Blair gives Burnham some European pre-conference counsel

Few rub the anti-EU press up like the three-term prime minister. The Daily Mail ran another headline, ‘Now Tony Blair gets his son to help out with his reverse Brexit campaign!’ after Euan separately called for membership of the bloc, as if he wasn’t a spectacularly successful businessman in his own right, thanks to his Multiverse apprenticeships firm.

And it’s true that, timed to land just days before Labour’s annual conference kicks off in Liverpool, the report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is a provocative intervention. In it, the former Labour leader writes that Britain should “initiate a process of negotiation with the EU where everything is on the table” and that Burnham should not be constrained by “what British public opinion might accommodate”.

In his foreword, Blair added that joining the EU should be a “cornerstone of the UK government’s upcoming ten-year plan” with no need to put the issue to a referendum.

Suggested Reading

Emily Maitlis’s diary: Trump doesn’t fear the AI apocalypse – but he’s terrified about the midterms

Emily Maitlis

It probably isn’t what Burnham wanted to fall into his lap ahead of his first conference as Labour leader, despite previously saying he wanted to join the bloc. He has since been more circumspect and, while he used his first speech to the United Nations in New York this week to decry Russian interference in the 2016 vote, he also told journalists on his flight to the US any plans to join the EU were “for another day”.

But in many ways it is actually propitiously timed. Although Blair says Labour should be constrained by public opinion, public opinion remains well ahead of the political parties. Polling by YouGov for the 10th anniversary of the referendum this year found that only 6% of voters thought that leaving the EU had been good for Britain compared to 57%who thought it bad.

Meanwhile, fresh MRP polling by YouGov for the pro-EU group Best for Britain this week examined the impact of four hypothetical Labour policies on EU relations on Westminster voting intention to estimate how it might affect the outcome of a general election.

It found that a commitment to EU membership could secure Labour 321 seats, only five less than the 326 needed for a majority government, while halfway scenarios such as the single market or customs union would see the party win only 256 or 257 seats respectively, leaving them 70 seats short of an absolute majority.

Were Labour to cling to its current red lines on the EU (no return to single market, customs union or freedom of movement), they could see their current 403-seat count slashed to 136 seats, resulting in a hung Parliament with Reform UK holding the highest number of seats.

Suggested Reading

The decline of the Daily Mail

James Ball

And a tiny but telling story this week: delivering a lecture at Florida State University, where he now unaccountably teaches, Boris Johnson was, once again, asked about the benefits of Brexit. His response was, once again, the lie that it allowed Britain to get the Covid vaccine more quickly than anyone else.

“And you won’t hear that in the media,” he said. “You won’t see that on the BBC, but it is absolutely true.” Really? 10 years on, that’s all you’ve got?

All this comes with one large caveat: is Tony Blair really the man to be delivering this message? Part of the success of the Brexit campaign – apart from the Russian disinformation we can now apparently talk about – is the characterisation of it as the elites against the people.

Were we to have that public debate again, it might be useful for the pro-EU side not to be led by the likes of a multi-millionaire former prime minister with an institute for global change, regardless of the fact that his intentions may be good. It is probably also not useful that his report refers throughout to ‘“rejoining” the EU, as if we were resetting the clock to 2016, Obama is back in the White House and Francis Fukuyama was right all along.

But it shouldn’t detract from the fact that the report is a useful and timely piece of work. Maybe Andy Burnham should give it a read on his journey to Liverpool.