A new European settlement will take time

On one issue above all, delegates to the Labour conference in Liverpool accept that there is a gulf between what they want and what is politically possible. That is on the European question, according to The Independent.

The Labour Party is united in regretting that Britain left the European Union, and in wanting, in theory, to rejoin. But most of the party recognises that rejoining is no simple matter.

If, therefore, Andy Burnham were to announce that he was tearing up the party’s red lines — its promises not to rejoin the single market, or a customs union, or to accept free movement — he would no doubt be cheered enthusiastically. But parts of the hall would be worried about the implications of treating manifesto commitments so casually.

Hence the attraction of a bold democratic gesture: the idea of holding a general election on a platform of reversing Brexit. This is proposed by Ben Judah, a special adviser to David Lammy as foreign secretary until earlier this year, in an interview with The Independent.

Burnham has ruled out an early election, but the question of what the Labour manifesto should say about Europe whenever the election comes remains a live one.

The Independent shares the view of most Labour Party members, and indeed, according to the opinion polls, most of the British people, that leaving the EU was a mistake. But we do not believe that it would be right or sensible to try to fight an election on a single issue.

Prime ministers sometimes believe that they are entitled to do so, but the electorate often has other ideas. When Edward Heath called an election on the issue of “who governs Britain?” — the elected government or the trade unions — many voters decided that the unions had a good case. When Theresa May asked for a stronger mandate to negotiate Brexit, she lost seats to Jeremy Corbyn, even though he appeared to face both ways on the issue.

The first problem with “rejoin” as a political programme is that rejoining a club is a two-sided affair. Although some EU leaders say that they would welcome the return of the prodigal nation, there is no evidence of any great enthusiasm sweeping the continent at the prospect of Britain’s return to the fold.

The second problem, as Sir Tony Blair pointed out in his surprising contribution this week, is that the EU has changed since we left and we would be unlikely to be able to rejoin on the same terms that we enjoyed before.

What was remarkable about Sir Tony’s argument was not that he advocated rejoining within the next 10 years, but that he wants to rejoin a “reformed” EU. In his view, the EU is too bureaucratic and hostile to competition and enterprise, and should be remade in his image before it is considered worthy of Britain’s membership.

There is a touch of Gaullist arrogance about such an approach, but he makes the essential point that any recasting of the relationship between Britain and the EU should be a two-way process — as much as possible when one of the parties is so much larger and more powerful than the other.

Above all, it should be obvious that such a new relationship cannot be rushed. The important priority is for Burnham to start thinking now about the kind of flexibility he will need in Labour’s manifesto for the next election, whenever that may be, to allow him to negotiate freely. The red lines must go, but they cannot be torn up this side of an election, and the next election will be fought on many questions besides that of Europe. There is a hint of this in Burnham’s remark that he wants to move Britain on following a decade of post-Brexit “drift”.

There are many similar issues on which British politics has become stuck, trapped by manifesto promises made for reasons of short-term tactics. The state pension triple lock is another, as is the quadruple bind of Labour’s promise not to raise income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax.