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. 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.
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