DAILY MAIL COMMENT: If the PM wants to demean himself by tugging his forelock to Brussels, that's his choice...but ANOTHER referendum on the EU would be misguided

Published: 19:02 EDT, 30 September 2026 | Updated: 20:12 EDT, 30 September 2026 Andy Burnham has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth about Europe for what feels like a very long time.Days after announcing his plans last May to return to Parliament, Mr Burnham - who has never been slow with pro-EU sentiments - insisted that failing to 'respect' the Leave vote would undermine democracy.Yet a month later he was doing exactly that with alarmist noises about 'ten years of political turbulence since Brexit'. Now, in an extraordinary turn of events, he has refused to rule out the spectre of the electorate returning to the polls to vote on rejoining the bloc.It is outrageous enough that the Prime Minister is prepared to ignore the expressed will of the people in the 2016 referendum. But it is arguably even worse that he could now coerce Britons into a new plebiscite where no one would really know what they were voting for.The issue might effectively be the same as a decade ago, but the circumstances are very different. A vote to rejoin the EU would do nothing more than give Mr Burnham a mandate to go to Brussels - cap in hand - and plead his case.Does the PM really believe the Eurocrats would let Britain back into the club without a punishment beating for having the temerity to stand up to them? Has he even thought about all the hoops he would be made jump through during re-entry negotiations?The potential humiliations are almost too painful to consider. Being forced to give up sterling - a currency with more than 1,200 years of history - for the euro would almost certainly be among them. Does the PM really believe the Eurocrats would let Britain back into the club without a punishment beating for having the temerity to stand up to them? Has he even thought about all the hoops he would be made jump through during re-entry negotiations?Nothing we have heard from Mr Burnham amounts to any kind of persuasive case for signing up again. The arguments for remaining out - the EU's dysfunctional nature and glacial growth rate among them - are far more convincing.If the PM wants to demean himself by tugging his forelock in Brussels' direction, that is his prerogative. And, of course, it is red meat for the Left. But he is deluded if he thinks he can talk the British people into voting in the dark for something they have already rejected in unambiguous terms.New Chinese threatWhile MI5's warning about Chinese state activity in Britain's universities is unprecedented, it hardly comes out of the blue.It has been an open secret for years that the Beijing authorities have a voracious appetite for gathering data on the Westminster political apparatus, including IT systems. That they're also taking an interest in academic research on cybersecurity and covert communications is a dangerous new front.The MI5 alert is an important reminder that we can never be too vigilant when it comes to the espionage threat from hostile powers. It should also serve as a marker for our universities – which welcome the inflated tuition fees paid by overseas students - to be rather more choosy about whose money they accept.Energy failureWith annual energy bills set to rise by almost £300 in January, the PM is correct to say that Britons face a 'tough winter'.Which begs the question of why he hasn't already proceeded with plans to approve drilling the North Sea's Jackdaw gas field. Or might it have something to do with the by-election Labour's about to fight against Zack Polanski's eco-zealot Greens?