Peter Mandelson has dismissed the prospect of an incoming Labour government taking Britain back into the EU, saying “you’ve got to be joking” that Brussels would want to renegotiate the UK’s membership.
The Labour peer, a former EU trade commissioner and close adviser to Keir Starmer, said rejoining the 27-country bloc would require a referendum that UK voters had little desire for, after the Conservatives’ botched handling of Brexit.
“I cannot see the British people running towards [a referendum] for love nor money after what we went through during the last one. I really do not think that people are going to run towards a repeat of that experience,” he told a British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) event at Heathrow airport on Wednesday.
Lord Mandelson, speaking at the launch of the lobby group’s report on building “Global Britain” after the general election, added that a Starmer government would build closer ties with the EU without rejoining.
The EU wanted a more “stable, constructive relationship” with the UK, Mandelson continued, but there was no desire in Brussels for wholesale negotiation of the country’s return.
“Reopen a negotiation? You’ve got to be joking,” he said. “They [the EU] have got other priorities. They have other fish to fry now. And they’re not going to go through the back-and-forth, up-and-down, seesaw motion; or another protracted, probably hard fought over, and indecisive negotiation with Britain. So that’s simply answered.”
His comments come after the BCC called for politicians to “step out of Brexit’s long shadow” and prioritise trade, including through closer ties with the UK’s single largest trading partner.
