What is Andy Burnham up to? In the week of a difficult Budget, the prime minister has chosen to shove the sensitive and divisive issue of Brexit back to the top of the political agenda. For a man whose self-proclaimed mission was to unite the country and pursue a “relentless domestic focus”, he has angered some and enraptured others with his call for an “honest discussion” about the possibility of a return to free movement of workers between the UK and the European Union.
A reset summit is due in November to finalise some modest moves on food and drink border checks, the EU energy trading system and a youth mobility scheme, unobjectionable to all but the most hardened Eurosceptics. Yet this innocuous agenda is surely going to be overshadowed by this “honest discussion” – the kind of thing a hapless marriage counsellor might advise, accidentally provoking an explosion of recrimination. Mr Burnham might recall what befell David Cameron, who tried to insist during his EU renegotiations with German chancellor Angela Merkel that some aspects of free movement had to be revisited: he got short shrift.
