Andy Burnham will travel to Brussels on 20 November for the second EU-UK summit. He will go with the polling evidence he believes supports him, and he should read the rest of it first.
Among Britons who describe the state of the economy as poor, 46% attribute some responsibility to Brexit, according to independent Ipsos polling published on 22 October. That figure has been treated in some quarters as vindication for a prime minister who told his party conference that Brexit had caused a decade of drift and division.
The same body of Ipsos fieldwork points in the opposite direction. Asked to choose between two statements, 47% of respondents backed total government control over who comes into Britain, even at the cost of a more limited relationship with the European Union. Forty per cent preferred a closer relationship even if that means the government does not have total control over the number of people entering the country. Thirteen per cent did not know. Among those who expressed a preference, the split is 54% to 46% in favour of control.
That is a plurality, not an absolute majority, and Great British PAC does not claim otherwise. Nor does it establish that the voters who blame Brexit are the same voters who want to keep control of the border. The two findings come from separate questions put to the same sample, and the published material does not show that the same individuals gave both answers. What it does establish is narrower and still significant: economic dissatisfaction has not been converted into public support for trading away immigration control. A Prime Minister who says he will let “the public be the boss” should note which way the public answered when the trade-off was put to them directly.
Great British PAC’s position
Great British PAC is a pro-Brexit organisation, and we make no apology for it. Leaving the European Union was a democratic decision in the fullest sense: an instruction from the British people about who should make their laws, control their borders and decide their future. That instruction has not been withdrawn, and no subsequent economic grievance can quietly cancel it on the public’s behalf.
Our position is straightforward. Trade and diplomatic cooperation with our European neighbours are desirable and always were. The free flow of goods, data, students and tourists does not require the transfer of sovereign powers over immigration, law-making or the courts. The mistake, made consistently since 2016 by those who never accepted the referendum result, is to treat closer relations as a package deal in which Britain must buy the economic parts by surrendering the constitutional parts.
Britain can be a close friend to Europe without being a subordinate member of it. The question for 20 November is not whether cooperation is good. It is what the Government is preparing to pay for it, and whether it intends to tell the public the price before it pays.
Three different questions, often treated as one
Much of the commentary surrounding the EU debate depends on conflating questions that measure entirely different things. The Ipsos data allows them to be separated, and the separation matters.
The first question is who or what is responsible for the state of the economy. Here, among those who say the economy is poor, 46% point at Brexit, alongside 44% who point at decisions by US President Donald Trump, 43% at the war in Ukraine, 41% at the pandemic, 39% at Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, and 21% at Andy Burnham and John Healey. Blaming Brexit is one item in a long list, and it does not, on its own, describe anyone’s preferred constitutional settlement.
The second question is whether voters will accept reduced control over immigration in exchange for closer EU relations. This was asked of a weighted base of 1,077 British adults aged 18 to 75. Forty-seven per cent rejected the trade and 40% accepted it. The disagreement is generational and regional. Among 18 to 34 year olds, 52% chose the closer relationship, as did 53% of respondents in London and 53% in Scotland. Among those aged 55 to 75, 61% chose total control, as did 52% in the North and 50% in the Midlands.
The third question is whether Britain should rejoin the European Union. The Ipsos poll did not ask it and cannot answer it. Campaign groups have commissioned research that shows a rejoin lead, including a survey by Obsurvant for European Movement UK reporting a split of 57% to 30%, and earlier polling by other firms has shown similar movement. Those are legitimate findings, from campaign-commissioned research by an organisation campaigning for the outcome it tested. They also measure a question the country has not been asked to decide.
The three findings sit together without contradiction. A voter can hold the Government responsible for the state of the economy, can list Brexit among several explanations for it, and can still refuse to trade away control of the border. That is precisely what the polling permits, and it is why citing the 46% figure as though it settled the constitutional argument does not work.
What is actually on the table
It is worth being precise about what is confirmed, what is reported and what is merely assumed, because the distinction has been blurred throughout this debate.
The European Council confirmed on 12 October that António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen will receive the Prime Minister in Brussels on 20 November, with a joint declaration expected at the end. That is a matter of record. The published agenda covers defence and security, energy, agrifood rules, climate, “people-to-people contacts”, and migration and law enforcement. That is also a matter of record, and the last two headings are the ones that should concern anyone who values control of the border. “People-to-people contacts” is the diplomatic term for mobility, and “migration and law enforcement” is how the European Commission describes cooperation built on shared databases and shared legal authority.
The specific measure under negotiation is a youth mobility scheme, described in Government briefing as a Youth Experience Scheme, which would allow British and EU citizens under 30 to live, work or study in each other’s countries for up to three years. The UK is reported to want an annual cap below 50,000, while the EU has pushed for 150,000, according to The Independent. Brussels has also sought home fee status for incoming EU students at British universities, a demand it is now considering shelving so that a deal can be signed, as Politico reported. Both of these are reported negotiating positions, obtained from briefings, not agreed text. They should be treated as such, and they should be published in full if they become agreements.
The same caution applies to “Made in Europe”. Britain’s exclusion from that initiative, which would reserve EU supply chains in renewable energy, nuclear and electric vehicles, is being discussed in the same breath as the reset. The Prime Minister has acknowledged the risk to British manufacturing. The EU has not settled its own position, and EU lawmakers are not expected to agree one before December. What has been reported is that the UK might be offered an opt-out in return for raising tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, a condition attributed in press reporting to Berlin. That is not confirmed policy on either side. The principle it illustrates is what matters: market access purchased with regulatory alignment is still regulatory alignment, and if EU trade policy is to become British trade policy, the public should be told plainly.
The red lines and the Prime Minister’s own words
Labour’s 2024 manifesto ruled out returning to the EU, the single market or the customs union, and restoring freedom of movement. The Government says it is honouring those commitments, and that a return to free movement is “not on the table”.
The Prime Minister has nonetheless declined to rule it out beyond the next election. Speaking in the Commons on 12 October, he said that “sticking with the status quo is not good enough for Britain” and that it “would be a major dereliction of duty to turn away” from exploring closer relations, adding that the Government should “set up a serious dialogue about the different options for our relationship in the long term” before the Brussels summit.
Earlier, in an interview with the BBC’s political editor on 30 September, he was asked directly whether a future Labour manifesto could promise a fresh in-out referendum. His answer was that a referendum “wouldn’t be the right thing to do right now”, and then: “Yes, things are possible. I think where we are isn’t good enough.” He added that Britain needed to “consider the options” for its relationship with the EU. He has previously said he advocated rejoining within his lifetime.
A prime minister is entitled to change his mind. What he is not entitled to do is campaign on red lines and then describe those red lines as merely the current position, subject to a dialogue he intends to open. The distinction between “not on the table” and “not on the table for now” is the whole of the argument. Voters who were told in 2024 that freedom of movement was off the agenda are entitled to hear, before the next election, whether it still is.
The response from the opposition parties was immediate. Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, accused the Prime Minister of “trying to sneak us back into Brussels via the back door”, adding that what had done real harm was “a Labour government that can’t deliver growth, can’t control migration and now wants to outsource the job to Brussels”. The Conservative deputy leader, Alex Burghart, said Labour was already “dragging us into the European Union via the back door with their EU reset” and that Labour “cannot pin the blame for their disastrous economic decisions on a vote that happened over a decade ago”. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens make the opposite case, arguing the Government is not going far enough. The Greens want customs union membership, with full EU membership as “the best option”.
Statements from European leaders are a separate category again. President Macron has said it would be “very good news” if Britain wanted to rejoin. Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his country would welcome Britain back “with open arms”. Michel Barnier, the EU’s former chief negotiator, has said Britain would be welcome back, “but there are conditions attached”, and that public consent would be required. These are the views of European political figures, offered in the knowledge that no such question is currently before the British public. They are not negotiating positions agreed by the European Union.
Great British PAC’s concern about the direction of travel
On the record above, the honest position is this. Brussels has not published a document setting out British re-entry as its objective, and the British Government has not said that membership is its aim. Great British PAC states the following as a political judgement, not as a finding of fact, and readers should weigh it as such.
Our concern is that the reset is being constructed as a sequence in which each agreement creates the conditions for the next. A mobility scheme normalises movement. An agrifood agreement aligns rules. An emissions trading link or a “Made in Europe” arrangement extends regulatory dependence into industrial policy. Each step can be defended on its own terms as a practical improvement, and each one makes the next easier and the last harder to resist. Membership need never be named as the destination for the destination to be reached.
That concern is reinforced by the language the Government itself has used. A Prime Minister who speaks of “a 10-year plan”, of considering “the broad options”, and of the current arrangement not being “good enough” is describing a journey, not a settlement. If ministers believe that journey ends somewhere specific, they should say where. If they do not, they should say that instead, and rule the end point out. Vague reassurance is not the same as a commitment, and an ambition deferred beyond the next election is still an ambition.
The democratic point that keeps being overlooked
The case for Brexit has always rested on something the polling cannot measure with a percentage. It is the principle that laws should be made by the people who have to live under them, and that the borders of a country should be decided by its own government and its own parliament, answerable to its own voters.
That principle does not expire when the economy underperforms. It does not weaken because a government decides it has made a poor job of the last two years. And it is not overridden by the finding that 46% of those who think the economy is poor include Brexit among their explanations for it.
There is a further point about the attribution itself. Brexit was a decision to leave a set of institutions. It was never a claim that leaving would deliver prosperity by itself. The years since 2020 have included a global pandemic, a European land war, an energy shock that closed the Strait of Hormuz for a period, and two chancellors in Britain who between them raised taxes in successive budgets. A voter who lists Brexit as one factor among six, in a question that invites exactly that, has not necessarily concluded that the decision was wrong. The Ipsos data shows them listing it alongside Trump, Ukraine, Covid and their own former chancellor.
The public’s answer on the one question where a genuine choice had to be made is more instructive than any list of grievances. Offered closer relations at the price of immigration control, a plurality said no.
Great British PAC response
Steve Wright, Brexit Campaign Lead at Great British PAC, said:
“The polling continues to be clear – that even for those people who blame Brexit for economic woes that long predate it, they still believe that control over our laws borders and money belong in the hands of the UK Government, not those in Brussels.”
Great British PAC calls for answers
Great British PAC is calling on the Government to meet five clear commitments before and after the Brussels summit.
1. Publish the negotiating mandate. Before 20 November, the Government should set out in writing what it intends to seek in Brussels, what it will offer, and what it has already ruled out. The European Union has published its summit objectives. The British public is entitled to see its own government’s.
2. Confirm the legal effect of any mobility scheme. If a youth mobility scheme is agreed, the Government should state plainly whether the numbers are capped, whether the cap is legally binding, how it will be enforced, and whether the scheme creates any enforceable right of entry or residence. A figure described as a cap in London and as a starting point in Brussels is not a cap.
3. Guarantee that no agreement will transfer immigration control. The Government should give a binding assurance that no element of the reset, at this summit or any later stage, will give the European Union, the European Commission or the Court of Justice any authority over who may enter, reside in or be removed from the United Kingdom. The Eurodac and Dublin arrangements the UK left should not be reintroduced under a different name.
4. Preserve regulatory independence. Any arrangement concerning “Made in Europe”, agrifood rules or emissions trading should be assessed publicly for its effect on the UK’s ability to set its own regulatory policy, including in areas where the EU may change its rules in future. Alignment that Britain cannot withdraw from is not trade policy. It is membership by instalments.
5. Subject the outcome to full parliamentary scrutiny and a referendum lock. Any treaty or agreement materially changing the UK’s relationship with the European Union should be published in full in advance, debated and voted on in both Houses, and should not take effect without the express consent of the British people in a referendum. Decisions of this magnitude are not for the executive alone, whichever party holds office.
Britain’s Sovereignty Is Not Up for Negotiation
Britain’s relationship with the European Union should be conducted as a matter of national interest, not of institutional deference. Trade, science, security and friendship are all achievable without surrendering the right to decide who lives in this country or which laws bind it.
The 20 November summit will be presented as a modest step towards better cooperation. Its agenda, and the trajectory the Government’s own language describes, suggest something larger. The public should be shown the whole map before the first step is taken.
The British people set the country’s direction on this question in 2016. A plurality of them, offered the trade-off in fresh polling, still will not give away the border for the sake of convenience. Any Government that intends to test that position should say so openly, before the vote and not after it.
Great British PAC will continue to argue for a sovereign Britain that cooperates with Europe as an equal, controls its own borders and makes its own laws. Economic difficulty is a reason to govern better. It is not a reason to abandon the decisions that made self-government possible.
