𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Mr Burnham does so want to live in the past. If he is not campaigning against Margaret Thatcher for daring to win elections in the 1980s and transforming the economy, he is campaigning to reopen the conclusive Brexit vote of 2016. This is bad politics, bad for democracy and bad for our current economic prospects.

He wants us to know Russians might have tried to influence the Brexit vote. He could instead turn his study to what impact did the very public interventions of President Obama, the IMF and the OECD have with their gloomy forecasts and warnings? Better still he could accept the result and get on with his job of using the Brexit freedoms to promote UK prosperity.

He is floating three ways of going back on Brexit. There is the slow stealthy way of the re set. There is the crazy Lib Dem way of joining the customs union. There is the full-throated way of seeking to rejoin. All three would make the UK worse off and undermine the democratic result of the UK’s largest ever popular vote.

The reset means giving away to the EU more of our money, more of our fish, more of our powers to choose our own laws for nothing back in return that is worth having.

If being in the single market under so many EU laws worked we would have had faster growth when we were fully in the EU. It would be salami slicing, as the EU sent us a large and growing bill whilst changing rules so they could export more to us and we could make less for ourselves. Their package will put up energy costs even more and speed deindustrialisation in the UK.

The customs union would be worse than useless. It means putting back tariffs on a large number of things we cannot make or grow ourselves which we import from non-EU countries.

It means levying a tax on components and raw materials our industry needs from non-EU sources. It means losing or watering down all our trade deals with non-EU countries which we have been able to agree now out of the EU.

The customs union makes people poorer. It is protectionism, seeking to protect continental businesses from American or Asian competition. Why tax our consumers more when we are in a cost of living crisis? We already have tariff-free trade with the EU itself. These people think tariff-free in Europe is best so why impose tariffs on most of the world outside the EU?

Rejoining the EU would be impossible or would come at an unacceptable price. Why would the EU want us back in when the main opposition parties would pledge to leave again? They would not offer us the same terms as we had.

Doubtless the costs of membership would be much higher as their budget and borrowings are now so much larger. There would be no special UK rebate. We would probably have to pledge to join the Euro at some later date. An avalanche of new EU laws passed since we left would be visited upon us. The bulk of UK companies just serving the UK market would face all the needless extra costs of complying with EU laws which our exporters already do anyway.

All three routes to more EU would damage the interests of the UK and undermine its democracy.

Lord John Redwood is a former Conservative Cabinet minister