Melanie Onn has said she would not support a promise of a fresh Brexit referendum in Labour's next general election manifesto.
The Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes MP made the intervention after Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a future manifesto could possibly include another in-out vote, while making clear that a referendum was not right now.
Onn said the 2016 referendum had been painful and divisive and that the country was still debating its consequences a decade later. She argued that repeating the exercise would be the wrong response.
Her constituency contains communities in northern Lincolnshire where support for leaving the European Union was particularly strong. Onn said she could not support putting a new vote in Labour's manifesto, although she stopped short of predicting that it would necessarily be electorally catastrophic.
She instead argued that the government was negotiating with the European Union from a position of strength and should use that opportunity to secure improvements in the relationship.
The distinction is significant: Onn is backing closer practical engagement with the EU while opposing a further binary referendum on membership.
Her comments expose a live debate inside Labour over how far the party's European policy should move beyond improved cooperation and whether a future election platform should leave open the route to another public vote.
