Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra rules out near-term EU re-entry

LIVERPOOL — Scottish Labour’s new leader, Michael Marra, said he does not believe there is a “realistic prospect” of the U.K. rejoining the European Union because of “huge political instability” across the continent.

Speaking at the POLITICO pub during Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Marra argued that the changing political landscape in Germany and France meant the EU was not in a position to consider a British return “on any terms that we might think is reasonable.”

Scotland’s governing Scottish National Party has repeatedly called for the U.K. to rejoin the bloc after 62% of Scots voted to remain in the EU in 2016.

But Marra said that while he’d support a U.K. effort to rejoin should Europe find itself in a “different place” in the future, he admitted it may not be a “realistic prospect” for a generation or more.

“Politics in Europe, I think, is really unstable at the moment. It’s facing many of the same challenges that we are in the U.K. in terms of the global economic instability, challenges in the Middle East, and migrant crises across parts of Europe have really destabilized politics.”

Marra, who took over as leader after Labour suffered a humiliating defeat in May’s Scottish Parliament election, instead urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to be “pragmatic” about forging closer links with the bloc.

“What we do need is a closer relationship because we know the economic cost that’s resulted from Brexit. I want to see us doing that on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “Some of the things we’ve done around Erasmus and so on, I think that is a key thing.”

His comments come amid growing debate among senior Labour ministers about the next steps in the U.K.’s relationship with Brussels at the party’s annual gathering in Liverpool.

In a major intervention ahead of the conference, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said there should be a plan to rejoin a “reformed EU” in the next decade.

Andy Burnham has not yet ruled out including conditions for a fresh membership bid in his party’s next election manifesto, but is expected to expand on his approach when he speaks to the Labour faithful later today.