Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, has urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to use an upcoming UK-EU summit to forge much closer ties with the bloc, arguing that Britain is still paying the price for what he called the Conservatives' "bad" Brexit deal. He said that with a difficult Budget approaching, war in Ukraine, and uncertainty from Donald Trump's tariff policies, the government must act now to rebuild economic and political relations with the EU, describing it as the UK's largest trading partner and most important market.

Nowak stopped short of calling for a return to the single market, customs union or free movement, and said he was not seeking to rerun the referendum or rejoin the EU. He called instead for sectoral deals, including in pharmaceuticals, and for access to "Made in Europe" arrangements alongside the government's reindustrialisation agenda, citing estimates that Brexit has cut UK GDP by up to 8 per cent. His comments, made to The Independent ahead of TUC Congress opening in Brighton, come as a new poll found 56 per cent of the public would support the government going further than Labour's current Brexit "red lines".