Tony Blair calls for UK to work towards rejoining “a reformed EU” within a decade

The United Kingdom should work towards rejoining a reformed EU over the next decade, former prime minister Tony Blair has said, adding to growing pressure on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to reconsider Labour’s reluctance to revisit the outcome of the 2016 referendum.

Blair has urged Burnham to use his 10-year plan, due in November, to put the UK’s EU membership back on the table, a decade after British voters opted to leave the bloc. The intervention comes as new polling suggests that EU membership is now the most popular option for the UK’s future relationship with the bloc in almost every parliamentary constituency in Great Britain.

New poll and analysis by YouGov and pro-EU campaign group „Best for Britain“ found that EU membership was the preferred UK-EU policy option for a plurality of voters, ahead of the government’s current approach of pursuing closer relations with the EU while remaining outside the Customs Union, Single Market and free movement arrangements.

According to the analysis, EU membership was the most popular option in 628 of Great Britain’s 632 constituencies. The four exceptions were Ashfield, Clacton, Great Yarmouth, and Boston and Skegness, where “Don’t know” was the most common response.

Nationally, 35% of respondents said EU membership was the option they most wanted the government to pursue, compared with 18% for the government’s current policy. Support for joining the Single Market stood at 6%, while 5% preferred a Customs Union.

The findings reinforce earlier Best for Britain polling, which found that 53% of Britons supported EU membership, compared with 32% opposed. In Burnham’s own constituency of Makerfield, 29% selected EU membership as their preferred policy, compared with 24% who answered “Don’t know”.

Best for Britain said the latest findings strengthened its call for the government to pursue a more ambitious relationship with Europe.

Blair calls for a different Brexit debate

In a paper entitled “Beyond Leave and Remain: A Path to Rejoining a Reformed Europe”, published by the Tony Blair Institute on Thursday, Blair argues that Britain should seek a new approach to its relationship with the EU rather than simply trying to reverse the 2016 referendum.

The paper calls for the UK to work towards the ambition of rejoining a “significantly reformed” EU over the next decade. It also argues that Britain should remain open to different forms of cooperation and integration while negotiations take shape.

Blair says the UK should accept that any future return to the EU would come with conditions, including free movement and a financial contribution. The former prime minister argues that the debate should no longer be framed simply around whether Britain is “reversing” Brexit. Instead, he says, the question should be whether the UK can establish a modern relationship with Europe that reflects its national interests in 2026.

Blair also argues that the EU itself needs fundamental reform, particularly in competitiveness, defence capability and border controls. He says Britain should seek closer cooperation while pushing for reforms that would make Europe more competitive and strategically capable.

“Over the next decade, Britain should work towards the ambition of rejoining a significantly reformed EU,” the TBI paper says.

Pressure on Burnham

Blair’s intervention comes as Burnham faces renewed pressure over Labour’s long-term position on Europe. Burnham has previously said he hopes to see Britain rejoin the EU in his lifetime, but has resisted calls to make EU membership an immediate Labour policy. This week, he declined to rule out including a pledge to rejoin the bloc in Labour’s next manifesto, saying the issue was “for another day”.

He has instead stressed that his immediate priority is to rebuild relations with the EU and strengthen economic and political cooperation.

The issue is particularly sensitive for Labour because of concerns that explicitly seeking to reverse Brexit could reopen political divisions from the 2016 referendum, particularly in constituencies where Reform UK has made gains.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy dismissed the idea earlier this year, warning against “reopening the circular arguments that we ended up in as a country”.

Other Labour figures have been more explicit in their support for a future return to the EU. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has described Brexit as a “catastrophic mistake” and argued that Labour should ultimately seek to rejoin the bloc.

For Blair, however, the argument is not simply about public opinion. His paper says Britain and the EU remain strategically interdependent, with the UK bringing significant capabilities in defence, finance, technology and intelligence, while the EU provides the scale of its single market and industrial capacity.

Tony Blair, born in 1953, was Labour leader from 1994 and UK prime minister from 1997 to 2007 – the longest-serving Labour PM – winning three general elections after rebranding the party as New Labour. His governments delivered devolution, the Good Friday Agreement, a national minimum wage and public-service reforms, but his close alliance with the US over the Iraq War remains deeply controversial. Nearly two decades after leaving office he is still a high-profile commentator; recent UK polls show he is not popular with the public, with around 20% holding a favourable view and more than 50% an unfavourable one though he fares better than many more recent prime ministers and retains some standing among older Labour voters.

Sources: YouGov, Tony Blair Institute For Global Change

Caption: Sir Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Executive Chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, participates in a session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China, 24 June 2025. EPA/JESSICA LEE