Andy Burnham will take Britain back into European Union, Neil Kinnock claims
Good morning. In his long statement to MPs yesterday, Andy Burnham was evasive when asked whether he wanted his planned renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU to result in a Labour-led government, after the next election, rejoining. In response to one question about this, Burnham told a Tory MP he was “getting way ahead of himself” with the question. But one well-placed observer is not being so coy.
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader and one of three people Burnham has named as his political mentors, has given an interview to la Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. He told it that he believes Burnham does want to, and will, take the UK back into the EU.
Kinnock said: “Andy makes the declaration of his determination to change the relationship, and it’s obvious that his objective is to join again.”
Asked again if he thought Burnham would be the person to take the UK back into the EU, Kinnock replied:
Yes, sure, sure, sure. His commitment is authentic. He really does understand from the grassroots up why restoring what I think of as normality in our continent is vital for every party economically, politically, culturally, all in security terms, and is able to articulate it in language that people can understand. So yeah, he is definitely.
Asked about Burnham playing down his desire to revisit the referendum result during the Makerfield byelection campaign, Kinnock claimed this was just a matter of deciding when to have this debate.
Andy’s not changed direction. He’s always been a committed pro-European. In the byelection, he rightly didn’t make a noise about it. That’s tomorrow’s debate. Simply because the byelection wasn’t about Europe. It was about winning Makerfield in order to enable him to become leader of the party. That’s all it was about.
Kinnock was interviewed by Antonello Guerrera who asked how, as someone who inherited a leftwing party and dragged it to the right, Kinnock felt about a sucessor taking Labour to the left. Kinnock said he thought Burnham’s approach was right.
It’s common sense. It’s not left and right. Andy’s view of the engagement of the state is about what Winston Churchill did in the 1950s, and I don’t remember Churchill being thought of as on the left. Andy’s a socialist, but he’s a very common-sense socialist. He’s very rational. He’s cool, not just with his dark blue T-shirt, but in his thinking, and he’s advanced a hell of a lot in the last 10–12 years in terms of his understanding of the absolute importance of utility, of usefulness in politics.
That’s what puts us, basically, he and I, on the same spot. Of course he’s on the left. I’m on the left. We’re socialists, but we are prompted by the usefulness of the application of ideas.
We have got a lobby briefing later and no doubt No 10 will clarify that its understanding of Burnham’s position on rejoining the EU is not quite the same as Kinnock’s. Kinnock is a former vice president of the European Commission, and an ardent pro-European, and perhaps there is some wishful thinking in what he says. But he is also a good friend of Burnham, and an astute observer of Labour politics. You will have to decide for yourself if he is right.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Andy Burnham chairs cabinet.
Morning: Burnham attends meetings with business leaders in No 10.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the courts and tribunals bill.
3pm: Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, gives evidence to the Commons defence committee.
5pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, attends the regular weekly meeting of Lib Dem MPs, after two frontbenchers stood down amid concerns about his leadership.
Also today, another round of prisoner releases is happening under the prisoner early release scheme in England.
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Key events
SNP invites Burnham to its party conference, saying his defence of union has made constitution ‘central question’ in politics
Andy Burnham is reportedly planning to go to Scotland on Friday. The SNP has invited him to attend its conference, which is starting in Aberdeen on Thursday.
In his own conference speech Burnham made a passionate defence of the union, and the SNP says this means he accepts Scottish independence is the central question in political debate.
In a statement, the SNP’s deputy leader Keith Brown said:
The SNP would like to invite Andy Burnham to SNP conference as part of his visit to Scotland …
Andy Burnham made Scottish independence the focus of his conference speech with his time in Downing Street fast becoming defined by the UK’s constitutional future – it is the central question on these islands.
SNP conference is the perfect and natural place for Andy Burnham to set out the logical extension of his words – an agreed legal process.
Standards watchdog warns Burnham of growing concern that wealthy donors exercising ‘undue influence’ on politics
Andy Burnham has been warned that progress on beefing up ethical standards in public life is “stalling”.
The comment came in the first annual report to the PM from the Ethics and Integrity Commission, the body set up last year to replace the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
Doug Chalmers, the former deputy chief of defence staff and master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, has to report every year to the PM on “the health of standards in public life” and he has delivered his first update in the form of an open letter.
In it, he says:
A number of positive steps have been taken since the July 2024 general election towards strengthening England’s standards system, but progress is at risk of stalling. Your personal leadership is needed to accelerate standards reform and to ensure that the core values and standards expressed in the principles of public life remain at the heart of government and our public services.
In particular, Chalmers says there is a growing concern that wealthy donors are exercising an “undue influence” on UK politics because parties are ever more reliant on them for money.
He says:
The longstanding debate around the merits of a universal annual cap on permissible donations is receiving increased attention from parliamentarians and the media in light of the trend for large donations to originate from a small number of donors.
Political parties play a vital role in our democracy and need significant sums of money to function, yet the reliance on large donations from a limited number of sources creates the risk that donors may exert undue influence, or may be perceived to do so, which is damaging for trust in politics.
Chalmers does not mention Reform UK in his letter, but his comment seems in part influenced by the alarm generated by the news last month that two cryptocurrency billionaires are between them giving £72m to Nigel Farage’s party.
Whether the donations will comply with a new election law going through parliament remains to be determined, but ministers are under pressure to tighten the law further, with some MPs saying the amount an individual can give to a party should be capped.
In his letter, Chalmers says a cap is “likely to affect the major parties in different ways” and he says any reform should not be seen as partisan. “This will also ensure reforms have democratic legitimacy and are more likely to endure,” he says.
The letter also urges Burnham to press on with action to strengthen standards in other areas, including local government and lobbying.
Here are pictures of ministers arriving for cabinet today.
IMF raises UK growth forecast as economist says Healey should ‘stay the course’
John Healey should “stay the course” and continue repairing the UK’s public finances, the International Monetary Fund’s top economist has said, after the fund lifted its growth forecast for Britain, Heather Stewart reports.
Andy Burnham will take Britain back into European Union, Neil Kinnock claims
Good morning. In his long statement to MPs yesterday, Andy Burnham was evasive when asked whether he wanted his planned renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU to result in a Labour-led government, after the next election, rejoining. In response to one question about this, Burnham told a Tory MP he was “getting way ahead of himself” with the question. But one well-placed observer is not being so coy.
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader and one of three people Burnham has named as his political mentors, has given an interview to la Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. He told it that he believes Burnham does want to, and will, take the UK back into the EU.
Kinnock said: “Andy makes the declaration of his determination to change the relationship, and it’s obvious that his objective is to join again.”
Asked again if he thought Burnham would be the person to take the UK back into the EU, Kinnock replied:
Yes, sure, sure, sure. His commitment is authentic. He really does understand from the grassroots up why restoring what I think of as normality in our continent is vital for every party economically, politically, culturally, all in security terms, and is able to articulate it in language that people can understand. So yeah, he is definitely.
Asked about Burnham playing down his desire to revisit the referendum result during the Makerfield byelection campaign, Kinnock claimed this was just a matter of deciding when to have this debate.
Andy’s not changed direction. He’s always been a committed pro-European. In the byelection, he rightly didn’t make a noise about it. That’s tomorrow’s debate. Simply because the byelection wasn’t about Europe. It was about winning Makerfield in order to enable him to become leader of the party. That’s all it was about.
Kinnock was interviewed by Antonello Guerrera who asked how, as someone who inherited a leftwing party and dragged it to the right, Kinnock felt about a sucessor taking Labour to the left. Kinnock said he thought Burnham’s approach was right.
It’s common sense. It’s not left and right. Andy’s view of the engagement of the state is about what Winston Churchill did in the 1950s, and I don’t remember Churchill being thought of as on the left. Andy’s a socialist, but he’s a very common-sense socialist. He’s very rational. He’s cool, not just with his dark blue T-shirt, but in his thinking, and he’s advanced a hell of a lot in the last 10–12 years in terms of his understanding of the absolute importance of utility, of usefulness in politics.
That’s what puts us, basically, he and I, on the same spot. Of course he’s on the left. I’m on the left. We’re socialists, but we are prompted by the usefulness of the application of ideas.
We have got a lobby briefing later and no doubt No 10 will clarify that its understanding of Burnham’s position on rejoining the EU is not quite the same as Kinnock’s. Kinnock is a former vice president of the European Commission, and an ardent pro-European, and perhaps there is some wishful thinking in what he says. But he is also a good friend of Burnham, and an astute observer of Labour politics. You will have to decide for yourself if he is right.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Andy Burnham chairs cabinet.
Morning: Burnham attends meetings with business leaders in No 10.
Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the remaining stages of the courts and tribunals bill.
3pm: Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, gives evidence to the Commons defence committee.
5pm: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, attends the regular weekly meeting of Lib Dem MPs, after two frontbenchers stood down amid concerns about his leadership.
Also today, another round of prisoner releases is happening under the prisoner early release scheme in England.
I’m afraid we are no longer able to have comments open below the line every day on this blog. If you want to contact me, please email politics.live@theguardian.com. You can use this email to flag up corrections, comments for publication, questions or complaints.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/oct/13/andy-burnham-brexit-eu-europe-neil-kinnock-lobby-wes-streeting-labour-prisoner-early-release-uk-politics-latest-news-updates
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