Nigel Farage to challenge Andy Burnham on EU and electoral reform

LIVERPOOL, England — Nigel Farage will use a speech in a Brexit-backing Labour heartland to start the fightback after Andy Burnham reignited Britain’s EU debate.

The Reform UK leader — a key architect of Brexit — will make a “major speech” in Doncaster on Thursday to rail against the Labour prime minister opening the door to a possible return to the bloc, a senior Reform official told POLITICO.

Burnham used his first Labour conference as leader, in Liverpool on Tuesday, to snip three political livewires in British politics, including proposing a change to the “triple lock” protecting the state pension and electoral reform.

Farage is spoiling to address all these fault-lines on Thursday.

“He will talk about Burnham wanting to take us into the Euro, return us to freedom of movement with 500 million people and losing the ability to nationalize key industries,” said the Reform official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the pending speech in Doncaster.

The Yorkshire city voted 69% in favor of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum, making it one of the most pro-Brexit areas in the U.K. One of its MPs is Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.

Burnham has reopened the debate in Labour and beyond by saying he will canvass opinion on several options for Britain’s future arrangement with Brussels and set them out around the time of a EU-U.K. summit later this year.

Those options, he has said, could include rejoining the single market, the customs union, or “go all the way,” which Reform is interpreting as scrapping the Pound in favor of the Euro. Burnham has not made that specific pledge, and Labour resisted Britain joining the single currency when it was introduced.

Farage is meanwhile planning to argue that EU re-entry would curb the ability of British governments to nationalize key industries — a play by the Reform leader that upends the traditional left-right debate in British politics. Burnham has put emphasis on bringing back “public control” of privatized utilities rather than public ownership, but Farage has changed tack from his Thatcherite credentials to express support for nationalization in some sectors.

So far most of Farage’s criticism of Burnham’s speech has centered on accusing Labour of “going after pensioners” on the triple lock.

But his stance on the PM announcing a commission to investigate overhauling Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system will be one to watch.

The current voting system makes it incredibly hard for insurgent parties, like Reform, to get a foothold in Parliament. But after a certain polling threshold is crossed it rewards parties with vast numbers of seats on proportionally little of the vote.

Farage has long been in favor of changing this system — but his party has recently attacked Labour’s reversion to a more proportional voting system in mayoral races as being an “establishment stitch-up.”