Burnham says UK has "lost more than we gained" since Brexit

Andy Burnham has said the UK has "lost more than we gained" since leaving the European Union, and accused the Conservative Party of having "burned all our bridges" with the bloc. He made the remarks on Saturday, 14 November, at the Welsh Labour conference, according to The Guardian.

Brexit is the common name for the UK's exit from the EU, a split that followed a referendum in 2016. Burnham said the Conservatives gave Britain a harsher and harder version of Brexit than voters expected when they cast their ballots that year.

He also set out what he hopes to achieve in talks with the EU. Burnham said a new UK-EU food and farming deal would "get food prices down" and put more money in the pockets of British exporters, meaning businesses that sell goods abroad.

Burnham is due to meet European leaders at a UK-EU summit next week. He is seeking agreements that he says could raise gross domestic product, the total value of goods and services an economy produces, by 0.4%, or about £17bn. The agreements he is seeking cover food and farming, emissions trading and a youth mobility scheme. Emissions trading is a system that puts a price on carbon pollution.

Burnham also reiterated Labour's manifesto "red lines", the firm commitments the party set out before its election platform was published. Those lines rule out a return to the customs union, a shared trading area with common external tariffs, as well as a return to the single market, the EU's common market for goods and services, or to free movement of people across borders.

Burnham said voters would ultimately be "the boss" of any changes involving rejoining the single market, the customs union or the EU itself.