UK needs ‘national consensus’ over rejoining EU, David Miliband says | David Miliband
Britain needs a “national consensus” on rejoining the European Union, David Miliband said in response to comments that the UK government was proposing to the bloc the creation of a single market for goods with the EU.
The former foreign secretary, who is now chairman of the International Rescue Committee, said he thought Britain needed a “much higher dose” of resetting its relations with the EU than the government had planned.
Asked about the Guardian report on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said he was “absolutely convinced” that the UK’s security and prosperity depended on “institutionalised, deep and strong relationships with the rest of Europe”.
“I think it’s a good thing when the government says we want to reset our relationship with Europe, but when I look at the reset so far, [which] “It will only be worth £9bn by 2040 and I remember Britain being a £3tn economy, I just said no, we need a much higher dose in our reset.”
Asked whether he would advocate rejoining the union, he said: “What we need to do is build a national consensus about our position with the European Union. I’m very happy with that as a long-term goal… I want that strong institutional relationship with the European Union, but I also know that the deal we had until 2016 doesn’t exist now; we won’t be able to get that deal again.”
He said that the European Union has changed profoundly, with Ukraine being an increasingly important factor. “The biggest issue for Brussels today is not Britain joining, but Ukraine joining,” Miliband continued. “They are talking about joint membership for Ukraine; they are talking about different levels of membership.”
On the question of the Labor Party leadership, in which his brother Ed Miliband could play an influential role, he said he was more concerned with the government’s actions than the leadership.
“Britain is in the eye of a global storm. The global order is falling apart. Our economy is being transformed by new technology. Our welfare system needs to shift from focusing on older people to investing in young people – the million people aged 16 to 24. [are] “We have a huge debate in this country about how we encourage wealth creation, how we distribute it fairly,” he said. [and] Reinvent the way a government works… If we spend all our time talking about who and not what, we miss the point. ‘What’ questions are absolutely key.
Asked whether Labor needed a new leader and the country a new prime minister, he said: “When the world changes, we must change too. And the world has changed fundamentally in the two years since the general election.”
