Lisa Nandy said on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that an \u2018honest conversation\u2019 was needed after a decade in which Britons had been badly let down. Photograph: Jeff Overs\/PAView image in fullscreenLisa Nandy said on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that an \u2018honest conversation\u2019 was needed after a decade in which Britons had been badly let down. Photograph: Jeff Overs\/PACulture secretary pushes back against talk of revisiting Brexit but says closer ties would fulfil referendum promisesOne of Andy Burnham\u2019s cabinet ministers has said she wants to avoid \u201ccircular arguments\u201d about whether the UK should rejoin the EU, underlining divisions at the top of government over revisiting Brexit.Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, appeared to suggest she was not in favour of rejoining the trade bloc, but she said the prime minister should still pursue closer ties to fulfil the promises made at the time of the referendum.She is one of a handful of cabinet ministers who are concerned about Burnham\u2019s plan for an \u201chonest conversation\u201d with the public about Brexit and who are privately warning it could reopen a row that would only benefit Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK.\u201cI do not believe that anybody wants to repeat circular arguments about in or out, leave or remain. I do think, though, that over the last decade we have let the British people down very badly,\u201d she told the BBC\u2019s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.Five European leaders call for closer EU-UK ties ahead of Brussels summitRead moreNandy, whose Wigan seat voted overwhelmingly for leave in 2016, and who is one of the most cautious in the cabinet about reversing Brexit, was asked if she wanted to go back in. \u201cI don\u2019t know if that\u2019s a choice we have,\u201d she said.However, she did concede that Burnham was trying to address the failings of the Brexit deal, telling Sky News it was important to \u201cbe honest\u201d and highlight that \u201cthe deal that we got is not what we were promised\u201d.The culture secretary stressed there were \u201ctrade-offs and choices\u201d to be made which involved a conversation with people across the country, indicating that Brexit would be a key theme of the next election campaign.Burnham will attend the European Political Community summit in Dublin on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Downing Street sources said he would use it to get Labour\u2019s reset deal over the line and to meet many European leaders for the first time.In private, EU counterparts will be expecting Burnham to set out his ambitions for further integration after he announced his intention to move beyond Labour\u2019s \u201cred lines\u201d on the bloc after the next election.At a Brexit reset meeting on 20 November in Brussels, agreements on agriculture and food, emissions trading and youth experience visas are expected to be confirmed.Burnham said at the weekend there was more to come. \u201cThis summit will show what we can achieve when we work together, but it doesn\u2019t need to be the end of our ambition,\u201d he told the Sunday Mirror.Officials will also discuss the agenda for the next round of the reset, which could include another attempt for the UK to join the EU\u2019s \u20ac150bn (\u00a3125bn) Safe defence fund, collaboration on law enforcement and borders, and visas for touring artists.Soon after the Brussels summit, Burnham is expected to give a speech setting out options for a closer relationship with the EU, arguing it would be in the UK\u2019s long-term interest. No 10 sources said he wanted to \u201cframe the conversation, not go straight to the endgame\u201d before testing public opinion.Senior government figures say Burnham wants a mandate to start negotiations with the EU in Labour\u2019s next election manifesto, but that any subsequent referendum would be solely confirmatory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion\u201cYou can\u2019t ask people to vote on an undefined plan like in 2016. That was David Cameron\u2019s mistake,\u201d one said.However, Burnham has faced reservations from others within his cabinet. The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, are cautious about pushing to fully rejoin.The EU\u2019s former chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said London could not have the \u201csingle market \u00e0 la carte\u201d by cherrypicking which of the four freedoms \u2013 including freedom of movement \u2013 it would like in future negotiations.\u201cThere is no cherrypicking.<\/p>\n
There will be no possibility to have one freedom and not the other,\u201d he told the BBC.Nandy was forced to reject allegations that celebrating the UK rejoining the Erasmus plus scheme by linking it to Remembrance Sunday was inappropriate, after suggesting it would help to honour \u201cthe immense courage of those who served our country\u201d before Remembrance Sunday.Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, suggested she was using the national civic occasion to \u201ctry to make an EU membership pitch\u201d. He said: \u201cOur veterans did not fight for a student exchange scheme.\u201dSpeaking on Sky News, Nandy responded: \u201cThey are the only party that is talking about Brexit and the EU. What we are announcing this weekend is that we\u2019re going to widen the Erasmus scheme.\u201cI cannot see what is political about saying that we want young people from every part of this country to understand the contribution that their grandparents and great-grandparents made, not just to us but to many, many lives of people that they had never met,\u201d she added.Explore more on these topicsBrexitLisa NandyLabourForeign policyEuropean UnionEuropenewsShareReuse this content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lisa Nandy said on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that an \u2018honest conversation\u2019 was needed after a decade in which Britons had been badly let down. Photograph: Jeff Overs\/PAView image in fullscreenLisa Nandy said on Sunday\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}