Andy Burnham's Brexit U-turn sparks Cabinet civil war as PM undermines Shabana Mahmood again

Andy Burnham's decision to reopen the debate on freedom of movement has sparked a huge row in his Cabinet after the Prime Minister appeared to undermine Shabana Mahmood yet again.

The Home Secretary was not informed of Mr Burnham's freedom of movement bombshell ahead of his interview with The Sunday Times.

A Labour insider claimed Ms Mahmood was “furious”, while a Government source told The i newspaper that the remarks had “undermined” her immigration strategy.

Ms Mahmood has overseen a drastic drop in net migration to the UK, with a peak of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023 falling to just 171,000 in the year ending December 2025.

Rejoining the single market and restoring freedom of movement would likely enable hundreds of thousands of EU nationals to move to the UK every year, with 450 million citizens on the continent having the opportunity to relocate to Britain.

However, the Prime Minister's freedom of movement row comes amid growing pressure on the Home Secretary.

Labour bigwigs Mattia Fahnbulleh and Angela Rayner have spoken out against Ms Mahmood's migration reforms.

Ms Mahmood is now consulting on her proposal to increase the qualifying period from five years to at least 10 years amid fears of a ticking migration time bomb.

GB News also revealed last month that the Prime Minister and Home Secretary have been at loggerheads over the small boats crisis.

While Mr Burnham consistently blames a surge in Channel crossings on Brexit, Ms Mahmood flat-out rejects the suggestion that leaving the European Union has had a major impact.

Blaming Brexit again, Mr Burnham said on Monday: "The reason the small boats crisis has arisen is because we can’t return people, and people know we can’t do that in the same way that we used to be able to do.”

More than 210,000 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel since 2018, including around 85,000 under Labour's watch.

Speaking just a few hours later, Ms Mahmood said: "The Dublin regulation, of which we were part; in our last five years in it, we did not deport as many people as we managed to under our agreement with France."

The UK's final few years of participation in the Dublin Convention would indicate that Britain was a net recipient of asylum seekers.

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Home Office data revealed that 676 asylum seekers were transferred from Britain in 2016 and 2017, while 1,019 illegal migrants were transferred to the UK over the same period.

The problem worsened in 2018, when only 209 out of 5,500 requests for asylum seekers to be returned were completed, while the UK accepted 1,215 migrants.

The figure comes in stark contrast to the 131 who were transferred into the UK in 2015, when 510 asylum seekers had been transferred out.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage raged at Mr Burnham for his comments about Brexit and the small boats crisis.

He told GB News: "It is just not true. Leaving the European Union made us a sovereign country with the ability to make our own decisions.

"It's just that the Tory Government chose not to use those freedoms, and the Labour Government have no intention of using those freedoms."

However, Mr Burnham's decision to re-run the Brexit debate is causing a stir within the Prime Minister's Cabinet.

“It concerns me and my patch. I’m worried about it reopening old wounds," a Labour frontbencher told The Telegraph.

Another minister said: “I don’t think we necessarily want to be committing to that at this stage.

“More trade and more opportunity for young people – I think that’s all a good thing and we can do lots of that, more cooperation on the boats.

“But I think it should be everything up to the line of a commitment to rejoin. The public aren’t in that space yet.

"I don’t think we want to be making the case to rejoin next time.”

GB News has approached the Home Office for comment.