Nandy rules out relitigating Brexit

The culture secretary, asked about Lisa Nandy rejoining EU membership on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, said she did not want the country to go back over the leave-or-remain divide. Pressed on whether she personally wanted to rejoin, she said: "I don't know if that's a choice we have." She argued the UK has "let the British people down very badly" over the past decade, while saying the prime minister should pursue closer ties with Brussels.

Caution rooted in Wigan

Nandy is among the most cautious cabinet ministers on reversing Brexit, and her Wigan seat voted overwhelmingly for leave in 2016. She was one of several ministers worried that Andy Burnham's call for an "honest conversation" with the public about Brexit could hand an opening to Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

She did, however, tell Sky News that Burnham was trying to address failings of the Brexit deal, saying "the deal that we got is not what we were promised", and spoke of "trade-offs and choices" requiring conversations across the country - a sign Brexit will feature in the next election campaign.

Burnham's reset ambitions

Burnham travels to the European Political Community summit in Dublin on Thursday, where Downing Street sources said he would seek to get Labour's reset deal over the line and meet European leaders. EU counterparts privately expect him to set out ambitions for further integration, after he said he would move beyond Labour's "red lines" on the bloc after the next election.

• •At a Brexit reset meeting in Brussels on 20 November, agreements on agriculture and food, emissions trading and youth experience visas are expected to be confirmed.
• •Burnham told the Sunday Mirror the summit "doesn't need to be the end of our ambition".
• •Soon after Brussels he is expected to give a speech on closer EU ties; No 10 sources said he wanted to "frame the conversation, not go straight to the endgame".
• •Senior government figures say he wants a mandate in Labour's next manifesto to start EU negotiations, with any referendum solely confirmatory: "You can't ask people to vote on an undefined plan like in 2016. That was David Cameron's mistake."

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, meanwhile, are cautious about pushing to fully rejoin. Michel Barnier, the EU's former chief Brexit negotiator, has said London cannot have a "single market à la carte": "There is no cherrypicking. There will be no possibility to have one freedom and not the other."

Erasmus row with Tories

Nandy rejected an allegation by Conservative chair Kevin Hollinrake that linking UK rejoining the Erasmus plus scheme to Remembrance Sunday was an attempt to "try to make an EU membership pitch". Hollinrake had said: "Our veterans did not fight for a student exchange scheme."

Responding on Sky News, she said the Conservatives "are the only party that is talking about Brexit and the EU" and that the UK would widen the Erasmus scheme. Rejoining it, she argued, would help honour those who served, by allowing "young people from every part of this country to understand the contribution that their grandparents and great-grandparents made".

Officials are to discuss the next reset round, which could include a renewed UK bid to join the EU's €150bn (£125bn) Safe defence fund, law enforcement and borders collaboration, and touring artist visas.