October 11 2026 - 4:00pm
Former Labour minister Jess Phillips has said that she wants the party’s next manifesto to commit to Britain rejoining the European Union.
Speaking at the Cliveden Literary Festival in Berkshire this weekend, Phillips stated: “I would love to rejoin the European Union, and it would be better for our country, and we should be brave enough to argue for it.” Asked by host Emily Maitlis whether she would like to see the proposal in Labour’s next manifesto, the Birmingham Yardley MP said: “Yes.” She added that “personally, I think Brexit has been a total disaster. It has harmed our economy.”
At this year’s Labour Party Conference, Prime Minister Andy Burnham vowed to forge closer ties with Brussels, telling the BBC afterwards that it was “possible” a future manifesto would promise another referendum on British EU membership. During the event at Cliveden, Phillips suggested that rejoining the bloc might be a Labour policy rather than the subject of another vote, saying: “I would be delighted to put it back to the country, whether in a general election or — I don’t run towards having another referendum, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
Phillips backed the Remain side ahead of the 2016 referendum, and during her 2020 Labour leadership campaign hinted at moving to rejoin the EU if she won the contest. She said this weekend: “I miss being a European citizen; I miss it on behalf of my children.” She added: “I look at the superpowers of our world and I would feel much, much better if I felt less isolated from our nearest, most moral economic partners.”
Other Labour figures have pushed for Burnham to start work on returning to the union, with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan arguing at last month’s party conference that “the heavy lifting, the pitch rolling must be done now.” Khan went on: “You can’t, a week before a general election, pull out of a hat this rabbit of a manifesto and say we’re going to rejoin in six weeks’ time.”
Earlier in September, former Labour prime minister Tony Blair suggested that Britain should look to rejoin the EU in the next decade. In a report published by the Tony Blair Institute, he called for the country to “enter into a structured formal relationship with Europe and initiate a process of negotiation where everything is on the table, but nothing agreed until everything is agreed”. The paper also stated that this ambition would involve “rejoining a significantly reformed EU”.
