Reeves’s call to rejoin EU will be rejected by working people, Communist Party says

FORMER chancellor Rachel Reeves’s changed tune on rejoining the EU will be rejected by working people, Communists warned today. Writing in the Sunday Times, she backed PM Andy Burnham’s stance on potentially deepening ties with the EU, saying Brexit had made Britain “poorer, weaker and less secure.” Ms Reeves, who was sacked as chancellor by Mr Burnham when he took office, said: “I am proud of the progress we have already made in strengthening our relationship with the European Union. “Brexit has made us poorer, weaker and less secure. “There is a debate to be had about our future relationship with Europe, and I welcome Andy Burnham’s leadership in facing up to this. No-one in the Treasury ever doubted where my instincts were.” Although Ms Reeves said she believed “Britain’s future lies in the European Union,” she stressed it was “incumbent on supporters of our re-entry to make the argument, demonstrate tangible benefits and to get the next steps right.” While in opposition, however, in 2023 she said that while she voted to remain in the European Union “almost seven years have passed now, we are outside the single market and the Customs Union, we have to forge a path outside. “The last thing I want for our country is to restart the division that occurred during that referendum,” she had told LBC. Denying she was acting out of political expediency to win Eurosceptic Red Wall voters, she insisted that her position was “a genuine belief.” “And the idea that another seven years of negotiations is going to serve our economy,” she said. “Well, I just don’t think it will. And it will open up the divisions, which I think did huge damage to us as a country and I don’t want to reopen them.” Today Communist Party international secretary Kevan Nelson told the Morning Star: “That Reeves looks backward to the EU comes as no surprise from someone who was a leading member of a Labour government that has chosen the economic status quo over extending public ownership and state investment in industry. “This intervention may impress her prospective corporate employers but will be rejected by working people who see the current austerity and socio-economic crises gripping EU member states.”