Labour should pledge to rejoin the EU at next election

The U.K.’s ruling Labour Party should commit to rejoining the EU at the next general election, London mayor Sadiq Khan has told CNBC.

In an interview on Monday, Khan acknowledged his party’s disastrous showing in local elections last week. He urged the government to be “bolder and braver,” and deliver on its promises, as party lawmakers openly discuss replacing Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“People are frustrated with the lack of pace of delivery,” Khan told CNBC’s Ritika Gupta.

“We have not been bold enough, we’ve not been brave enough. We are in danger of losing the next general election pretty badly.”

Khan welcomed a speech by Starmer after the election results, in which the prime minister indicated that the U.K. government would rebuild ties with the European Union, including strengthening its alignment with the bloc’s single market and customs union.

“Stand at the next general election with a manifesto with a clear promise: if Labour wins the next general election, we will rejoin the European Union,” Khan said. A general election must take place no later than August 2029.

The country left the bloc in 2020, after a 2016 referendum delivered a 52% victory for the “Leave” campaign.

Khan, who is the mayor of Europe’s largest financial center, called Brexit the “biggest act of economic self-harm any country has ever done.”

Khan said the U.K. can tackle the cost-of-living crisis by generating more wealth and prosperity, adding: “The best way to do that is to rejoin the biggest trading bloc on our doorstep.”

Khan highlighted “big changes” since Labour won the 2024 general election, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which he said had damaged global trade.

This and the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine raised the cost of living and the price of energy, Khan said, adding that people must “acknowledge and recognize the headwinds from overseas.”

On relations with the U.S., Khan said people should remember “how unpredictable the current president is.”

He added: “It’s very difficult to have a relationship with somebody like that, who is, you know, just a maverick or a disrupter, but clearly behaves in a way that’s difficult to predict.”

Khan added it was unprecedented for a U.S. president to be “having tariffs, being protectionist, being unilateralist, withdrawing from climate change agreements, talking about withdrawing from NATO, withdrawing from deals made in literally days and weeks based on mood.”

But he said the countries’ relationship was about “more than personalities” and said Starmer had “done a great job explaining that you can be friends with the USA and be close to the European Union.”

He conceded that Labour’s policy successes had been overshadowed by “basic mistakes and mishaps,” calling last week’s election result “more than a shellacking” for the party.

But Khan urged caution about replacing Starmer.

“When I speak to people across the globe, whether they’re investors, chief executives, venture capitalists, they look to the U.K. as somewhere that provides calm, stability and certainty,” he said.