Andy Burnham thinks he has found Britain’s Brexit escape route

It seems that Andy Burnham is an expert kite flyer. 

The prime minister is now suggesting that the UK could return to free movement with the EU – he told the Sunday Times he wants an “honest conversation” about it.

This is a remarkably bold and welcome move – remember Sir Keir Starmer spending months just trying to restart the Erasmus scheme to allow students to study across Europe for a limited period. 

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And of course, Burnham’s gambit has aroused the usual suspects with their well-practised faux moral outrage. 

For them, the 2016 referendum to leave the EU prohibits any return to free movement, and that’s that. Nigel Farage said, “This is a total betrayal of Brexit Britain”, while shadow chancellor Andrew Griffiths added: “I don’t want to go back to open borders that the British people conclusively rejected… And I really feel for those young people in the UK that can’t get a job now.”

Which suggests both believe that the referendum was about ending freedom of movement (it wasn’t) and that youth unemployment is caused by immigration (it isn’t). But it also shows the venom and hatred that raising this issue stirs up. So why is the PM bothering?

The answer is obvious. Brexit has been an utter disaster, and he knows it. 

On Monday, he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “Looking back at Brexit… I don’t think it has played out as people said it would at the time. We got a harder Brexit than was proposed in the referendum campaign. It’s weakened our economy.”

Pretty much every government minister from agriculture and fish, energy and environment, to the home, defence, and foreign secretaries, and especially the chancellor, would agree with that. They are all struggling to deal with the constant headaches, problems and costs of Brexit. 

Not being able to mention that Brexit is immensely damaging is no longer an option. Burnham knows that to push Britain forward, he is going to have to negotiate a much better deal with the EU, like Canada is currently doing, and free movement is the elephant in the room. 

Nearly all the economic damage of Brexit would disappear if we just rejoined the EU’s single market, but that comes at a cost; you must accept its four freedoms if you want to join. While the vast majority of people would have no problem with the free movement of goods, services and capital, free movement of people arouses real fear.

That is doubtless why Burnham has flown his kite is such a clever way, by calling for a new debate on immigration and suggesting that free movement led to immigrants who stayed a few years and then went home, rather than the post-Brexit immigration which has led to many more people coming here to stay permanently. 

He told GMB: “I think we’ve got weaker control now. The reason the small boats crisis has arisen is because we can’t return people, and people know we can’t do that in the same way that we used to be able to.” 

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This makes it sound like freedom of movement is a sensible policy that even those fearful of migration should support. It even appeals to the bigots; it suggests that rejoining the EU will reduce immigration, mean British jobs for British people and end the “invasion” of small boats across the Channel. Only the last point is probably true, but it is a clever way of pointing out that those who thought Brexit would win back “control of our borders” were sold a lie.  

Kite flying is not without its problems. This issue is a dangerous and difficult path to start down. The Cabinet and the Labour Party are obviously split on whether this fight is sensible, let alone winnable.

Burnham is hedging his bets with comments like he will not “jump to a firm position” on free movement, but then also adding that it would not be a red line in talks either. You can expect this to be the pattern for some time – raising kites like freedom of movement to see how they fly, until one day the kite of once again joining the EU as a full member is raised.

Some might say the PM should put the kites away and just lay out the position he believes in – and possibly fight an early election on it. That is not going to happen, yet.

For now, at least Burnham is trying to rewrite the terms of the debate in order to give his government room for manoeuvre. He is prodding the country to tell him how far he can go. It is the exact opposite of the mad, self-defeating cul-de-sac that all previous administrations over the last 10 years have managed to reverse themselves into. 

This is, at last, a step in the right direction. Flying a kite during a storm is sometimes a good idea.