Author of Labour’s Brexit red lines says they deserve ‘dignified retirement’
Chris Ward, the minister who co-wrote Labour’s 2024 pledge never to rejoin the EU, the single market or the customs union, says the red lines “should be given a well-earned and dignified retirement” by the next election because “they no longer speak to the world as it is in 2026”. Andy Burnham attends the European Political Community summit in Dublin on Thursday and signs agreements on food, emissions trading and youth mobility in Brussels on 20 November.
Mr Ward, the Brighton Kemptown MP who was Sir Keir Starmer’s chief adviser as shadow Brexit secretary and one of the ministers working on the EU reset, says the lines were “designed precisely to close down the debate and to narrow the target that Brexit had become for Labour” and that the coming deal “will demonstrate that real benefits can be delivered within those red lines” — cheaper prices, youth mobility, Erasmus+. But he argues Britain “could no longer rely on the Americans”, that the minimum should be “a deep and enduring defence and trade partnership”, and that he “never understood the argument” for the single market without membership; the question of rejoining “was unthinkable in 2016, but it is unavoidable in 2026”. The intervention is understood to prefigure a speech by the prime minister after the Brussels summit on options for the relationship, with a single-market pledge possible in a manifesto but full membership requiring a referendum; Michel Barnier said on Sunday the door is open within four years but with “no cherry picking”. Watch Dublin for how far Mr Burnham goes in front of 40-odd European leaders.