George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor, has said the UK economy has "fallen off a cliff" since Brexit and urged the country to rejoin the EU's customs union as the quickest way to boost growth. Speaking a decade after the 2016 referendum he campaigned against, Osborne argued that leaving the customs union caused significant damage to trade that was never properly debated during the Brexit campaign, and said Britain is now "clearly poorer" as a result.

Osborne told The Independent that rejoining would be "a quite simple thing to do" because, unlike single market membership, it would not require accepting free movement of people, which he called a politically difficult issue. He dismissed the original justification for leaving the customs union, the promise of major trade deals with the US, as "pretty fanciful" in hindsight, and suggested that even a figure like Andy Burnham should back rejoining given the growing recognition that reviving trade and investment with Europe is key to addressing Britain's growth problems.