The race to challenge Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has intensified as two prominent contenders have expressed their intentions to reverse the Brexit decision and rejoin the European Union.
Wes Streeting, the former Health Secretary who recently stepped down from Starmer’s cabinet, has formally announced his campaign to unseat the Prime Minister. If successful, Streeting has pledged to lead the UK back into the EU.
Streeting described Brexit as a “catastrophic mistake” in an interview with The Times of London. He criticized the Vote Leave campaign for its unrealistic vision of a global free trade utopia, likening it to a bygone era of British colonial power. He emphasized the necessity of rebuilding a strong relationship with the EU, asserting, “Britain’s future lies with Europe, and ultimately, within the European Union once more.”
Streeting’s stance marks a clear departure from the existing government’s position. While Prime Minister Starmer had opposed Brexit, he has maintained that the outcome of the 2016 referendum should be respected.
Streeting’s perspective on rejoining the EU aligns closely with that of his main rival, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who also aims to challenge Starmer for the leadership.
However, Streeting’s rejoin position is quite similar to his main rival in seeking to tear the top job away from Starmer, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
Quoted by the Westminster gossip site Guido Fawkes from a Labour Conference last year, Burnham said: I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime… I believe in the unions of all kinds. The union of the UK. The European Union, and the benefits it brought this country. Trade unions… People prosper more when they’re part of unions. That’s my belief, and I’ll say it clearly.”
While rejoining the European Union currently enjoys majority support in Britain, it remains to be seen how pushing for the largest democratic exercise in British history to be overturned would go down in the working-class areas of the country that Labour has been bleeding support from to Brexit champion Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
Indeed, according to veteran Times journalist, Steven Swinford, Reform plans to make the Makerfield by-election — which was sparked by Burnham’s plot to return to parliament to take down Starmer — a referendum on rejoining the EU, which the party plans to argue will only result in more mass migration, and that rejoiners like Burnham would open Britain’s borders to half a billion people.
Such a message is likely to resonate in Makerfield, where nearly two-thirds of voters backed Brexit in 2016.
The prospect of a Brexit betrayal by a Labour government elected on the promise to respect the referendum has sparked widespread outrage.
Reform UK politician Matt Goodwin said: “They really don’t care about you. They don’t want to fix the borders. They don’t want to end mass uncontrolled immigration. They don’t want to respect your democratic vote for Brexit. And they certainly don’t want to stop treating you like second-class citizens in your own country. Vote Reform.”
Meanwhile, at the Freedom Association conference in London next week, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith is expected to say that the Labour Party does not have an electoral mandate to overturn Brexit.
In comments released ahead of the event, Labour peer and founder of Blue Labour, David Jones, said that the Labour leadership battle is an “ominous” sign for Brexit. However, Jones said that even Starmer — who has sought greater “alignment” with Brussels — would “sell Brexit out in a stroke if he thought it would save his skin.”
“As for the rest of this third-rate field, they all think that the EU flag is the one for the sell-out Left to rally round as they scramble to cling onto power. One way or another, they want to flirt with or actively rejoin such EU shibboleths as the single market and the customs union – while not admitting that the British taxpayer will have to fork out billions for these job-destroying ‘privileges’,” the Labour peer said.
