John Healey says UK apology over historic role in slave trade won’t lead to financial reparations – UK politics live
Ahead of a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, Andy Burnham wrote that Britain needed to ‘acknowledge its complicated history’ At the end of his interview with Kuennsberg, Healey was also asked to comment on a potential apology for Britain’s near-250 years of perpetrating the slave trade and why the government should or shouldn’t pay reparations to enslaved people and their countries. Sitting in th
The former chancellor Rachel Reeves has argued Britain’s future should be back in the European Union, saying Brexit has made the UK “poorer, weaker and less secure”.
In her first major intervention since leaving the Treasury when Andy Burnham took office, she said those forging a path back towards EU membership had to make compelling arguments to the public.
Reeves, who was sacked as chancellor by Burnham, said in an article for the Sunday Times that no one who worked with her in the Treasury could be in doubt about her pro-European instincts. “I am proud of the progress we have already made in strengthening our relationship with the European Union. Brexit has made us poorer, weaker and less secure,” she said.
“There is a debate to be had about our future relationship with Europe, and I welcome Andy Burnham’s leadership in facing up to this. No one in the Treasury ever doubted where my instincts were.”
The current focus for British negotiations is the EU summit later this month to seal an agreement to ease some trading restrictions and a youth mobility deal. But the prime minister has made it clear he wants to see a long-term and stable relationship with the bloc.
Burnham has said he believes there should be “honest discussion” about freedom of movement and that rejoining the single market could be done without the need for another referendum, if Labour put it in its manifesto. In contrast, he said fully rejoining would need another in-out poll.
