Andy Burnham just tried to distract us with conspiracy theories – it’s a slap in the face

There is an old political maxim that when you are losing the argument, try and change the subject. So perhaps it’s entirely predictable that when the Prime Minister addresses the House of Commons for the first time in over a month today, he’s expected to talk about rejoining the European Union.

While millions of Britons are struggling with sky-high energy bills and a tax burden not seen since the Second World War – not to mention illegal migrants crossing the Channel in their thousands – Andy Burnham’s government already seems to have run out of ideas. So instead, in an act of sheer desperation, he is choosing to formally exhume the political corpse of the Brexit argument.

For a man who only a fortnight ago told conference delegates “I think we’ve got to focus on bringing people together”, it seems an oddly divisive tactic. Worse still, in a display that plumbed new depths of political desperation, the PM has also dusted off tired conspiracy theories regarding foreign interference to explain away a democratic outcome they simply refuse to accept.

To suggest that 17.4 million voters cast their ballots because of outside trickery rather than a rational desire to take back control of our laws and borders is, frankly, an insult to the intelligence of the British electorate. What’s more, it is a patronising narrative pushed by politicians who think that anyone who disagrees with them must have been duped.

Already, Prime Minister’s own Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty was forced to row back on the claims yesterday, telling LBC’s Nick Ferrari: “The result is the result. We know what the result was. I don’t think they’ve succeeded in their efforts.” But just why is Andy Burnham so convinced the road back to Brussels is paved with gold? First and foremost, let’s talk about borders and migration.

Rejoining the EU means the automatic restoration of freedom of movement. That is an open invitation to surrender our sovereign, but unused, right to control who enters our country. Independent modelling has shown that signing back up to Brussels’ rules could cause net migration to skyrocket by 500,000 people a year.

Britain is already dealing with severe pressures on housing and infrastructure. The idea that we should willingly open the floodgates to nearly half a million people with zero effective national control is sheer lunacy.

Then there is the staggering financial cost. EU membership isn’t free. It comes with a colossal multi-billion-pound membership fee. When voted to leave, we paid £18billion a year in membership dues. Current models estimate that it could now be as much as £41billion.

Why on Earth would we want to send vast amounts of British taxpayers’ money, which could be spent on boosting our armed forces, supporting our NHS and cutting domestic taxes, straight back to Brussels to prop up a bloated, bureaucratic machine riddled with waste and inefficiency? At a time when British families are working harder than ever to make ends meet, handing over tens of billions a year just for the privilege of being told how to run our own country is pure economic vandalism.

And let us not forget the surrender of our laws. Rejoining means bowing down once again to the European Court of Justice and accepting thousands of pages of EU regulations that we have no power to vote against. It would mean locking ourselves back into the single market and the customs union, which would mean we couldn’t strike our own independent trade deals across the globe.

We would become rule-takers, not rule-makers, trapped in a stagnant economic bloc that is failing to compete on the world stage.

Look, you don’t need a degree in political science to see what Andy Burnham is trying to do here. He wants to blame everything on Brexit. He wants to frame the idea of rejoining as the answer to all our prayers.

Well, if he is so confident that voters will follow him down that rabbit hole in the mistaken belief that we will emerge in some sort of economic wonderland, then he should call a general election now.

The British people didn’t fight to break free from the EU just to crawl back on our hands and knees. We’ve won this argument before. We will do so again.