Rejoining the EU Would Cost £750m a Week, Brexiteers Warn Burnham Before His Brussels Summit

News | By Matt, Editor

Going back into the EU would cost Britain £39.3 billion a year, or £750 million a week, according to a new campaign launched by Vote Leave veterans.

Stay Out is chaired by Oliver Lewis, the former deputy chief Brexit negotiator, and backed by Lord Gove. Its figure is a gross one, and the group says it is more than double the gross amount Britain paid in 2016, the Telegraph and GB News report.

The group gives three reasons. The EU budget is heading towards €2 trillion, with the Commission forecasting it will need 1.26% of members’ national income in 2028, up from about 0.9% in 2019. The cost of servicing Brussels’ pandemic borrowing is set to jump from €9.9 billion in 2027 to €24 billion in 2028. And the rebate Britain had from 1985 would not come back: Michel Barnier has said a new one would be “off the table”.

Lewis said, GB News reports: “The EU that Britain would be rejoining is more indebted, divided and expensive than the one we left, and on the Commission’s own numbers it would cost us £750million a week, with no rebate.”

Gove said families worried about mortgages, energy bills and the weekly shop wanted a government easing the cost of living. “Sending £750million a week to Brussels would do nothing to help with any of this,” he said.

The launch lands a week before Andy Burnham’s UK-EU summit in Brussels on Friday 20 November. At the European Political Community in Dublin on Thursday, the Prime Minister said a deal “could be more like the Brexit people thought they were voting for in 2016”. According to the Daily Mail, he has refused to rule out a commitment to rejoining in Labour’s next manifesto, and said the Cabinet would decide “what, if anything, comes next”.

The government has not proposed rejoining, and the £39.3 billion is before any EU money spent back in Britain. But Stay Out’s point is simple: the club costs far more to join than the one Britain left.

Our view: every step towards Brussels comes with a bill. Voters deserve to see it before the summit, not after.

Would rejoining the EU be worth £750m a week? Vote below.

Read more: 780 EU laws a year, peers warn of Burnham’s Brexit reset

Sources

• GB News, 14 November 2026: Stay Out launch, Lewis and Gove quotes, £39.3bn
• Guido Fawkes, 13 November 2026: Stay Out’s three reasons
• The Telegraph, 13 November 2026: Stay Out’s £39.3bn a year, Oliver Lewis chair
• Daily Mail, 13 November 2026: Burnham in Dublin; manifesto and Cabinet remarks

Main image: the Berlaymont, European Commission headquarters, Brussels (Fred Romero, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons); British coins (Olgierd, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons).