{"id":391,"date":"2026-10-15T14:42:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T13:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/?p=391"},"modified":"2026-10-15T14:42:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T13:42:51","slug":"a-dialogue-on-europe-but-with-whom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/2026\/10\/15\/a-dialogue-on-europe-but-with-whom\/","title":{"rendered":"A dialogue on Europe, but with whom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are a few weeks past Andy Burnham’s speech<\/a> about wanting to re-open the question of the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU.<\/p>\n

Since then, there has been a fair amount of (sometimes hyperventilated) comment and discussion about what this relationship might look like, usually in flavours of Why My Prior Preference Was Right Then And Right Now.<\/p>\n

But one thing that has been missing is any more detail about what Burnham actually, specifically has in mind for this ‘dialogue’. Indeed, it’s not even clear who the dialogue might be between.<\/p>\n

Monday’s statement<\/a> to Parliament might have been that moment, as the Prime Minister dropped a bunch of international matters on the floor of the House. That neither Iranian involvement in the Fairford incident nor future UK-EU relations was felt to be serious enough to merit a statement of their own points both to a busy time in international relations and to Burnham’s standing intention to focus more on domestic matters (logically, given that these are much more immediately likely to secure votes in a general election).<\/p>\n

But the statement was very light on details too. Other than that he will do something around the time of the 20 November summit to ‘present options’, we have no guidance on process, who’s involved, how long it will take, whether any decisions will come out of it, nor what actions will flow from any decisions that are made.<\/p>\n

As a best guess – and it is a guess – Burnham will do some kind of high profile speech to start a form of public consultation\/debate, presumably with a nominal end-point that will get captured in a reflection document. That document either gets debated in Parliament as the basis from some new mandate to negotiate or – more likely – becomes the basis of a new Labour party manifesto commitment for the next general election.<\/p>\n

Given that Burnham was repeatedly pushing back not only on indicating a preference option but also on going across existing red lines, it’s hard to see him trying for anything more than this, certainly within this Parliament.<\/p>\n

None of this is intrinsically wrong, but with only just over a month until the summit the absence of any articulated plan, especially one where “[a]t every stage, the British public will be the boss”, seems to confirm the extent to which this whole project was sprung on government<\/a> by Burnham, leaving it running to catch up. That in turn points to a more extended process, to set up lines for the next Parliament, rather than any hurried dash to set new policy.<\/p>\n

From a European perspective that might be the better way of doing things too. Given understandable concerns about whether this is simply another swing of the Brexit pendulum, the effort to seek out more consensual and non-partisan policy positions might better enable the exploratory talks that this development seems likely to produce. Of course, should there be a Conservative\/Reform-led government, the limits to that will be all too obvious.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, it is useful to keep watching how the plans develop and who gets to set those decisions, especially if there is a genuine commitment to popular involvement.<\/p>\n

\"\"

PDF: https:\/\/bit.ly\/UshGraphic152<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are a few weeks past Andy Burnham’s speech about wanting to re-open the question of the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU. Since then, there has been a fair amount of (sometimes hyperventilated) comment and discussion about what this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,47],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-burnham","tag-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EUatOU\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}