After a holiday spent contracting nursery bugs from an 11-month-old, it’s good to return.
asserted
it → spend → old
Yesterday, Andy Burnham marked his first day back after party conference by calling for a closer relationship with the EU and drawing a line under a decade of “drift and division”.
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Burnham → mark → drift
On Sunday, he said it was “clear” the Kremlin had been involved with the 2016 Brexit referendum vote.
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Kremlin → say → vote
Both statements mark a break, rhetorically at least, from his predecessors.
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statements → mark → predecessors
Conservative governments long insisted there was no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit vote.
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governments → insist → vote
Keir Starmer attempted to put the entire issue of Brexit behind him, treating it as a historic event rather than a cause of economic pain.
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Starmer → attempt → pain
But for all his words about a closer relationship with the EU, Burnham has kept the details pretty vague.
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Burnham → keep → details
Today’s newsletter, with the help of the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin and our senior political correspondent Peter Walker, asks what his stance might actually amount to.
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stance → ask → what
That’s after the headlines.
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That → ’ → headlines
Andy Burnham said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were “almost certainly” behind threats to RAF Fairford, the firmest attribution of responsibility made so far by the UK after an incident late last month.
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Corps → say → incident
A close adviser to Nigel Farage had an influential role at a national polling company despite not being publicly associated with the firm, the Guardian revealed.
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Guardian → have → firm
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to respond to Russia’s continuing attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as European leaders rally around Kyiv amid a feud with Donald Trump over Ukraine’s strikes on oil refineries.
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leaders → vow → refineries
Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the country’s attorney general and the head of the Shin Bet security service to reveal the identities of soldiers and officers interviewed in the documentary NAZA and prosecute them for causing “harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests”.
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Netanyahu → order → interests
RJ Mitte, the young actor best known for playing Walter White Jr in the award-winning TV series Breaking Bad, died on Monday.
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Mitte → know → Monday
In depth: What does Burnham want from Europe?
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Burnham → want → Europe
In the years after it voted to leave the European Union, Britain became something of a laughing stock among EU member states.
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Britain → vote → states
People in Brussels would be staying up to watch votes in the House of Commons,” Jennifer Rankin, who moved to Brussels to cover the EU for the Guardian in January 2016, tells me.
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who → stay → me
Civil servants in Brussels grew to regard the UK as one might regard a belligerent and ungrateful elderly relative, an impression that reached its apotheosis when the former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis admitted that the UK’s Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland would break international law (albeit in a “very specific and limited way”.)
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arrangements → grow → way
“From 2016 to 2020, the UK was seen as a model of how not to run your country,” Jennifer says.
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Jennifer → see → country
This impression softened after the passing of the Withdrawal Agreement Act in early 2020, and the Windsor framework deal, which amended the arrangements under the Northern Ireland protocol in 2023.
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which → soften → 2023
“That was a turning point in drawing a line under the bad blood of the Brexit years,” Jennifer says.
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Jennifer → draw → years
Keir Starmer’s government then sought to cooperate with the EU on various issues such as security, food and fishing, but the “reset” he pledged to deliver was tightly circumscribed by his red lines: no rejoining the single market, no customs union, no freedom of movement.
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he → seek → movement
After his conference speech, Burnham suggested he might be open to reconsidering this when he suggested, somewhat cryptically, that the UK could go “all the way” (presumably towards full EU membership), and yesterday he called for a “longer-term discussion” about Britain’s relationship with the EU.
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he → suggest → EU
But what might that actually mean?
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that → mean → what
Could the UK rejoin the EU?
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UK → rejoin → EU
Burnham has been “showing a lot of ankle” to remainers over the last few weeks, Peter Walker tells me.
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Walker → show → me
During his Labour conference speech, he promised to lay out “different options” for Britain’s long-term relationship with Europe, and acknowledged that Brexit had caused “more harm than good”.
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Brexit → promise → harm
“It’s pretty clear that a decent majority of people would like to push a switch that meant Brexit had never happened,” Peter says.
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Peter → ’ → switch
Indeed, a YouGov poll in January 2025 found that just 11% of people thought Brexit had been more of a success than a failure.
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Brexit → find → failure
And as recently as last week, the Messina Group, a polling company, reported that half of voters say they would like to rejoin the EU.
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they → report → EU
The economic consequences of Brexit are now well known, and research has estimated that, a decade after the referendum, UK GDP per head is between 6% and 8% lower than it would have been without Brexit.
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it → know → Brexit
Yet reversing this decision would require another referendum, which would be politically fraught, reigniting a debate that splintered the country a decade ago, and reducing a highly complex and technical issue to a binary decision.
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that → reverse → decision
It’s hard to imagine Burnham – or any politician, for that matter – wanting to fight the next election while pledging something so divisive.
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Burnham → ’ → something
Notably, even the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-EU of the major parties, favour rejoining the single market and customs union but describe UK membership of the EU as a “long-term goal” rather than an immediate priority.
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Democrats → favour → goal
If a second referendum seems like a vanishingly distant prospect, other changes could take place without one.
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changes → seem → one
In the combustive years after Brexit, there was a short-lived hope that the UK might pursue its own version of the Norway model, allowing it to become a member of the European Economic Area.
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it → be → Area
“It was the Conservatives who decided to pursue the hardest Brexit possible,” Peter reminds me.
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Peter → decide → Brexit
In theory, a softer deal could mean rejoining the single market and customs union.
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deal → mean → market
But this would mean breaking Labour’s red lines, which Burnham has said he will stick to.
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he → mean → which
And if the UK was to rejoin the single market but remain outside the EU, it would be forced to accept rules that it had no power to shape.
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it → rejoin → power
…and 40 more, not listed.
The Aporia
