Downing Street tests public appetite for UK EU rejoin as Burnham signals openness

Inside Downing Street, a quiet machinery has begun turning. Senior officials are making calls to thinktanks and pollsters, asking a question that would have been unthinkable just months ago: what would the British public think if Labour promised to rejoin the European Union? The machinery is methodical. It is also deliberate. There is momentum, according to those tracking the government's moves, toward including such a pledge in the party's next election manifesto.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has already moved the conversation forward in public. At Labour's conference this week, he announced a formal review of Britain's relationship with Europe—and crucially, he said that review would include the option of rejoining entirely. This marks a sharp break from his predecessor Keir Starmer, who ruled out that possibility. On Tuesday, Burnham told delegates that Brexit had caused more harm than good and that he would lay out the different options available to the country. On Wednesday, he went further. Speaking to the BBC, he outlined a spectrum: staying as things are, pursuing a customs union along lines George Osborne had suggested, adopting a single market approach the Liberal Democrats had championed, or going all the way back in. "We could go all the way," he said. The words landed.

The response split immediately along predictable lines. Pro-EU campaigners celebrated. The Best for Britain campaign released a YouGov poll suggesting Labour could more than double its parliamentary seats if it entered the next election on a rejoin platform. The Tony Blair Institute had already published research arguing that Burnham should pursue talks with Brussels, though with conditions attached—the EU would need to relax regulations in energy and technology sectors. The Institute for Public Policy Research is preparing its own paper calling for rejoin. Think Labour has been examining the practical mechanics of how difficult such a move would actually be. The intellectual groundwork is being laid.

Conservatives reacted with alarm. Alex Burghart, the Conservative deputy leader, accused Labour of scapegoating a democratic vote from over a decade ago rather than owning the consequences of its own economic decisions. Inside government, there was calculation about risk. Some officials wanted Burnham to go further in his conference speech—to promise that Labour would begin work on rejoining after the next election, not merely review the options. That proposal was rejected. The party was already bracing for a fight over pensions policy and did not want to hand Nigel Farage ammunition while he faced scrutiny over party donations. No 10 later insisted the prime minister had never seriously considered making such a commitment and that it had not appeared in any draft of the speech.

Yet the political calculus appears to be shifting. Polling that government officials have seen suggests that promising to rejoin does little to boost support for Farage's Reform UK. When Farage responded to Burnham's speech, he attacked the government over pensions, not Europe. That silence—or at least that choice of target—may have emboldened those in Downing Street who see reopening the EU question as politically survivable, even advantageous.

Internationally, the response has been notably warm. Emmanuel Macron, France's president, welcomed Burnham's comments at a press conference in Madrid on Wednesday. "Welcome back," he said in English, then switched to French to express his view that the prime minister's openness to all options was good news for both Britain and Europe. An EU spokesperson offered cautious encouragement, saying the bloc remained open to engaging on whatever options the UK government might propose. A second layer of diplomatic signal came through EU officials who told The Guardian there was "a good feeling" about Burnham's willingness to look at all options and seek consensus—something Brussels had wanted to see from London for some time.

The timing matters. Burnham's team has also been pressing the EU on a separate but related issue: the bloc's Made in Europe legislation, which threatens to exclude British goods from certain European supply chains. No 10 has been seeking to have British manufacturers classified as European for those purposes, even threatening to delay a UK-EU summit until signals came that London might get accommodation. Since the prime minister's speech, however, talk has shifted toward holding that summit on November 20. One EU diplomat confirmed that Brussels wanted to see Starmer's old reset agenda concluded before any conversation about what one diplomat called "a real reset" could begin. The machinery, in other words, is not just testing public appetite. It is also preparing the ground diplomatically, should the political decision be made to move forward.