Conversations about rejoining the EU by Labour leadership hopefuls 'misses the point completely'
Lisa Nandy said Wes Streeting's comments imply that things in the UK were fine in 2015 before the country chose to leave the EU
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said that rejoining the European Union as Labour's answer to the beating it took in the local elections misses "the point completely".
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Ms Nandy, MP for Wigan, told LBC's Lewis Goodall that she found former health secretary Wes Streeting's comments about rejoining the EU "quite odd".
Speaking at the Progress think tank’s conference in central London on Saturday, Mr Streeting described Brexit as a “catastrophic mistake”, and broke the ice on a topic which Labour has long avoided revisiting.
He said: “We need a new special relationship with the EU, because Britain’s future lies with Europe – and one day back in the European Union.”
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was meanwhile probed over his support for returning to the EU as he seeks to stand in a Brexit-voting, Reform UK-facing parliamentary constituency.
Jostling over Labour’s future direction on Europe began as the party debates how to move on from its bruising election defeats last week.
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Ms Nandy told Lewis that Mr Streeting's comments imply that things in the UK were fine in 2015 before the country chose to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum.
"I know that Wes is coming up to campaign in the by-election. I think he'll hear from people loud and clear across Ashton, Winstanley and other parts of Makerfield that that is absolutely not the case," she said.
"The sorts of issues that the Prime Minister has been talking about, about job, living standards, housing, opportunities for young people to stay and contribute in the places that they call home and not have to get out to get on high streets, all of those things are actually far more fundamental.
"I think moving closer to the EU helps us with that. But going back to 2016 and going round in circles again about rejoining seems to me to have missed the point completely."
Following Labour's massive losses in local elections, there has been discontent within the party about Sir Keir Starmer's leadership, with politicians putting their heads above the parapet calling for the Prime Minister's resignation.
Mr Streeting and Manchester mayor Burnham are two of the people vying to replace Sir Keir in any future leadership contest.
But, Ms Nandy went on to say that the public doesn't want to see the in fighting that has played out this week.
"We were elected to bring an end to the chaos and to create real change in people's lives," she said.
"I think we've started to make that change. I think the message that we got when we got an absolute kicking at the ballot box last Thursday was that that change needs to be bigger, bolder, more urgent, more fundamental.
"What we can't do is this internal wrangling and fighting that we've seen over the last week and particularly cutting people out of the conversation immediately after they sent us a very powerful message and going back to talking about ourselves. It's just not on."
Josh Simons, MP for Makerfield, announced on Thursday that he would step aside so that Mr Burnham could try to secure a spot in Parliament and, eventually, challenge the Prime Minister's position.
Ms Nandy said when she has been out on the doorstep this week, she claimed that people who had voted for Reform UK in last week's elections have said they will vote for Mr Burnham if he were to run as the Labour candidate in a by-election.
"There were a lot of people were pleased to see us and pleased to hear the message about go it, doing more, going faster, being bolder. And if Andy is selected as the candidate, I'd be very proud to go and run that campaign with him and make sure that we get him elected."