Andy Burnham has been warned that he does not have enough time to wait until the next general election to start the process of rejoining the EU.
The prime minister has so far refused to rule out pledging to rejoin the EU in the next Labour manifesto, but senior Labour backbencher Stella Creasy, chair of the influential Labour Movement for Europe, has said he only has six months to start taking action.
Ms Creasy spoke to The Independent at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool ahead of the Labour Movement for Europe rally due to be addressed by foreign secretary Ed Miliband.
The intervention comes as momentum has begun to build behind the push for the UK to rejoin the EU with former prime minister Sir Tony Blair saying Mr Burnham needs to have a plan in place for the UK to rejoin in a decade.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) also published a paper in the past week revealing that the UK is losing £6.5bn a year in exports alone from not having mutual recognition with its biggest trading partner, the EU.
Ms Creasy warned that the way the world has changed in just the last two years means the UK can no longer stand alone in a world dominated by the big power blocs of China, the US and EU.
She agreed with Sir Tony that the “red lines” Sir Keir Starmer set at the last election need to go immediately.
“I have been saying they should go for the last two years,” she told The Independent.
But she said that delaying the issue for 10 years and going into talks saying the UK would not consider free movement or joining the customs union or single market would not work.
“We need a fundamental rethink,” she said.
She warned: “We are now facing a world that is destabilising and reorganising itself at a pace. Do we want to be on our own trying to navigate that, or do we want to be part of a group of nations who will support and strengthen each other?
“Every single test we face, whether it's energy prices, border control, economic stability, the answer has to be cooperation. The answer has to be, ‘well, we we can't do this from outside. We can't do this if we are, you know, shouting into the wind and hoping that we might get a hearing’.
“That means we have to recognise that having got into the room, we need to have something to say. So yes, I think the inevitable consequence and conclusion of the last year alone of geopolitics has to be, ‘my God, what is our relationship with our neighbours?’”
She added: “In 2026, when you've got Donald Trump using tariffs as a form of national security measure. I mean, literally using trade to enact his national gains in terms of Greenland.
“You've got Russia and China taking advantage of that. Russia, particularly through energy and oil. Then the exposing point of Brexit, which is that we have isolated ourselves from all of the kind of major trading blocks, becomes very apparent.”
She asked: “Do we think we are more likely to secure our national interest, sitting out the fight to challenge that and to be in our terms of force in this world, or standing with our allies in different countries, whether they are in office or not, fighting for the things we believe in?”
She also warned that the EU’s “Made in Europe” provisions to protect items made in the bloc could cost Britain “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
“I look at Made in Europe, and I'm really worried. I think again, the Brexiteers want to keep taking us back to having a debate about 2016. I'm not interested. I'm interested in what's happening in 2026 and the fact that if Europe goes ahead with that industrial accelerator act and we are not part of it. That is hundreds of thousands of jobs in Britain gone because we will be ripped out of those supply chains.”
Warning that the major changes are coming in the “next six months alone”, she said: “I really think this is a critical time for us, and that's why I'm very pleased that we are having this debate and that people are kind of coming forward to it.”
She likened the international crisis to the rebuild needed after the Second World War, but added: “We don't need 1945 Europe. We need 2027 Europe.”
She also suggested that Mr Burnham should be “comfortable” with using an election manifesto as a mandate to rejoin the EU without necessarily having another referendum.
“We do need a democratic moment of consent but I am comfortable about what that might be.”
