He said: “First of all, I’m really proud of the Prime Minister’s leadership, and this is another example of a Prime Minister that’s willing to confront the big issues and big challenges, whether it’s domestic issues like social care, whether it’s big international issues like our relationship with the European Union. Andy Burnham shows bold and courageous leadership.
“As the Prime Minister said, he wants to take the country with us and take the public with us, and EU membership, as we warned at the time we were having the referendum, it isn’t an on and off switch.
“So you can’t just leave the European Union and then expect to turn the switch back on and rejoin the European Union. I don’t think that’s where we are.”
He added: “I think where we are is at a space… obviously we’ve got the summit coming up but I think around the summit there are bigger questions about what deeper cooperation could look like. What would the choices involve? What would the tradeoffs be?