Brexit | The Guardian

No 10 gathering evidence on public support for UK rejoining EU

Kiran Stacey and Lisa O’Carroll — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:33:20 GMT

Senior Downing Street officials reach out to thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test backing for reversing Brexit

Senior Downing Street officials have been reaching out to thinktanks and pollsters as they look to test public support for the UK rejoining the EU.

Aides to Andy Burnham have been talking to EU experts in a range of organisations about how the public would view a promise to rejoin, as momentum builds behind including such a pledge in the next Labour manifesto.

A proportional representation voting system could spell disaster for Labour | Letters

Guardian Staff — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:53:18 GMT

Gian Lorenzo Spisso says his knowledge of Italian voting systems and British politics leads him to the view that first past the post is the lesser of two evils

Reading that Andy Burnham wants to push electoral reform forward and move the UK towards proportional representation (Report, 29 September), I found myself shouting at the screen.

I come from Italy, where I have seen proportional systems at work. They drive a wedge between MPs and their constituents. They reward tribalism (yes, even more than here). They leave large parts of the electorate hostage to the whims of tiny parties, and force parties into ragtag coalitions that produce unstable, ineffective governments. And for all that, people do not seem to feel any better represented.

Macron says ‘welcome back’ to Burnham suggestion UK could rejoin EU

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:40:27 GMT

French president, speaking alongside Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez, says EU bid would be good news for UK and Europeans

UK politics live – latest updates

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has reacted warmly to Andy Burnham’s suggestion that the UK could rejoin the EU.

“Welcome back,” the French leader said in English with a smile at a news conference in Madrid on Wednesday. Macron continued in French: “If the British want to come back and if the prime minister is moving in that direction, I think that is very good news, both for his country and for the Europeans.”

Voters back Burnham’s plan to cut back triple lock to fund social care reform by 48% to 28%, poll suggests – as it happened

Andrew Sparrow — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 12:30:15 GMT

This live blog is now closed

‘Oozing everyman charm’: what the papers said about Burnham’s speech

Andy Burnham has suggested that it would not be legitimate for a party to form a majority government with less than 30% of the vote.

In his Today interview, asked why he wanted electoral reform and a move towards proportional representation, Burnham replied:

I found it better being elected under a different system as mayor of Greater Manchester, where people had one or two, they could put that on the ballot paper.

Because you had a reason to stop on every doorstep and chat to people who might not always support your party and try and get their second preference.

No, it could happen with any political party. It’s whether that would be a legitimate government.

I think you’ve got it completely wrong really, if you don’t mind me saying, to put it like that, because I have put out … a vision for a national care service.

There are pensioners out there who watch your programme who are paying for care costs from their basic state pension. Now, is that right or fair?

Andy Burnham: UK could ‘go all the way’ by rejoining EU

Aletha Adu Political correspondent — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 07:41:26 GMT

PM says he is looking at all options and ministers will examine ‘what is doable’ and the ‘pros and cons’

UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham has opened the door to the UK rejoining the EU, saying Britain could “go all the way”, as he prepares to reconsider Labour’s post-Brexit red lines.

The prime minister used a series of interviews after his emotional Labour conference speech to spell out how wide-ranging his consideration of Britain’s future with Brussels could be because Brexit had caused “more harm than good”.

Andy Burnham wants to review the UK’s relationship with the EU. What are the options?

Lisa O’Carroll, senior correspondent — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 05:00:13 GMT

The PM said Brexit has ‘done more harm than good’ and wants an assessment before the next UK-EU summit

Andy Burnham has said Brexit has “done more harm than good” and pledged to launch a major review of the UK’s relationship with the EU, opening the door to a potential referendum over rejoining the union.

He said he would “lay out options” around the time of the next EU-UK summit, due to be held at the end of November or soon after.

The Guardian view on Andy Burnham: grounds to hope for a better Britain | Editorial

Editorial — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 18:22:58 GMT

By linking Brexit, voting reform and public services, the prime minister made a powerful, personal pitch for a brighter future

Andy Burnham’s first speech as prime minister to a Labour conference was a serious attempt to argue that rebuilding the public realm will be better for the country than shrinking the state. He is right about this. Mr Burnham’s belief in the power of government is welcome, as is his instinct that by spending now on public services he will save money later. Admitting that Brexit “has done more harm than good” before setting out options for a closer relationship with the EU could be the speech’s most consequential sentence. Offering voters a bargain at the next election – give up a little of the annual triple-lock increase in pensions for free personal care for older people – is a gamble.

But Mr Burnham clearly thinks that he will be able to show that enough has improved by then for him to ask voters to let him finish what he has started. The prime minister smartly recast “take back control” as a Labour argument. His pitch was that privatisation removed economic control, emasculating local government removed political control, and Brexit reduced control over immigration. This was deftly done – threading a common idea through housing, water, energy and Europe.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Burnham gambles on radical progressive plan to help Britain ‘rise again’

Pippa Crerar Political editor — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 18:21:29 GMT

PM accepts some of his plan could be difficult and admits he ‘may pay a political price’

Andy Burnham has staked his future on a gamble that the public will back radical progressive policies on social care, electoral reform and Europe, telling voters that his agenda will break the mould of the last 40 years and “allow us to rise again”.

In a deeply personal speech at Labour’s conference, Burnham began building his next general election manifesto, acknowledging that he may end up paying the price for creating sharp new dividing lines in politics.

Burnham says he would put PR in Labour manifesto and scrap triple lock to fund social care – as it happened

Andrew Sparrow — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:20:06 GMT

PM, in first speech to party conference as leader, insists his plans are a ‘good deal’ for older people

Burnham to signal willingness to look at scrapping pension triple lock to fund social care

Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, has apparently confirmed that Andy Burnham will float the prospect of getting rid of the pensions triple lock to help fund the creation of an NHS-style care service.

Asked about the prospect on Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Rayner said that Burnham was “absolutely right to start the conversation” and that he was being “brave”.

The high principle on this is that people have paid in all their lives. They are willing, I think, to look at that.

What they don’t want is what they consider to be, quite frankly, incompetent politicians that are going to take something from us to fill a black hole.

When we met with Andy [Burnham] this week, it certainly wasn’t mentioned.

But I do think that it’s important that Labour make sure that working-class people know that they’re on their side, and this would be a direction of travel that would say the opposite to that.

What I understood the national care service to be was a universal benefit: everybody paid in and everybody gets out, and that is what actually the principle of that is.

Going to a group of people who are getting around £12,500 a year in order to pay for it to take away their security is wrong.

From Brexit to electoral reform: key takeaways from Andy Burnham’s conference speech

Peter Walker and Kiran Stacey — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:29:17 GMT

Ending the pensions triple lock, creating a national care service and making changes to leaseholds were all announced by the PM in Liverpool

UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham’s first speech to a Labour conference as prime minister was not only quite long, at over an hour, but unusually dense with policy. Here are some of the things he set out:

Cutting immigration to the UK means billions less for the Treasury. Can the country really afford that? | Zoe Williams

Zoe Williams — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:00:48 GMT

‘Taking back control’ turns out to be staggeringly expensive. That’s something to mull over as budget day approaches

Every 100,000 immigrants lost to the UK costs the treasury £7bn, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. That figure is unsurprising if you’ve been concentrating at all – the calculation was made in 2024 – but at the same time completely staggering. Nobody ever says, “The chancellor’s going to be in trouble because of all those lost immigrants”; few people remark on, let alone decry, the very large numbers of migrants who have been lost due to policy decisions.

And then, as budget day approaches, brute facts and mathematical realities assert themselves: migration numbers have been falling faster than anticipated. And if you take all the measures you can to discourage international students, skilled workers, all imaginable young, mobile people who work and don’t get ill, while at the same time preventing with all your might any legitimate employment opportunities for asylum seekers, you will suffer a hit to the national coffers.

Switzerland’s love of referendums keeps the far right at bay | Joseph de Weck

Joseph de Weck — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:00:24 GMT

Brexit gave direct democracy a bad name. But the Swiss approach could be what Europe needs now

Fascism rests on a two-part confidence trick. First, a leader claims to embody the will of the people. Then they argue that only by being granted sweeping powers can that be realised. Having grown up in Switzerland, I find it easy to see through this trick. That is because the policies championed by the far right rarely pass the referendum test.

Dismantling publicly funded media? In March, 62% of Swiss voters rejected a far-right initiative to halve funding for the country’s public broadcaster. Corporate tax cuts? In 2017, 59% struck down such plans of the Swiss government. Immigration police hunting down migrants? Again, 59% rejected a far-right proposal to automatically deport foreign nationals convicted of crimes without judicial review. Or this week’s resounding 70% “No” vote on a far-right proposal to tighten Switzerland’s neutrality to the point that Bern would have been forced to drop sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.

Joseph de Weck is an associate fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations and writes for Guardian Europe from Zürich and Paris

UK politics live: Pat McFadden tells Labour activists they should not defend benefits system ‘status quo’ because it ‘writes off’ claimants

Andrew Sparrow — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:11:00 GMT

Work and pensions secretary says the current system is flawed because it consigns too many people to a life on benefits when they would be better off working

‘I can deliver’: Burnham pledges radical change on eve of Labour conference

Kuenssberg puts it to Burnham that, according to the Health Foundation, a system offering adult social care free at the point of delivery (like healthcare delivered by the NHS) would cost £18bn.

Burnham says the cost is “not that high” (ie, not as high as £18bn).

Not that high.

But can I directly deal with this issue of the costs?

Louise Casey is still doing an official review for us, so I will set out the vision, if you like, on Tuesday [in his speech to the conference].

Louise will then help us with the how. How do we make this happen? When can we make it happen?

‘We’ve done everything by the book’: EU citizens left in limbo after UK government strips post-Brexit residency status

Lisa O’Carroll Senior correspondent — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:04:22 GMT

Home Office faces legal action after 1,473 people living in UK before Brexit told settled status was granted in error

The Home Office faces legal action over a policy to strip residency rights from EU citizens who were in the UK before Brexit on the grounds that it gave them the status “in error”.

It comes as a Home Office minister revealed that the government has contacted 1,473 citizens with post-Brexit residency rights to tell them the original decision to grant them residency was made in error.

Tony Blair would like Andy Burnham to take his advice on rejoining the EU. Should he? | Tom Baldwin

Tom Baldwin — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 11:05:08 GMT

The former PM has been consulted by many who came after him – but Burnham might want to shake his New Labour past once and for all

Tony Blair can, apparently, sound slightly wistful when he describes how he once had a cloak-and-dagger meeting with Andy Burnham, who wanted to talk to him about standing for the party leadership. Before anyone gets too excited, however, this wasn’t in the past few months, during which Burnham succeeded in landing the job. The story dates back to 2010. That was when he was a callow member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet and understandably wary of his boss discovering not only his ambition to take over if Labour lost the looming general election, but also from whom he wanted advice.

Much has changed since then, not least Burnham himself. His journey out of Westminster and back again – which in his telling has become an almost spiritual pilgrimage of personal redemption – enabled him to shed the New Labour baggage that proved so cumbersome during his previous, and unsuccessful, runs for the leadership. In common with Brown, Ed Miliband, Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer – all of whom tried with varying degrees of success to distance themselves from Blair – Labour’s latest leader now also wants to keep Blair at arm’s length, and certainly far away from his party conference in Liverpool this week.

Tom Baldwin is a former assistant editor of the Times and a former senior adviser to the Labour party. He is the author of Keir Starmer: The Biography

UK food and drink trade deficit largest since 2000 at £21bn

Sarah Butler — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 23:01:32 GMT

Industry leaders call on government to protect homegrown produce in the interest of national security

The gap between Britain’s food and drink exports and imports has neared its highest this century, as a combination of Brexit, war in the Middle East and US tariffs dented deliveries overseas while imports soared.

The UK’s food and drink trade deficit has risen to more than £21bn – the largest since 2000 – in what industry leaders said was a “wake-up call” for the government to protect homegrown produce in the interest of national security.

Londoners get £3bn a year subsidy because structure of council tax biased against north, says thinktank – UK politics live

Andrew Sparrow — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:31:47 GMT

Resolution Foundation says households outside London are paying hundreds of pounds a year more in council tax than they would be under a fair system

Tim Shipman has written about what will be coming up at the Labour conference next week in his cover story for the Spectator. He says:

Labour special advisers summoned last week to the pillared state room on the first floor of No. 10 to hear the plan for conference from Burnham’s political secretary, Hayden Munro, left in no doubt that the PM wants to be a transformational figure. The conference ‘narrative’ these advisers were urged to push includes the telling line: ‘This Labour government will bring forward the biggest change to Britain in 40 years, with a new political and economic model.’ On the specifics, Burnham will pledge: ‘We will make the choices that are needed to end rough sleeping, solve the social care crisis and get more young people into work.’

Burnham will pledge to run a ‘cost-of-living government’ with further ‘immediate action’ to ‘provide the breathing space people need’, as well as outline plans to devolve power ‘out of Whitehall’, ‘reindustrialise Britain’ and take back public control of ‘the essentials in life – such as energy, water and housing’ to ‘make them affordable again’.

Ultimately, the election choice is Burnham’s. ‘If you knew what Keir’s aides thought, you knew what he would do,’ says a ministerial aide. ‘But Andy has political opinions of his own.’ Burnham may go for it. But those closest to him doubt it. ‘He likes risk, but he has stuff he wants to get done,’ says one close confidant. While outsiders think his ambitions require an election, Burnham thinks he can transform Britain without one. ‘Andy really cares about the devolution stuff,’ the ministerial aide observes. ‘Most of Westminster roll their eyes but he thinks that will change the country. He thinks doing that will make him a great prime minister.’

And those who think none of that will deal with Britain’s economic problems seize on another clue. A Labour adviser concludes: ‘Ultimately I think Burnham and his team will do what they often do with difficult decisions, and not make one.’

What I imagine is that some schools will offer some of these subjects where their local labour market demands, and this is where our mayors and our local leaders are really helping to shape that in their area.

So I wouldn’t expect a school to offer all of these, as they don’t offer all GCSEs at the moment. They will specialise in particular areas.

If you’re trying to do engineering or construction, for example, you know that involves a lot of problem solving, a lot of maths, a lot of thinking, as well as the hands-on skills that’s required.

So it’s not dumbing down, it’s the opposite of that, actually, because this is about raising the standards and the rigour and regulating these qualifications.

UK ‘losing up to £6.5bn a year in EU trade’ without post-Brexit product deal

Phillip Inman — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 08:48:11 GMT

IPPR finds failure to align testing standards has forced companies to abandon exporting to EU and is costing costing 0.18% of national income

The UK is losing out on annual exports to the EU that could be worth as much as £6.5bn without a deal with Brussels that allows manufacturers to jettison duplicate product testing.

In the latest attempt to calculate the loss of trade with the EU after Brexit, the IPPR thinktank said many companies have given up selling goods to the EU or set up subsidiaries inside the trade bloc after successive governments failed to secure a mutual recognition agreement that would avoid the extra administration costs.

Motor vehicle and part exports would have been between £2.48bn and £3.42bn higher each year.

Electronic exports could have been between £1.17bn and £1.67bn higher.

Pharmaceutical exports would have had an estimated annual uplift of between £740m and £820m.

Tony Blair says Britain should work towards rejoining EU in next 10 years

Kiran Stacey Policy editor — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 23:01:01 GMT

Andy Burnham under pressure to revisit Brexit as poll suggests pledge to rejoin could boost Labour’s electoral chances

Britain should work towards rejoining the EU in the next decade, Tony Blair has said, adding to growing pressure on Andy Burnham to abandon Labour’s reluctance to revisit the 2016 referendum.

The former prime minister has urged Burnham to use his 10-year plan in November to put the country’s membership of the union back on the table, a decade after it voted to leave.

UK to join EU ocean science scheme to better predict extreme weather events

Karen McVeigh — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 14:24:37 GMT

Cooperation on OceanEye, which aims to create ‘real-time’ model of world’s oceans, comes amid efforts to boost EU ties

Britain is to join a major new ocean science programme, led by the EU, to better forecast extreme weather and climate events, the environment secretary is to announce in New York.

The announcement on Wednesday will come as Andy Burnham’s government aims to rebuild the UK’s relationship with Europe, and follows warnings this year’s “supersized” El Niño, tracked in the Pacific Ocean, will fuel more extreme weather globally.