One of the main candidates to replace Starmer maintains that “one day” the United Kingdom will have to return to the EU | International

The Labor Party primaries are still a long way off on the horizon, but the two candidates who have already made clear their willingness to participate in them do not want to waste a minute to start campaigning. The former Minister of Health, Wes Streeting, has already taken out of his hat the ghost haunting the British left for a decade, suggesting that the United Kingdom, “one day, must rejoin the European Union.”

It has been an ambiguous statement, because what Streeting really promises is “a new relationship with the EU”, in order to correct “a catastrophic mistake that left the country poorer, with less power and less control over its future. We cannot remain silent on this matter,” he said. With that statement he received the greatest applause from all the deputies who had come to listen to him at the conference organized by Progress, a think tank affiliated with the Labor Party that was created by the protagonists of Tony Blair’s New Labour. Streeting does not hide his adherence to that moderate current of the left (which his critics prefer to call the “right wing” of the party), but he is confident that his charisma, his communication skills and the attempts in recent months to seduce the most skeptical deputies about his message and his intentions will end up bearing fruit.

Until now, Streeting is reluctant to confirm whether he has the eighty signatures of colleagues in the parliamentary group necessary to activate a primary process. But it’s not the time either. Streeting gave his support, as soon as he announced his resignation last Wednesday, for Labor to give itself the necessary time so that the mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, favorite of the bases according to all the polls, could obtain a seat and return to Parliament, an essential condition to be able to fight for the leadership of the Party.

The National Executive Committee has already given the mayor permission to run in the by-election (by-electionin British political jargon) in Makerfield, northwest England, which should take place around mid-June. Burnham knows that that seat, even though Labor won it easily two years ago, Today it is more complicated to reconquer.

Nigel Farage’s far right that swept that area of ​​the country in the municipal elections in England on May 7, has conspired to block the way for the mayor and defeat him at the polls. But Burnham knows she has no time to waste, and her campaign for the Makerfield seat is now also the campaign for the leadership of the Labor Party, whenever those primaries are held. “We have to use this opportunity to rescue the Labor Party, to save it from the situation it is in,” Burnham told the BBC, in a direct criticism, although without naming him. to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I want Labor to be solidly the party of the working classes and communities, and that is going to require a lot of changes,” he added.

Although Burnham has not wanted to enter into the discussion for the moment about a hypothetical re-entry of the United Kingdom into the EU, which would probably contaminate her electoral assets in Makerfield and give ammunition to Farage’s party, her idea about the future relationship with Brussels was already made very clear in an interview with EL PAÍS two years ago. “Reentry is not a political option on the table right now. But I am confident that the next generations, our grandchildren, put the UK back in in the European Union,” the mayor of Manchester said then.

While Streeting and Burnham have already launched themselves into the competition, Prime Minister Starmer, with increasingly less support in the party and the parliamentary group, avoids direct debate with his potential adversaries and continues to maintain the image that his Government is moving forward. It has already been made clear that, If someone finally activates the primary process, He too will compete to try to preserve his position. But as long as that challenge does not officially start, Starmer has repeated again and again that he does not intend to resign.