The government has dismissed calls from Neil Kinnock to “look at rejoining the EU” in a bid to get a grip on the small boat crisis while booting out Reform UK’s electoral threat.
The former Labour leader, who guided the party through the 1980s and early 1990s, today urged Keir Starmer to make the bold move to put an end to the “huge self-inflicted losses” of Brexit, also citing economic benefits.
“If we rejoined, we’d be able to get rid of the economic growth deficit, which is costing us £100bn a year, which means the government is losing £40bn in tax revenue. We can’t afford to carry on losing revenues on that scale or the investment in jobs that would go with that amount. We need to resume normality and be part of our continent again,” he told the Independent.
Lord Kinnock added: “It would help the small boats crisis, too, as we will be part of the Dublin Protocol again. Under that protocol, which we participated in until 2021 when we fully left the EU, anyone who arrived by irregular means could be returned to the last EU country through which they came from [France].”
“We had to get out of the Dublin Protocol when we left the EU, something believers of Farage and the rest of them never acknowledged but it was always the truth,” he said. “When we left the EU, we left the Dublin Protocol, which is the main deterrent to irregular migration. That is what has happened.”
But a government spokesperson dismissed the call.
“We will not be rejoining the European Union,” they said.
“Thanks to the new UK-France Treaty, people arriving in small boats can now be detained and sent back to France, with the first returns having taken place this week.”
Lord Kinnock has previously urged the government to implement a wealth tax to bolster the public finances without breaking Labour’s election pledges.