The politician who helped draft the manifesto that ruled out EU re-entry has now publicly declared that Britain belongs inside the European Union.
Rachel Reeves, writing in the Sunday Times in her first significant public statement since departing the Treasury, called Brexit a historic error that left the country diminished.
Her intervention represents a striking reversal from the position she championed during Labour’s 2024 general election campaign, when the party explicitly rejected any return to Brussels.
Reeves said Brexit had made Britain “poorer, weaker and less secure,” setting out a case for membership that she acknowledged many of her former colleagues had long suspected she privately held.
“No one in the Treasury ever doubted where my instincts were. I do believe Britain’s future lies in the European Union,” she wrote.
Despite her conviction, Reeves was careful to put the burden of persuasion on those who share her view, insisting it is incumbent on supporters of re-entry to build a credible public argument.
She called for immediate, concrete progress, urging the government to secure confirmation of a youth mobility scheme and advance discussions on joining the Security Action for Europe defence partnership ahead of an upcoming UK-EU summit.
SAFE, which was announced last March, forms part of a broader European rearmament drive that gathered pace following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Demonstrate tangible benefits and… get the next steps right, especially ahead of the UK-EU summit later this month,” Reeves said, framing near-term diplomatic wins as essential to building wider public support.
The backdrop to her remarks is a debate that Prime Minister Andy Burnham has deliberately reopened, placing three distinct options on the table: full EU membership, rejoining the single market, or rejoining the customs union.
Burnham has argued the time has come to examine options that would allow Britain to forge closer ties with the European bloc, though he has stressed any changes would require a fresh electoral mandate.
With the next general election not due until 2029, the timetable for any formal shift in policy remains distant, giving both supporters and opponents time to organise.
The debate has already exposed divisions inside Labour, fracturing parts of Burnham’s own cabinet and splitting MPs across the parliamentary party.
Opposition parties have shown little appetite for the conversation, with the Conservatives dismissing any desire to relitigate Brexit and Reform arguing there is no public mandate for drawing closer to Brussels.
Reeves’s willingness to speak so openly nonetheless signals that the once-settled question of Britain’s relationship with Europe is firmly back in political circulation.