No 10 plays down talk of UK joining EU single market after Burnham seems to say referendum would be needed for this
Andy Burnham has created confusion about whether or not he would give the public a referendum on rejoining the EU single market.
In a response to a question from a broadcaster, he appeared to say that a referendum would be needed. But there was some ambiguity as to what he said, and sources are saying that no final decision has been made on this point.
At the Labour conference, Burnham said that he wanted a debate on how Britain can establish a closer relationship with the EU. He would not say whether he expected this to lead to a plan to rejoin fully, or to just rejoin the single market, or another option, but he indicated that the first two options at least would only happen after a general election.
In an interview at the end of Labour’s conference, Burnham hinted that a referendum might not even be necessary for Britain to rejoin – but generally he insisted that any discussion of this matter was premature.
Since conference, Burnham has now firmed up that he does now accept that Britain would need to hold a referendum before rejoining the EU and that a government could not do this solely on the basis of an election manifesto pledge. Burnham said this in the Commons in response to a question from the Tory MP Edward Leigh.
Yesterday Ben Riley-Smith, the Sunday Times’ political editor, published articles based on a series of interviews with Burnham over the past 100 days. He reported:
Burnham … also said that a new referendum would be needed to rejoin the EU, but not necessarily for joining the single market or the customs union.
For Britain to join the single market, it would have to accept EU freedom of movement rules – allowing EU citizens to come to the UK for a job.
Today, asked by a broadcaster if he would allow the UK to “join the EU freedom of movement without a rerendum”, Burnham replied:
No, and I wasn’t saying that yesterday.
I was asked about how things have changed in the 10 years since Brexit. And the truth of the matter is we lost immigration control in the way that we once had.
Burnham seemed to be saying he would not join the single market without a referendum – although he may just have been rejecting the notion that he has already committed to single market membership.
Government sources are briefing that no final decision has been taken on whether joining the single market would require a referendum.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing, asked to clarify the PM’s position, a No 10 spokesperson said:
The prime minister isn’t proposing a return to freedom of movement, or any option.
He is saying that it’s time for us to discuss what kind of long-term relationship with Europe is best for Britain and he is referring to the types of areas that that agreement and long-term future could cover.
He is crucially not leaning either way, and that will be for the British public to decide. And his focus for now is on next month’s summit and the practical arrangements that we hope to make there, which will add billions to the economy.
Key events
Q: [From Serena Barker-Singh from Sky News] How to you respond to Andy Burnham implying people like you lied about the benefits of Brexit?
Farage claims Adam Boulton, the former Sky News political editor, used to say Farage was the only leading person on the leave side who never lied about the potential benefits of Brexit.
I would say to the prime minister the opportunities of Brexit have not been delivered. This was the chance of a great escape from a failing European single market, which in terms of foreign direct investment growth and every other metric you could look at was failing …
We’ve not had anything like the potential that Brexit could have delivered. Was it the right thing to do? Undoubtedly. And what would rejoining be? Utterly moronic.
Q: [From Ben Wright at the BBC] How do you think Brexit freedoms could have been better used. One of the proposals in your plan today (see 12.46pm) is for imperial measures to come back. How will that be good for growth?
Farage claims the Conservatives were never really committed to the degulatory freedom that comes with Brexit.
On imperial measures, Jenrick says having more freedom to use imperial measures might help exports to the US.
Farage and Jenrick are now taking questions.
Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News] Why are you so far down in the polls? You have not even been able to fill this hall. And, to Jenrick, what is your policy on defence spending?
Farage asks Jenrick to go first.
Jenrick says he has committed to get defence spending up to 3% of GDP by 2030.
Farage says Reform UK has had a difficult summer. But it is out to energise voters. An election fought on Brexit might do that.
And, on the size of the audience, he blames “staff incompetence”. This was scheduled on a Monday afternoon, when business people are at work.
And Jenrick sets out what Reform UK would do.
First, we start paying down the credit card that gets the lenders off our backs. That gets your mortgages down.
Second, we give some of it back to you – £1,300 for the average family in year one. The tax free allowance in year one goes from £12,500 to £15,000 – £500 back for every taxpayer. Nearly 3 million people out of income tax altogether.
And the state pension untaxed for everyone, the biggest rise in the personal allowance in history.
And you know what? I’ll resign if it isn’t done in 100 days.
Richard Tice will cut £250 off your energy bill. We’ll scrap the two carbon taxes that sit on every unit of electricity. We’ll move the green levies off your bill. We’ll take VAT off energy altogether, not for six months, but for good. And the 5p cut in fuel duty, which Labour is letting lapse next year, made permanent.
£1,300 – that’s the winter gas bill paid. That’s the family holiday.
Jenrick explains how Reform UK would cut spending by £40bn a year
Jenrick explains the bit of his plan that he says “the BBC and the Guardian will howl about” – the proposed £40bn cuts that a Reform UK government would implement in year one. By year five, the cuts would be worth £80bn, he says.
He explains:
Unlike the Tories, we care about public services. Under Reform, every one of those gets more.
Instead, we’ll take it from the things that do nothing for the people who actually pay for them.
Start with the biggest benefits. Last year, £12bn went on benefit for foreign nationals, £414 for every household in this room. That ends immediately. British benefits for British citizens and for everyone else.
If you’ve been out for work for a year and you can work, you’ll have to work for your benefits.
We’ll protect the severely disabled, of course we will. But we will stop signing off other people. And the two-child cap comes back. It’s a matter of basic fairness.
Next net zero. The subsidies gone. The heat pump grants, the electric car grants, the carbon capture schemes, Great British Energy – gone. If Ed Miliband wants to buy a heat pump, you know what? He can buy it himself.
Then foreign aid capped at £1bn. Enough for disasters, but not enough for a sex chat bot in Kenya. Not enough for £88 million that Labour found for Gaza the week of a byelection.
And then Whitehall. The civil service is bigger now than when Tony Blair left office – 68,000 back office jobs, diversity teams, comms teams, HR teams all go gone.
And finally we stop lending young people £40,000 for degrees that leave them poorer than if they’d never gone in the first place. That is not education. That’s a scam.
At the Reform UK event, Robert Jenrick has presented to the audience with a copy of his rescue plan. He claims it is the most detailed alternative budget presented by an opposition party.
There are two statements in the Commons this afternoon after 3.30pm: Sally Jameson, the Cabinet Office minister, on civil service pensions; and Florence Eshalomi, the communities minister, on rough sleeping.
Jenrick claims Britain is ‘broke’, and that its economy is seen as a ‘joke’
Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick are presenting their Reform UK “economic rescue plan” (see 12.46pm) at an event in London. Farage has delivered his opening speech, and Jenrick is speaking now. He claims Britain is “broke”.
The state is broke and so are many of the people who pay for it.
The cosy Westminster club, it’s not so worried. But you are. You know when you’ve been had, you know when you can’t take any more.
First look at the state. We spend £110bn a year on interest – not paying down the debt, just interest. We pay our creditors nearly twice what we pay our armed forces.
Since the election, Labour have handed a quarter of £1 trillion to the people who lend us money. That was your money. It could have built 200 new hospitals, filled every pothole in Britain ten times over, rebuilt every crumbling school and still put a new GP surgery in every single town. Instead, it went to our lenders.
And you know what? Those lenders are getting restless. Last month the rate we pay to borrow went through 6% for the first time since 1998, well past Liz Truss territory.
Now we pay more to borrow than any other G7 country. More than Greece, more than Italy – once joke economies that Germany had to bail out.
Well, we’re the joke now.
No 10 plays down talk of UK joining EU single market after Burnham seems to say referendum would be needed for this
Andy Burnham has created confusion about whether or not he would give the public a referendum on rejoining the EU single market.
In a response to a question from a broadcaster, he appeared to say that a referendum would be needed. But there was some ambiguity as to what he said, and sources are saying that no final decision has been made on this point.
At the Labour conference, Burnham said that he wanted a debate on how Britain can establish a closer relationship with the EU. He would not say whether he expected this to lead to a plan to rejoin fully, or to just rejoin the single market, or another option, but he indicated that the first two options at least would only happen after a general election.
In an interview at the end of Labour’s conference, Burnham hinted that a referendum might not even be necessary for Britain to rejoin – but generally he insisted that any discussion of this matter was premature.
Since conference, Burnham has now firmed up that he does now accept that Britain would need to hold a referendum before rejoining the EU and that a government could not do this solely on the basis of an election manifesto pledge. Burnham said this in the Commons in response to a question from the Tory MP Edward Leigh.
Yesterday Ben Riley-Smith, the Sunday Times’ political editor, published articles based on a series of interviews with Burnham over the past 100 days. He reported:
Burnham … also said that a new referendum would be needed to rejoin the EU, but not necessarily for joining the single market or the customs union.
For Britain to join the single market, it would have to accept EU freedom of movement rules – allowing EU citizens to come to the UK for a job.
Today, asked by a broadcaster if he would allow the UK to “join the EU freedom of movement without a rerendum”, Burnham replied:
No, and I wasn’t saying that yesterday.
I was asked about how things have changed in the 10 years since Brexit. And the truth of the matter is we lost immigration control in the way that we once had.
Burnham seemed to be saying he would not join the single market without a referendum – although he may just have been rejecting the notion that he has already committed to single market membership.
Government sources are briefing that no final decision has been taken on whether joining the single market would require a referendum.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing, asked to clarify the PM’s position, a No 10 spokesperson said:
The prime minister isn’t proposing a return to freedom of movement, or any option.
He is saying that it’s time for us to discuss what kind of long-term relationship with Europe is best for Britain and he is referring to the types of areas that that agreement and long-term future could cover.
He is crucially not leaning either way, and that will be for the British public to decide. And his focus for now is on next month’s summit and the practical arrangements that we hope to make there, which will add billions to the economy.
Liz Truss’s new book defending mini-budget ridiculed by Tory peer as ‘most deranged’ he’s ever read
Liz Truss, the former PM, has published a new book defending her mini-budget and claiming she was brought down, not by the backlash over the unfunded tax cuts it proposed, but by some sort of establishment conspiracy.
In a review for the Telegraph, Simon Heffer, the journalist and historian who was made a Tory peer by Kemi Badenoch, describes the book as a “preposterous book-length attempt to justify the policy – an attempt reminiscent of the worst sort of saloon-bar bore, ranting in a corner while other patrons realise it’s time to go home”.
He concludes:
Of all the books I have ever reviewed that purported to offer a serious thesis, this is without question the most deranged. If you are seeking a Christmas present for someone you really don’t like, give them a copy.
(Heffer is too tactful to point out that, among the papers supporting the mini-budget at the time, the Telegraph was one of the most enthusiastic.)
Reform UK claims it could ‘kickstart economy’ with more than 60 cost-free, ‘job-creating policies’
Reform UK are holding a press conference later where Nigel Farage, the party leader, and Robert Jenrick, its Treasury spokesperson, will announce what they are describing as more than 60 “job-creating policies to kickstart the economy”. They are ideas that the party has floated before, mostly involving deregulation.
In a statement issued overnight, Jenrick said:
Everything reported so far suggests this will be a ‘mañana budget’, with John Healey dodging the tough decisions our country needs.
We can’t continue like this. The country can’t wait 10 years for Andy Burnham to work out a plan – we need action now.
Reform would bring forward more than 60 job-creating measures in our first budget to kickstart the economy. These common sense policies cost the taxpayer nothing – it’s a no brainer.
While many of the deregulatory measures on the list would be cost-free, others, like cutting employer national insurance, would impose a cost on the government.
But Reform UK is also claiming it could cut “£40bn of wasteful spending on the benefits bill, net zero subsidies and foreign [aid] to give the average household £1,300 in tax relief”.
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