Monday 07 September 2026 10:25 am
Burnham must accept what Starmer wouldn’t: The EU’s just not that into us, writes Eliot Wilson
Andy Burnham has done his best to represent change since succeeding Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister on 20 July. As he is from the same party, was elected leader unopposed and there has not been a general election to separate his reign from Starmer’s, it is not an easy task. He has pledged to “build a new politics”, to “make a break” from the old ways, to change his party’s “political direction”, to “bring back hope”. His arrival in Downing Street would be “a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in the last 40 years. A new political model and a new economic model.”
Well, perhaps. As he wrestles with a prison population at breaking point, contemplates tax increases in defiance of explicit manifesto promises and struggles with defence expenditure, it is still possible to hear the flat, stilted tones of his predecessor in the ether. They are loudest when Burnham talks about his approach to a “reset” of our relationship with the European Union.
“We will reset the relationship and seek to deepen ties with our European friends, neighbours and allies.” Andy Burnham? No, Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, source of so many of Starmer’s tin-eared mantras. The party’s policy was clear: there would be no return to the European single market, to the EU Customs Union or to freedom of movement. These were non-negotiable. At a G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains in June, Starmer said there would be a “reset” summit with the EU on 22 July. As it turned out, that was two days after he returned his seals of office and left Downing Street.
If the faces have changed – Burnham has replaced Starmer, and the Minister for European Relations is now Hamish Falconer, a former diplomat and son of Tony Blair’s flatmate-cum-Lord Chancellor – the script seems to have stayed broadly the same. There will be no return to EU membership, or any halfway house by joining the single market or a customs union. The Brexit vote of 2016 will be respected.
Burnham plays happy families with Macron
The Prime Minister last week met Emmanuel Macron as the President of the French Republic, who is now counting down his remaining months in office, became the first foreign leader Burnham had formally welcomed to Downing Street. The visit was primarily to mark the beginning of the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum, but in bilateral talks Burnham and Macron discussed how to increase cooperation on illegal migration across the Channel and the technology transfer which would allow Ukraine to produce Storm Shadow cruise missiles (SCALP-EP in French service) in domestic facilities.
Afterwards, Burnham exuded the matey bonhomie at which he excels, and told the media that Macron’s visit “shows what collaboration can achieve, just as we are also showing… on strengthening the UK-EU relationship”. It was emphasised later that the two leaders had “discussed the UK’s drive to get closer to Europe”.
The Prime Minister is trying to fool the public, or actually fooling himself. He seems to think that warm handshakes and toothy smiles for the flashing cameras of the press represent diplomatic progress. Look at the reality: Burnham’s current priority in the “reset” negotiations is the protection of steel and agriculture. He is worried that a “Made in Europe” EU procurement plan “could pose significant problems for British steel”, and will demand that the UK is included in the EU’s manufacturing scheme, designed to guard against Chinese competition.
Why would European leaders assent to this? The EU talks a great deal about free trade and tariff barriers, but it is both Jekyll and Hyde on the issue: there is the European single market in which goods and services can move freely, but the bloc also has savagely protectionist ramparts against the outside world. That outside world includes the UK, and even a decade on from the initial referendum, the EU will do nothing which suggests Britain has in any way gained from leaving the union.
It cannot afford to do so, with the Eurosceptic Giorgia Meloni having governed Italy for nearly four years, Marine le Pen, who is hostile to federalism and closer European integration, currently the runaway favourite to replace Macron as President of the French Republic and the nationalist Alternative für Deutschland enjoying a health poll lead in Germany.
Burnham also seems to ignore the fact that France is perhaps the past master of bending the European Union to suit its national interests. It was principally French opposition which limited Britain’s involvement in the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence loan scheme, with a €6.5bn membership fee being proposed at one point. France also called for stringent qualifications on any UK involvement in a €5bn EU equity investment fund for tech startups.
The EU is just not that into us
Before the general election, I warned that Sir Keir Starmer faced disappointment with his planned reset because our EU neighbours were just not that into us. It seems the delusion persists. We are important to Europe because we are a significant economy and one of the world’s leading centres for financial services. Our reputation for military capability is fast falling away but we also retain our nuclear status.
But European leaders are hard-headed and unembarrassable. We can expect no favours from the EU, yet again and again we make enormous demands and affect an attitude of high dudgeon when we are refused.
If Burnham wants to rejoin the EU and thinks he can rally support for it – a contested but hardly outrageous policy – then let him say so. He would please many of his colleagues. While we remain not only outsiders but outsiders prickly about our status and determination not to be “rule takers”, the government has to accept the consequences of that. Our diplomats may be plied with champagne (perhaps sparkling wine, more realistically) and given warm handshakes, but the EU will give as little and take as much as it can. We would, in their position; or at least we should. Labour’s continuing Brussels delusion makes it difficult to tell.
Eliot Wilson is a writer and historian. He is a senior fellow for national security at the Coalition for Global Prosperity and a contributing editor at Defence on the Brink