Burnham’s impending premiership is likely to reveal how little Brexit ever settled. Ten years after the referendum, Britain remains caught between the desire for stronger growth, tighter immigration control, greater national autonomy and closer cooperation with Brussels on security. As geopolitical and economic pressures intensify, these objectives are becoming harder to reconcile, exposing the limits of incrementalism. Burnham is therefore likely to deepen practical ties with the EU wherever possible within existing constraints, while gradually facing up to a question that successive governments have deferred: whether the current post-Brexit settlement represents a sustainable long-term position for the UK.
Andy Burnham’s likely arrival at 10 Downing Street in July 2026 will change the political leadership of the UK, but not the fundamental constraints shaping British policy towards Brussels. After a decade of Brexit, successive governments have been engaged in a difficult balancing act between four competing imperatives: stronger economic growth, maximum national sovereignty, tighter control over immigration and closer cooperation with the EU in response to a more demanding geopolitical environment. The challenge is that these objectives increasingly pull in different directions.
The circumstances of Burnham’s succession are unusual. Britain will have had seven prime ministers since the 2016 Brexit referendum, but the last time a Labour government transferred power from one leader to another after only two years was half a century ago. Nevertheless, Burnham will enter office with considerable political momentum. His rise offers Labour the opportunity to regain political initiative and respond more effectively to the threat posed by Reform UK. The key question is whether Burnham can translate his political authority into a more coherent response to the strategic dilemmas that have constrained every post-Brexit government.
The 2016 referendum was intended to settle Britain’s relationship with Europe. Instead, it made the debate more complicated. At the time, many of the geopolitical developments that now shape European politics were only beginning to emerge. The return of major-power competition, the growing challenge posed by China, Russia’s confrontation with the West, and uncertainty about the future direction of the US played little role in the referendum campaign. Membership of the European Union was decided. Britain’s longer-term economic and strategic orientation was not.
A full decade later, this remains the case. Few politicians have any appetite for revisiting the divisive arguments of the Brexit years. Yet many of the practical questions raised by Brexit continue to shape debates about growth, trade, security and Britain’s place in Europe. Burnham will inherit that reality rather than escape it.
Against this backdrop, Burham’s forthcoming premiership raises four related questions: what political strengths and constraints he brings to office; what options exist for the UK’s future relationship with the EU; what domestic political forces will shape those choices; and what direction EU-UK relations are likely to take in the short to medium term.
New leadership, familiar constraints
Starmer’s departure is ultimately the product of domestic politics. His critics accuse him of weak political leadership, poor political instincts and questionable judgement in several high-profile decisions. More broadly, his government struggled to articulate a convincing account of where Britain was heading and how Labour intended to use its unusually large parliamentary majority.
That majority was remarkable by contemporary European standards. At a time when much of Europe was moving towards fragmented party systems and centre-right led coalition governments, Labour secured a dominant parliamentary position, winning 411 seats out of a total of 650, giving it a majority of 174. Yet the stability of Westminster concealed the growing volatility outside. Reform UK finished second in almost 90 Labour-held constituencies, creating persistent anxiety among Labour MPs and reinforcing concerns about the durability of the party’s electoral coalition.
Burnham enters Downing Street with a different political profile. Although he spent many years in Westminster in ministerial roles under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he subsequently reinvented himself as a regional political leader. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he became one of the few senior British politicians associated with a place rather than a Westminster faction. His focus on regional inequality, local growth and economic rebalancing reflects one of Britain’s most persistent structural problems: the combination of weak productivity growth and unusually high regional disparities.
This background helps explain Burnham’s political appeal – and it illustrates the constraints he faces. Much of his recent rise has been driven by a belief within Labour that he offers a more effective response to Reform UK than the party leadership under Starmer. The Makerfield by-election, which paved Burnham’s return to parliament, became an important symbol of this argument. Burham won decisively with 55% of the vote, compared to 35% for the Reform UK candidate, his main rival. This reinforces Burnham’s reputation as a politician capable of winning back voters who had drifted away from Labour in parts of England where Brexit and immigration remain politically potent issues.
That success comes with a cost. The political coalition that strengthens Burnham’s position simultaneously narrows his room for manoeuvre on Europe. Voters who are attracted to Burnham because they see him as capable of defeating Reform are often sceptical of further European integration, specifically if it leads to further immigration. The more central these voters become to Labour’s electoral strategy, the more difficult it becomes for any Labour leader to advocate a significantly closer relationship with the EU.
Burnham’s own views add a further layer of complexity. His views on Europe chime with the majority of Labour’s broadly pro-European parliamentary party and he has suggested that rejoining the EU could become a long-term possibility. At the same time, he has argued that Britain’s relationship with the EU must be separated from its domestic economic challenges. His most recent position has been that Britain must first address its own economic weaknesses before contemplating larger questions about its future relationship with Europe.
This argument reflects a longstanding tendency in British politics to separate domestic renewal from European policy. But that distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Questions about trade, investment, labour markets, industrial policy, technology and security are no longer easily divisible into domestic and European categories. For any government seeking higher growth while operating within tight fiscal constraints, the relationship with the EU becomes part of the domestic policy debate rather than an external one.
Burnham’s options on relations with the EU
The first reality Burnham will likely confront is that the menu of available options is narrower than British political debates often suggest.
For much of the post-Brexit period, there was an assumption in parts of Whitehall and Westminster that Britain might eventually construct a bespoke relationship with the European Union. The broad idea was straightforward: secure privileged access to the single market for goods while preserving extensive regulatory autonomy in areas where Britain believes it enjoys comparative advantages, such as financial services, artificial intelligence, digital regulation and emerging technologies. At the same time, Britain would avoid significant obligations on free movement and maintain maximum flexibility over trade policy.
The EU – for better or for worse – has consistently rejected this approach. The latest British attempt to explore forms of deeper market integration without corresponding obligations met the same response. Brussels has remained committed to a simple principle: access to the single market cannot be separated from the obligations required to sustain it. Protecting the integrity of the single market has repeatedly taken precedence over accommodating British preferences.
The economic debate in the UK has evolved in parallel. While there is disagreement about the precise scale of Brexit’s costs, there is now broad acceptance across most mainstream economic institutions that leaving the customs union and single market has reduced trade intensity, investment and productivity growth. The Office for Budget Responsibility continues to estimate a long-term reduction in GDP of around four per cent relative to remaining in the EU. Therefore, the central debate is not whether Brexit imposed economic costs, but how those costs should be weighed against other objectives.
Against this background, Burnham would face five broad options.
The first is to stick to the current approach: maintaining the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) while implementing the additional measures agreed through Labour’s reset. These include arrangements on food and agricultural trade, carbon pricing, energy cooperation, a youth experience schemes and implementing a non-binding Security and Defence Partnership. This remains the most politically realistic option. Its limitations are equally clear. The economic gains are modest, while Britain remains largely outside the main structures shaping European economic and political decisions.
The second option is a customs union. This would reduce friction in goods trade and particularly benefit parts of British manufacturing. However, recent analysis by the Centre for European Reform suggests that a customs union on its own would generate relatively limited economic gains because it would leave many barriers affecting services trade untouched. Politically, it would reopen arguments about sovereignty and independent trade policy.
The third option is a Swiss-style arrangement involving participation in selected parts of the single market. This appeals to some British policymakers because it offers deeper integration while allowing a more managed approach to mobility. While not impossible, the difficulties are substantial. The EU remains preoccupied with finalising its own relationship with Switzerland and is wary that offering a particularly attractive arrangement to Britain could complicate Swiss domestic politics and strengthen Eurosceptic arguments elsewhere.
The fourth option is membership of the European Economic Area. Economically, this would provide deeper market access than any of the alternatives short of EU membership itself. Politically, it is difficult to imagine. EEA membership essentially accepts extensive rule-taking in return for market access. For a country where Europe remains a highly political issue linked to sovereignty and democratic accountability, joining the EEA largely to avoid a domestic argument about membership would be a difficult position to sustain.
The fifth option is eventual re-entry into the European Union. Public opinion has moved steadily in a more pro-European direction, and support for rejoining has increased, as recent polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations demonstrates. Yet this should not be confused with a settled political mandate. There is currently no electoral consensus behind any of the major alternatives to the status quo, whether rejoining, joining the EEA, entering a customs union or pursuing a Swiss-style arrangement. This creates a curious paradox: if both the current settlement and the principal intermediate models come to be seen as unsatisfactory, the debate may gradually return to the question of membership itself, not as a first choice but as the default alternative to an increasingly narrow field of options.
From the EU perspective, there are additional obstacles. Many member states would welcome Britain’s return because of its economic weight, financial importance and contribution to European security. At the same time, there remains considerable distrust after Brexit, persistent concerns about British political volatility and little appetite for reopening difficult institutional debates. Any route back would therefore require a stronger and more durable domestic consensus than currently exists.
The consequence is a familiar one. The available destinations are relatively clear. The difficulty lies in identifying a politically viable route towards any of them.
What is Burnham up against domestically?
The most important constraints on a future EU strategy remain domestic.
Polling increasingly suggests that more voters regard Brexit as a mistake than a success. Support for rejoining has also increased. Yet aggregate polling can obscure the intensity of opinion. Many voters who oppose closer integration continue to hold those views strongly and often connect them to broader concerns about sovereignty, migration and democratic accountability.
One way of understanding the debate is through two distinct positions that have become increasingly visible in recent months.
The first might be described as the “not now” argument. This position is particularly common among centre-right Remainers and among those who accept many of the economic criticisms of Brexit but question the timing of any major change. Tony Blair’s recent intervention broadly fit within this category. The argument is that Britain’s relationship with the EU should form part of a wider strategy for national renewal rather than become the starting point for it.
Several considerations underpin this view. Britain faces weak growth, high borrowing costs and stretched public finances. Governments have limited political capacity. Any major renegotiation with the EU would inevitably consume time and attention, with the UK negotiating from a position of weakness. Supporters argue that Britain should first strengthen its economic position before attempting to negotiate more ambitious arrangements.
This perspective often overlaps with arguments about regulatory flexibility. Britain, it is argued, may be able to move more quickly than the EU in areas such as AI, financial services, life sciences and digital regulation. Whether these advantages outweigh the costs of reduced market access remains disputed, but the argument continues to shape centre-right thinking.
A second position rejects the logic of reintegration more fundamentally. Rather than seeing Britain’s future inside the EU or moving steadily back towards it, advocates a Europe organised around different levels of participation. Building on ideas associated with the European Political Community, for example, they envisage a wider European framework where countries cooperate on security, foreign policy, trade and strategic challenges without necessarily participating in the same institutional structures.
In this vision, a tightly integrated EU core would coexist with a broader European Association, including countries such as the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine. The attraction is obvious. It promises deep cooperation while preserving national autonomy and avoiding many of the political conflicts associated with membership. The challenge is that it addresses geopolitical cooperation more effectively than it resolves the economic frictions that Brexit created, and presumes a fundamental revamp of Europe’s architecture that is politically unlikely.
These competing approaches increasingly shape the environment Burnham will inherit. The central divide is no longer simply between Leave and Remain. It concerns different ideas about Britain’s future economic model – and its place within Europe.
What is most likely in the short to medium term?
The most plausible outcome under Burnham is continued pragmatic cooperation combined with growing recognition that the current framework may not be sufficient over the longer term.
In the immediate future, implementation of the agreements contained in the recent Common Understanding will dominate the agenda. This can be fleshed out by extending cooperation to a number of additional policy areas within political constraints, as set out in our recent set of recommendations. Beyond that, cooperation could gradually expand in areas where the EU itself is becoming more active and where fragmentation carries increasing costs. Support for Ukraine (including participation in the EU’s €90bn loan), defence finance, industrial policy and economic security in its various guises all fall into this category.
These are not traditional single-market issues. They are areas where the EU is developing new forms of collective action – and where excluding capable partners such as the UK can impose costs on both sides. The logic behind growing cooperation is less about revisiting Brexit than about avoiding fragmentation in areas where scale increasingly matters. Our recent analysis of a decade of opinion polling in the EU and the UK suggests that citizens are open to what one might call “pragmatic Europeanism”.
The broader difficulty is that strategic convergence is developing more quickly than the institutional framework designed to support it. Britain and the EU increasingly share concerns about security, resilience, competitiveness and technological change. Yet the mechanisms linking them remain comparatively limited.
This is likely to produce a gradual rather than dramatic evolution. The immediate future is unlikely to involve either rejoining the EU or a renewed confrontation with Brussels. More likely is a continued expansion of practical cooperation wherever possible, building on the not unsuccessful parts of the reset in the field of security, alongside a slowly intensifying domestic debate about the long-term sustainability of Britain’s current red-line constricted position regarding the single market.
But between now and the next UK general election in 2029, Burnham will not be able to avoid the debate on what kind of relationship Britain ultimately wants with the political and economic centre of its own continent. If Labour hopes to present a credible strategy for growth, competitiveness and security, his government will need to begin addressing these questions during the current parliament. The strategic choices that successive governments have deferred are therefore likely to move back the heart of British politics well before this decade is out.
About the author
Jake Benford is Senior Expert Europe and Geopolitics on Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Europe programme
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