British Prime Minister Andy Burnham refused to rule out reversing Brexit and rejoining the European Union without a national referendum, claiming Russian interference unduly influenced the vote to leave the bloc.
The recently installed Labour prime minsiter, who came to power off the back of a Westminster insider coup and the strength of less than 25,000 votes in a special election in June, once again expressed his willingness to overturn the largest democratic exercise in British history, when 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union in June of 2016.
In an interview published over the weekend on the arch-establishment podcast The Rest is Politics, hosted by former Blair spin doctor Alastair Campbell and anti-Brexit “Conservative” government minister Rory Stewart, Prime Minister Burnham would not rule out rejoining the EU without a second referendum, as some in his party have suggested.
“I think it’s jumping ahead too far at this stage. One thing I think is true is that public opinion has moved more quickly than political opinion. I think the political class is behind the public on this issue,” he said according to The Times of London.
This comes despite vowing during the Makerfield by-election, upon which result he sits in parliament, not to “re-run” the arguments of the Brexit referendum, and the fact that the left-wing Labour Party he now leads was given power in 2024 after expressly promising the British voter to “make Brexit work” rather than seek to reverse it.
At the annual Labour conference in Liverpool last month, Burnham said that he would consider all options in drawing Britain closer to the EU and suggested that reversing Brexit could be a central feature of his party’s next general election manifesto.
Calls for Brexit to be overturned without another vote have been openly made by prominent members of Burnham’s party, including former minister Jess Phillips, who said last week that she would be “delighted” for Labour to run on rejoining the EU at the next election, but that a second referendum should be avoided.
Meanwhile, in an apparent bid to undermine the legitimacy of the 2016 referendum, in which 17.4 million Britons voted to leave the EU, Prime Minister Burnham claimed that Russia had interfered in the campaign.
“I asked the question coming to Downing Street: ‘Was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia?’ And I’ve had the clear answer that yes, there was,” he said per the Financial Times.
“I mean, these things are important now to put clearly on the record and, I believe, help voters in Germany and France understand that some of this politics is instigated via our enemies, namely Russia,” he added, suggesting that the rise of anti-migration parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Alice Weidel’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) are a result of backing from the Kremlin rather than for having popular policy prescriptions for their respective nations.
Burnham’s claims contradict earlier statements from the former Conservative government — which was by no means pro-Brexit itself — which told Parliament in 2020 and 2021 that it had seen “no evidence of successful interference in the EU Referendum”.
The anti-Brexit Electoral Commission was also forced to admit in 2020 that the Leave.EU campaign did not break any laws or accept any “dark money” from Russia, as had been alleged.
Commenting on the apparent effort to overturn the vote, prominent Reform UK backer Professor Matt Goodwin said: “This will be another betrayal of the British people. After the Tories betrayed them on immigration… Labour is actively preparing to betray 17.4 million Brexit voters [and] turn its back on working people.”
