output.

Watch the reaction in the run-up. The Conservative and Reform attacks will not let up, and Labour's own leave-voting base will be watching closely. If the summit produces consensus on even a modest step, such as a customs arrangement, it will mark the first real movement in the UK-EU relationship since Brexit. If it produces nothing, Burnham will have reopened the country's most divisive argument for no return.

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Sources

• Reuters: Burnham says Britain should weigh EU options, including rejoining bloc, 30 September 2026.
• Press Association: UK PM Andy Burnham not ruling out going "all the way" and rejoining EU, 30 September 2026.
• Politico: UK's Burnham says he'll consider push to rejoin EU, 30 September 2026.
• The Times: Andy Burnham could go "all the way" to rejoining EU, follow live, 30 September 2026.