French finance minister Roland Lescure wants the UK back in the EU (Image: Getty)

A French minister’s call for Britain to reverse Brexit and rejoin the European Union has triggered a furious response, with the bloc accused of seeing the UK as “a place to plunder”. Roland Lescure, France’s finance minister, urged Britons to rejoin the EU as Prime Minister Andy Burnham prepares to lay out options for the UK’s future relationship with Europe.

Mr Lescure urged the country to go “all the way” and rejoin, stressing that Britain can “come back any time”. He said the choice was for the people of the UK, but said Britain’s departure from the EU was “very sad”. Leading Brexiteer and former Thatcher aide Lord Redwood warned: “The UK cannot afford to rejoin the EU. It is a slow-growth zone weighed down by high taxes, big EU charges, large debts and too many anti-business rules.

“By leaving, we are saving billions each year on membership fees and do not have to pay for our share of the EU’s growing debt mountain. The EU sees us as Treasure Island, a place to plunder to help pay their excessive bills.”

Former defence secretary Dame Penny Mordaunt insisted it was not in Britain’s interests to become a member state again, saying: “Many European politicians miss having us in the EU, but any decision the UK takes about our future must be based on what is in our interests, and rejoining or taking any trade-inhibiting constraints is clearly not in our interests. So, non merci.”

Former defence secretary Penny Mordaunt opposes returning to the EU (Image: Getty)

David Campbell Bannerman, a former deputy leader of UKIP who served as an MEP, predicted there was more chance of France leaving the EU than Britain rejoining. “Actually, I am looking forward to welcoming France back as a proud independent sovereign nation again outside of the EU,” he said. “That is the direction of travel, not rejoin.” If France left, he said, it would “game over” for the bloc.

Christopher Howarth, who has worked at the heart of the European Research Group, warned: “The UK would have to pay tens of billions into the EU every year if it rejoined, accept EU laws and regulations, hand over its fish, drop all its own trade agreements and potentially join the euro. France, meanwhile, is engulfed with riots and is teetering on the edge of a financial crisis big enough to sink the euro. It’s no surprise France would now like to invite the UK to share in its mess.”

Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, said: “The British public had their say in 2016 and chose Brexit. They don’t want a return to free movement, and they definitely don’t want billions being sent to Brussels in return for suffocating rules and regulations, regardless of what the French say.”

Alex Burghart, Shadow Chancellor of the Dutchy of the Lancaster, said: “Our people-pleaser prime minister should be wary of these overtures, because closer alignment with the EU comes with a cost, as Labour’s flawed EU reset is already showing. We should not reopen settled arguments about Brexit when the priority must be tackling the structural problems holding back our economy, from Labour’s ballooning welfare bill to weak growth.”

The French minister’s intervention came ahead of Mr Burnham meeting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin. Mr Merz pledged to “do anything” possible to “bring the UK closer” to the EU.

He said: “From our German side, I can assure you that we will do anything what we can do to bring the UK closer and closer back to Europe, to the European continent, to the European Union.”

Mr Burnham said: “The time has come to think more seriously about growth, and obviously we know growth can come from that closer relationship. We have a UK-EU summit in front of us before the end of the year and I think it is important that we can show that growth comes from co-operation, as I believe it can do, as well as facing joint challenges together… It feels to me that the world as it is, is bringing us closer together. It’s making us more closely aligned. We already are very close partners, but UK and Germany becomes a more important axis as we go into the next next period.”

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Andy Burnham accused of ‘inciting disorder’ over migrant crisis (Image: Getty)

Andy Burnham has been accused of inciting disorder across the country because of the way his Government is handling the migration crisis.

It comes after his administration suffered its worst day on record, with 781 illegal migrants breaking into the country in unlawful Channel crossings in a single day.

The record-breaking influx also saw two boats arrive on UK shores undetected, sparking fury in Westminster and triggering threats of protests at migrant sites.

Horrendous footage and pictures, seen in Thursday’s Daily Express, also show what appears to be a man abandoning a child in the water so he can climb aboard a crowded dinghy.

Reform UK’s Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf warned that numbers were “accelerating” despite Home Office claims that the overall total had reduced.

He told Good Morning Britain that the UK has had “north of 210,000 people turn up on our beaches illegally in the past eight years” and warned “people’s lives are being turned upside down”.

Those comments were in relation to the village of Piddington, which recently hosted a symbolic referendum to leave the UK in protest against the housing of migrants at a nearby base.

Mr Yusuf said residents “are terrified that they are about to be outnumbered 10 to 1 by illegal migrant men”.

Home Office data shows a decline in the number of crossings this year, but critics say the overall figure remains far too high, with an insufficient number of people being sent back to their countries of origin.

Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf accuses Andy Burnham of inciting disorder (Image: Getty)

In a scathing attack on the Prime Minister, Mr Yusuf said: “Andy Burnham is inciting disorder in Britain by wielding the state’s monopoly on violence to impose unvetted men from countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea into local communities.”

He added: “This is unprecedented. I am worried the country is heading to a dark place.”

His remarks refer to footage showing coaches used to transfer migrants from the coast to immigration centres being accompanied by a police escort.

There have been mounting protests by masked men near locations used to hold migrants, though police support for security reasons is not uncommon.