A former chancellor speaks plainly
Rachel Reeves has said Britain's future lies in the European Union. Writing in The Sunday Times, the former chancellor argued that Brexit has made the country "poorer, weaker and less secure", and welcomed Prime Minister Andy Burnham's leadership in reopening the debate about the UK's relationship with Brussels. It is the most explicit statement of support for EU membership from a senior Labour figure since the party returned to government, and it comes from a politician who, until months ago, was responsible for defending a very different line.
Reeves wrote: "I am proud of the progress we have already made in strengthening our relationship with the European Union. Brexit has made us poorer, weaker and less secure. There is a debate to be had about our future relationship with Europe, and I welcome Andy Burnham's leadership in facing up to this. No one in the Treasury ever doubted where my instincts were. I do believe Britain's future lies in the European Union."
The significance of the intervention lies in who wrote it. Reeves was sacked as chancellor by Burnham when he took office, and she helped to draft Labour's 2024 manifesto, which explicitly ruled out a return to the single market, the customs union or free movement. That manifesto committed a Labour government to staying outside the EU and making Brexit work. Her remark that nobody in the Treasury doubted where her instincts were suggests her private view sat some distance from the line she defended in public while in office. As chancellor she argued for closer ties without membership, telling the London School of Economics in February that the "biggest prize is clearly with the EU". Now, out of office, she has gone further than anything she said while in government.
What she did not say
For all its bluntness, the article is careful about what it does not promise. Reeves did not say when Britain should rejoin, and she did not call for a referendum first. The BBC's paper review noted that she gave no timeline. Instead, she placed the burden on supporters of re-entry, writing that it is "incumbent on supporters of our re-entry to make the argument, demonstrate tangible benefits and to get the next steps right". That framing matters: it presents rejoining as a case still to be made to the public, not as a policy ready to be adopted.
Her immediate focus is the UK-EU summit due in Brussels on 20 November. Reeves wrote that at a minimum, the summit should confirm the youth mobility scheme negotiated earlier this year, and that she hopes it will also show progress towards entry into the EU's SAFE defence partnership. A youth mobility scheme would let young Europeans live, work and study in Britain for a set period, and young Britons do the same on the Continent, under a special visa agreed with Brussels. The Sunday Times has reported that the UK government has increased the annual cap it is prepared to offer from 50,000 to between 75,000 and 80,000, a figure that should be treated as reported rather than confirmed, since the scheme's terms are still being negotiated.
The summit is the next staging post in Burnham's plan. The prime minister wants to lock in deals on food and drink, emissions trading and youth mobility at the meeting, but has told ministers that the period beyond that would be to "explore options" for the long term relationship. On ITV's Good Morning Britain recently, Burnham said he wanted the UK back in the EU within his lifetime, but ruled out any change in this Parliament. Earlier this week he warned individual ministers in a letter that it would not be appropriate "to advocate for specific options or opine on the likely outcome of the process", adding that any fundamental change to post-Brexit arrangements would be "for the public to decide" and left to the next parliament.
That caution is the context for Reeves's article. She is not, on the published extracts, announcing government policy. She is a former chancellor, writing as a backbencher, giving public voice to a view she says she always held. The distinction matters, and it is one her critics have been quick to blur.
European Union flags flying in a row
Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
The political reaction
Reform UK has said Labour has no mandate to pursue closer ties with the EU. Party leader Nigel Farage has argued that the 2024 manifesto, which Reeves herself helped to write, closed the door on membership, and that reopening the question betrays the voters who endorsed it. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch criticised the intervention, telling the BBC she "can't even believe we are reopening" the Brexit debate. Both attacks land on the same point: that a government elected on a promise to make Brexit work should not drift towards reversing it without a fresh mandate.
The government, for its part, has tried to hold two positions at once. Downing Street has said Burnham is not proposing a return to freedom of movement, and when asked whether he could bring in free movement without a referendum, Burnham answered "no". Yet the prime minister has also opened a debate about the long term relationship that his predecessor did not allow, and Reeves's article pushes that debate further into the open. Reports that Reeves's former chief of staff, Ben Nunn, has joined No 10 to work on the relationship with the EU will fuel speculation about the direction of travel, though a staffing appointment is not, on its own, evidence of a policy change.
Reeves's article also defended her economic record and looked beyond Europe. On Thursday she co-wrote an article with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Nathalie Loiseau and Chrystia Freeland urging the EU to seize 210 billion euros (175 billion pounds) of frozen Russian assets for Ukraine. On Monday she will deliver her first public speech since leaving the Treasury in July, addressing economists and political thinkers at Harvard's Kennedy School. The timing suggests a former chancellor who intends to remain a voice in public debate, not to fade into the backbenches.
Why this intervention matters
The deeper question is whether Reeves's words change anything, or simply say out loud what many in Westminster already believed. There is a case for both readings. On one hand, a former chancellor publicly backing EU membership shifts the boundaries of acceptable debate inside Labour, and gives cover to others who share the view. On the other hand, Burnham has been careful to keep the actual decisions in the next parliament, and Reeves herself offers no timetable, no referendum plan and no route to membership. Her article is a statement of belief and a challenge to her own side to make the argument, not a programme.
That may be precisely its purpose. By saying that supporters of re-entry must demonstrate tangible benefits, Reeves is acknowledging the hardest problem facing the pro-European cause: that the 2016 referendum result still stands, that 17.4 million people voted to leave, and that any return would need to be won, not assumed. Critics will say that is an evasion, a way of backing rejoining without owning its consequences. Supporters will say it is honesty about the scale of the task.
What is certain is that the debate Reeves has joined will not go away before the 20 November summit, and probably not after it. The youth mobility scheme, the SAFE defence partnership and the food and emissions deals are concrete decisions with real effects, and each one will be read as a signal of how far the government is willing to go. Reeves has now put her own position on the record in the plainest terms available to a politician: Britain's future, in her view, lies inside the European Union. Whether the country agrees, and whether any government acts on it, is a question that will be answered in the next parliament, not this one.
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External sources: BBC News report, Glasgow Times report, The Times report, UK Fact Check analysis, Breaking Brexit News summary, GOV.UK, Council of the European Union.
