He backed the U.K. government’s current approach to the European Union, warning people would be “misplaced” to seek to return to a customs union. “Look at the arrangements we’ve already got,” he said. “You don’t add a lot more to it through a customs union … and you’d be having to, you know, frankly, accept a whole range of alignment on regulatory issues,” he added.
Reynolds comments come days after former Prime Minister Tony Blair published a paper calling for the U.K. to rejoin a “reformed” union within the next decade. Burnham left the door open to putting a rejoin pledge in Labour’s next election manifesto when speaking to journalists during a trip to New York earlier this month.
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Asked if the U.K. should rejoin the EU within his lifetime, Reynolds said: “What will Europe be in the future? I mean, there are clearly very challenging politics in Germany. It’s very clear that the French presidential election could be different. I honestly don’t know if you will evolve in one direction or the other. So I can’t really give you an answer to that.”
The business secretary added that the U.K. better regulates industries like the tech sector.