Andy Burnham, the new Prime Minister, arrived at 10 Downing Street last week with his wife Marie-France van Heel, greeted by the usual British pageantry. But behind the ceremony, a familiar battle is brewing: Brexit.
Rejoiners, still smarting from the 2016 referendum, are pushing what one commentator on UnHerd calls “Project Smear” — a series of statistical claims designed to show that leaving the EU has impoverished the nation. Chief among them is a report by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, authored by British and European economists, which argues that a decade after the vote, the UK economy is 6% smaller than it would have been had voters chosen to remain.
“New PM Andy Burnham warned against 'Project Smear' Brexit claims.”
The argument has shifted from Project Fear’s prediction of an immediate recession — which never happened. In fact, between 2016 and 2025, the UK outgrew France, Italy, and Germany. Now, the claim is a hypothetical: that Britain would have grown faster without Brexit. “Of course, this is a hypothetical that, sadly, economists can never test,” the piece notes.
Burnham, once dubbed the “King of the North” for his Greater Manchester mayoralty, now faces a different kind of challenge. European media have taken note of his arrival. According to i newspaper, European leaders urgently seeking a path to defeat the far-right are watching his “performative style” closely. But at home, the Brexit debate threatens to delay the very discussion Burnham may want to have: how to make Brexit work.
As the commentator warns, prolonging this “clapped-out, regressive, evidence-free debate” on whether to rejoin the EU only delays “the already much delayed discussion of how to make actual Brexit work for the many.” For now, Project Smear is back — and Burnham must decide whether to engage or sidestep it.