Former UK leader urges nation to rejoin EU

Former long-term United Kingdom prime minister Tony Blair has called on the country's current government to pledge to rejoin the European Union within the next 10 years.

Blair, who led a Labour Party government from 1997 to 2007, said the time is right for UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to change the stance of today's Labour Party government on the 2016 referendum that led to the UK's exit from the EU in 2020, an event known as Brexit.

"Britain should signal an intention if the terms are right to enter into a structured formal relationship with Europe and initiate a process of negotiation where everything is on the table but nothing agreed until everything is agreed," Blair wrote in a foreword for a paper titled Beyond Leave and Remain: A Path to Rejoining a Reformed Europe that was published by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, or TBI.

In the foreword, Blair says the UK should once again accept the free movement of people from within the EU, and be ready to make a financial contribution to the bloc to secure membership.

He said Burnham could list the intention to rejoin the EU among priorities in his 10-year plan, which is set to be published in November.

Since the 2016 referendum that was called by the Conservative Party government of the time led by David Cameron, the Labour Party has said it would honor the result and not revisit the issue for at least a generation.

But the close – 51.89 percent to 48.11 percent – result of the 2016 vote and the economic woes that have befallen the UK since it left the European single market have led to ever louder calls for the issue to be talked about once again.

In the research paper published on Thursday, the TBI says: "Over the next decade, Britain should work towards the ambition of rejoining a significantly reformed EU."

Other senior Labour Party figures have also recently called for Brexit to be revisited, including Wes Streeting, the UK's defense secretary, who said it was a "catastrophic mistake". Burnham told The Guardian newspaper last year: "I hope in my lifetime I see this country rejoin the European Union." And a new YouGov survey conducted on behalf of the pro-EU group Best for Britain found the Labour Party could double the number of seats it has in Parliament if it promises to rejoin the bloc.

Despite that survey of the opinions of 13,000 people, many Labour Party politicians are fearful about what could go wrong if they attempt to rerun the 2016 referendum, including such a move fanning the flames of far-right resentment and fueling the continued rise of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party Reform UK.