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(soft music)
Brexit is in part a manifestation
of a trend that is global.
It is dissatisfaction with the status quo,
creating a broad and slightly weird cross-class alliance
that votes against that status quo.
You can see elements of that
in the Trump vote in the United States.
You can see that in the electoral coalition
that Narendra Modi has put together in India.
Brexit is not a single event.
It's a whole process and a very painful process.
I was in favor of the referendum in 2016,
and I thought it was about time
that we actually had to make a decision
about what path are we on?
Are we going to be open and conscious
about our decision to be part of the process,
the political process of integration in Europe?
Or are we going to choose a separate path?
And I think the public has chosen a separate path
and that's the path we now have to follow.
(orchestral music)
I think it will be very unfortunate
if the UK became known primarily for Brexit.
(upbeat music)
Well, yes, it is a British brand and fair enough.
This sort of anti-globalization, a little bit nativist,
inward-looking element to politics
is there for all to see across the world.
Brexit is a specific manifestation of that
because of David Cameron's decision to hold a referendum.
(upbeat music)
I happened to meet David Cameron
just once during the period of discussion
as to when it should be,
and I said it should be held rather later.
But he took the argument that during the summer of 2016,
there was likely to be massive migration from Syria
and that would affect people.
So it means that in this country,
that sort of protest movement, if you like,
is gonna have a long-term impact
on the trading patterns of this country
well, well into the future,
which makes it very different to a normal electoral event.
One of the risks of Brexit is a degree of isolation.
And that means I think that
that threatens the loss of the UK soft power
which is very much dependent on our cultural clout,
on our music, our films, et cetera, et cetera.
And if leaving the EU reduces
as it were the market for that UK brand,
then I think Brexit will be very damaging.
One of the things that I think we're going to see
as Brexit plays out is a lot of people being surprised
by some of the consequences of what Brexit means.
The debate about Europe will carry on in British politics.
It's not that Brexit will be the end of it.
But if the referendum had been taken a part
to COVID, the result would have been different.
I think if in 2016 David Cameron had waited
till Trump had been elected,
I think the result might have been different.
We have to face the actual situation we are in
and it will require all the so-called fame,
perhaps the legendary bulldog tenacity of the British
to get us through.
(orchestral music)
[Man] The Spanish ship Begona reached Southampton
with several hours to spare, and for the 450
colored immigrants she brought to Britain,
anxiety was over.
At midnight, the new Commonwealth Immigrants Act.
A large proportion of those who voted for Brexit
did so because of immigration and free movement.
Some people simply don't like
immigrants or foreigners at all.
That core racist vote has been there for a while.
[Man] The large influx of colored people
from Commonwealth countries has created several problems,
but Britain does not intend to call a halt.
The government's attitude on the matter will
remain liberal and humane as it has been all along.
What made Europe a salient issue
was the question of immigration
under the free movement provisions.
When the ex-communist countries
of Central and Eastern Europe joined the EU in 2004,
there was a massive immigration into Britain
which totally dwarfed all previous immigrations.
For example, at the beginning of the 20th century,
there was an immigration of about 100,000 Jewish people
from Eastern Europe reacting against persecution there.
After the Second World War, there was an immigration of about
a quarter of a million people from the Caribbean
and a quarter of a million people from South Asia,
from India and Pakistan and so on to Britain.
Now from the EU, you had a net immigration
of between two and three million people.
Now whereas people from the West Indies and India
were part of the Commonwealth,
they could speak English,
many of the people from Eastern Europe
could not speak English, and they had no relationship to Britain.
And some members of ethnic minorities said,
"Look, my aunt in Calcutta"
"needs to fill in all sorts of forms"
"to be able to come into Britain,"
"but someone from Poland or Czechoslovakia"
"who have no connection with Britain at all"
"can come in quite freely. "
(soft music)
I think it's actually the speed of change
and the fact that in some places you got
very sort of big concentrations,
you would see sort of Polish shops
popping up in the High Street,
and you might have some workplaces
where actually most people are speaking Polish,
walk past a building site here
and you're just as likely to hear people speaking Polish
as you are to hear people speaking English.
So I think it's a bit of that,
but I think it's this sense of losing control,
things changing too fast for some people.
Other people think it's a great asset
to be able to attract people from all over the world.
There was a social question
of the disturbance of communities,
and people felt they hadn't been consulted.
Now that highlighted the fact that we hadn't got sovereignty
while we were in the European Union.
There was something people wanted to do
which was to restrict or manage immigration.
They didn't want to stop it, but to manage it.
But Parliament could not do it while we were in the EU.
And that issue, I think, was the key one.
Without that, I think we wouldn't have voted to leave.
And it was given added salience
by something that really had no connection,
that is, a huge migration from Syria,
which many people confused with EU migration.
Some people might be voting on the issue.
There are some people who've never been in favor
of UK membership of the European Union.
That was their opportunity to vote no.
There were some people who were concerned about
levels of immigration.
The flip side, I suppose, is since 2004,
when the enlargement of the European Union occurred,
there was an increase in the amount of immigration
coming into the United Kingdom, and that increase was maintained
because during the Eurozone crisis,
the UK's economy kept on going with a flexible labor market.
We were a place where people from Southern Europe
could come and find work.
So numbers did go up.
But I suppose one of the arguments is
given that numbers were going up,
given the impact that had
in some parts of the United Kingdom,
it was up to the British government
to make sure that those places were helped out.
There was a misapprehension on the part of many people
that EU nationals came here to claim benefits.
Absolutely not the case.
The vast majority of EU nationals,
including those from Eastern Europe
who were in this country, were working and contributing.
And all serious economic studies show if we cut immigration,
it will have a negative impact on the British economy.
Immigration has been very high in the UK.
It's one of these countries that benefited from
having a diverse population and people coming,
not just from Europe, but from all over the world,
more so than many other European places.
So I,
at the end of the day,
I think there was some misinformation,
but I think there was also reluctance on people's parts
to accept the information that was coming forward
because it's so complex they couldn't quite understand it.
It's very difficult to explain to somebody
how much more the price of your apple is going to be
because now a freight forwarder
has to pay that tax in advance, for the goods entering the country.
And so they didn't understand why economists were saying
the cost of this would be so painful
for the UK in the long run.
Arguably the triumph of Nigel Farage
was to link immigration, which was an issue
that had dominated British politics for several years,
to the European Union, which was an issue that no one really cared about.
And his linkage of the two led to the referendum
and led to the vote to leave.
Now I and most economists believe
those concerns were misplaced,
that free movement on the whole
was good for the UK economy and public services,
but those concerns were real.
And on top of that,
there was clearly a sense among some people
that the UK did not have control over who was coming here.
And of course that was true.
That's what free movement meant
that people could circulate freely more or less
within the European Union.
And it is true that the only way to stop that,
to end that was to leave the EU.
You can never actually tell why people are voting
the way they do in a referendum.
There's some people for whom
the UK's membership of the European Union
had always been a big issue,
and for whom this was finally an opportunity
to say they were very unhappy
about the decision that UK made back in the 1970s.
But it wasn't a big issue in British politics.
Actually it was a big issue in the Conservative Party,
but not a big issue in British politics.
Other people who were concerned
are much bigger particular issue about levels of immigration,
particularly the big influx of EU migrants
we'd seen in the UK since 2004. So that was an issue for some people.
That was why the message of taking back control
of our borders resonated so much.
For other people,
there was just a sort of long-run skepticism about
whether the UK had actually had a decent deal out of Europe.
Remember British politicians for a long time
had always sort of said
we're fighting all these battles in Europe, and we're losing some and things like that.
So that was part of the thing.
There had never been a very strong narrative
that membership of the European Union was great for the UK.
But then you've got a lot of people who
actually weren't voting on EU issues at all.
They were voting 'cause they didn't like the government.
And what's really interesting is since that Brexit vote,
migration has gone down as an issue enormously,
whether it's 'cause people think that's okay,
we can now control migration,
even though levels are much the same,
the composition of migration has changed,
bigger shift towards people coming in from outside the EU,
but still a lot of people coming in to the UK, or whether it's because actually
people have started realizing
there are benefits from migration as well
as what they might have seen before as disadvantages.
I mean of course Brits are less likely
to take up the opportunity of working abroad
simply because we're naturally less good linguists.
And in many ways,
the places that British people aspire to migrate to for work
are very often the other English-speaking countries,
the US, Canada, or Australia, places like that.
And that's where a lot of people have their sort of links.
All the opinion polling since 2016
has shown that the British have become more positive about immigration,
more attuned to the cultural and economic benefits
that immigration brings.
And so it's hard to escape the conclusion
that actually for some of the voters
for whom immigration was an issue,
the issue wasn't getting less immigration,
it was the sort of philosophical almost question
of the fact that we needed to have a degree of control
even if we don't choose to exercise it.
(soft music)
The UK has always had a rather difficult relationship
with the European Union.
We joined it late and we have always struggled with that.
And that goes back to the historical relationship
of the UK with the continent of Europe,
where it's always been and generally been
an objective of UK foreign policy
to ensure that Europe was in some ways divided
and not united against us.
We failed in that
when the European Union started without us.
We then repaired that by joining.
And now we're trying again by leaving.
While we were in the EU,
we had this very difficult balancing act
because we didn't take part
in some of the key programs of the EU.
For example, we weren't part of the Eurozone.
We weren't part of the Schengen arrangements.
We had all sorts of opt-outs.
And British politicians from earliest times
have tried to secure a balance to get the advantages
without, as it were, merging the country fully into the EU,
a very difficult balancing act to achieve.
We wanted, if you like, to be in but with opt-outs,
whereas now you may say we want to be out but with opt-ins.
(soft music)
There's a lot of people saying,
I'm happy to be part of economic integration in Europe,
but I'm not happy to be part
of this process of political integration.
So sooner or later, the British public was gonna have to make a decision
on which path they were gonna go on.
What we were not prepared to do
was what the founders of Europe wanted,
which was to join a super national organization,
which would limit parliamentary sovereignty.
We've got a long tradition of parliamentary sovereignty
which no other country has
and which explains why we don't have a constitution,
because if Parliament can do what it likes,
there's no point having a constitution at all.
So that was very important for us.
And we also thought
we had worldwide links to a Commonwealth,
which was the empire transformed as it were,
and with America.
We thought we had a special relationship with America.
So Churchill produced this argument.
We were at the center of three important circles.
The first was Europe,
the second was the Commonwealth,
third was America.
And British inference rested on that.
We should never get out of line, as it were,
with any of these three circles.
We were the only country
which was at the center of those three circles.
(soft upbeat music)
President Macron of France gave an interview on the BBC
and very bravely said he couldn't guarantee a referendum
and France wouldn't yield the same outcome as that in Britain.
So there are real problems if the EU is to survive.
(soft music)
I think they'll do everything they can to try and resist the referendum in France
because the risk is too high for France
and the risk is too high for Europe.
I think it was de Gaulle who said
you can have France without Europe,
but you can't have Europe without France.
If France leaves the EU, it's the end of the EU.
So I think they would do everything they can
to try and resist a referendum in France.
I actually think even if there was a referendum in France,
France would probably vote to stay,
because what is likely to happen now
is that EU will become more French.
It's interesting from Paris, Paris looks at Brexit and says,
it's odd that Britain is voting to leave,
'cause from Paris it looks like the EU
has been more British over the last 20 or 30 years.
Britain won a lot of the big constitutional battles.
Britain won the battle about European foreign policy.
It won the battle about the regulation of the single market.
It won the battle about the design of the euro
where Britain could opt out of it.
It won the battle of a whole range of issues
about the design of the EU
against often what the French view was.
And so France is now saying, oh, with Britain out,
we can go back to the Franco-German engine
at the heart of the EU.
I think that could change the perspective from France.
Again it perhaps will feel to many more French citizen
the EU again is much closer to French interest
than perhaps it has been over the last 20 or 30 years.
(orchestral music)
I think there were several charismatic politicians,
in particular, Boris Johnson,
who was able to sell a vision of Britain
being free from the shackles of Europe,
playing a more global role,
regaining, if you like, some of the independence
of a supposed Golden Age,
who appeal to a certain kind of British person
who has been for a long time very uncomfortable
I think with the kind of more liberal,
more metropolitan, more cosmopolitan Britain
that we've been really building
I guess ever since we joined the European Union.
Politicians like that do occasionally come along,
and people will listen to them.
I think Boris Johnson probably made the difference
in the end between us leaving the European Union
and us staying in the European union.
He made that much difference.
British politicians have no one but themselves
to blame for what goes on in this country.
On the EU side, obviously the change is less
because it's one of 28 that is leaving,
but it makes the EU a smaller market,
it makes the EU less powerful in world politics
because Britain is one of those countries with a
big diplomatic network, serious military forces.
But there's no doubt that the impact
is far greater on this side of the channel
than it is on the other.
I was not a Brexiteer but I lost the argument.
We didn't convince the British people.
And since then a lot of people have said,
oh, well, there were all sorts of unfair things
about the referendum.
But, as it were, disappointed litigants always say that
if you lose a law case,
you don't say the opponent's case was better than mine.
You say the judge was biased or my lawyer wasn't very good
or the other lawyer used unfair tactics.
You never say but actually perhaps
the other side's argument was better.
Of course that's not uncommon in politics and generally,
but it perhaps was a bit worse in this context
because of the nature of the decision
than it normally would be.
Now ultimate leaders of a Brexit campaign
were conservatives who believed in the market economy,
something quite different, the extension of globalization not limiting it.
They wanted a global Britain,
a kind of free-trading Singapore or Hong Kong if you like.
Now that involves less protection.
And in my personal view,
the only way that Britain can survive
outside the European Union
is through that global Britain, if you like,
through a fourth term of market catch-up,
free trade, lowering tariffs, lowering subsidies,
deregulating, and so on,
which of course would involve
a lot of disruption in the short run.
It's what New Zealand did when we joined Europe in 1973
when she had to find new markets.
She did exactly that. It was highly disruptive.
And a number of farmers committed suicide
when their subsidies were withdrawn.
So it's highly disruptive.
And it was very difficult to imagine
it occurring even before COVID,
but COVID makes it almost impossible,
because the whole COVID crisis means
that there's now more government intervention,
more public expenditure which is precisely the opposite
to the ideas of global Britain.
(upbeat music)
Will people feel conned?
I think down the line, we will see
whether people who supported leave
feel that the promises that the leave side said
that we would get a close relationship with the EU,
it will be the easiest trade deal in history.
That's obviously not proved the cases we've seen.
Whether people really sort of take it out on the people
who sold them that false perspective.
I mean there were certainly
some people on the Brexit side of the debate
who clearly were and are con men
in the sense of telling the public
things which were clearly not true.
In the height of a political campaign,
both sides resorted to simplifications.
One very famous simplification,
one very simple lie we can say
was the assertion that the United Kingdom
would receive 350 million pounds back
that we could then invest in the National Health Service.
The day after the referendum,
Nigel Farage said very clearly,
well, that wasn't actually true.
So there were a number of simple lies told.
And because of the heat of the political campaign,
it's very difficult to explain
actually what the European Union is.
So I don't think we can say it was the trick of a conman.
I think that the context didn't really allow
for a full explanation of what the European Union is,
and that left a gap for these complex truths,
left a gap for simple lies.
One of the slightly dishonest,
but perhaps very dishonest play
made by some of the Brexiteers
was that Turkey would soon be entering European Union
that we couldn't veto Turkey's entry,
which in fact we could,
and therefore that 18 million Turks
could come and live in Britain which was absurd.
So it's fair to say there were false claims on both sides.
I mean referendums are not university seminar.
They never will be.
But the issue of immigration was salient
by highlighting the fact
that Britain had lost her sovereignty.
(soft music)
You've got a lot of people who voted 'cause they didn't
like the fact that we were six years into austerity.
So they looked around and saw,
basically saw public services going backwards,
difficult to get an appointment with their GP,
with their general practitioner, their doctor,
difficult to get their kid into the school they wanted.
And so they were just protesting against the government.
So it was a big mix of reasons for voting to leave the EU.
When a politician or politicians came along
that could generate, if you like, a real debate about this,
it's not entirely surprising
that some of them suddenly became interested
and suddenly discovered what, in some ways, they'd known all along,
which was they didn't really like the European Union very much.
So I think it's a combination of social media,
perhaps lack of knowledge, lack of education,
and some charismatic politicians.
(soft music)
It wouldn't be correct to describe the Brexit referendum
as somehow stolen or manipulated.
There was a campaign.
The issues were all out there and discussed extensively,
perhaps not in the way that academics like me would always have
wanted them to be discussed, but nonetheless they were discussed.
People voted.
It was a legitimate democratic vote
and a clear albeit narrow decision.
I think it's certainly the case
that the government has not been clear with the public
about the trade-offs which were inevitable
between politics and economics.
The political argument was sovereignty,
take back control, very appealing.
And the government very effectively argued that
and also argued that there would be less contribution
to the EU in terms of money.
But on the other side,
there was always clear there would be an economic hit,
and the economic consequences were never explained.
We saw all the language of cakeism,
having a cake and eating it,
and being able to have the best of both worlds.
And in the early days you saw leavers saying,
well, we would be better off
than being in the single market by leaving the EU.
And we never, we don't see that anymore.
We just see the economic consequences
being played out before us. Now the government says
a lot of the problems at the moment are teething troubles.
You might not think that if you are a fisherman
who cannot get their stock
quickly enough to markets in other countries.
All the economist models suggest that
as far as the economy goes,
leaving the European Union is a very bad idea.
Although it won't necessarily be obvious to people,
we will have forgone
a great deal of economic growth as a result.
In terms of our diplomatic clout,
it would clearly be better for the UK
to be part of a larger block
when it is trying to argue
with countries like the United States of America or China,
or it's trying to do trade deals with them,
rather than being just one country on its own.
So if you look at it diplomatically,
and if you look at it economically,
and I believe if you look at it culturally,
leaving the European Union
probably has more downsides than upsides.
(suspenseful music)
COVID is for a couple of years, Brexit is for life.
There will be an initial shock,
and that initial shock will be felt by small businesses
and will be felt by consumers,
for example, in changes in prices,
could be felt by manufacturing
with cuts in supply chains or limits in supply chains.
We don't yet know what the medium-term impact will be.
And a lot of that I think will depend on what type of economic relationship
we manage to build with the E.
(suspenseful music)
Most economists would say the COVID economic hit
will be behind us in a couple of years' time.
The growth we've lost through lockdown
we will get back as we open up again.
And there's a splurge of spending from people who
haven't been on holiday, haven't been to the shops,
haven't been to the pubs,
desperately going out and spending money.
The Brexit impact will be slower but longer term
because it will keep on being an impact for the future.
And again economic modeling
from the London School of Economics shows quite clearly that over 10 years,
the impact of Brexit will be significantly greater
on the British economy than the impact of COVID.
(suspenseful music)
The leave campaign
was hugely better than the remain campaign.
The remain campaign was hampered very much
by not really getting going
until David Cameron did his renegotiation.
I think the fact that David Cameron himself
had made it clear that his decision on whether to stay or go
appeared to be dependent
on the outcome of that renegotiation,
that really didn't really deliver
any really material changes, made it very difficult.
And they were on a back and forth from the start
and they played their hand quite badly
and didn't really appreciate,
I think, where the leave vote was coming from.
The leave had an advantage over the remain
because they had two campaigns.
In a sense they had the official campaign
that had to be relatively straight, relatively official,
not making over-claiming about immigration
or closing immigration
or saying that we want to take back
control of immigration policy
but not officially coming out and say we want to reduce immigration,
not really playing the nationalist card as much as they perhaps could have done.
Alongside that, they had the Nigel Farage campaign
that was much more extreme and much more radical.
The famous picture of Farage in front of the people,
the way he was able to try and connect
the decision about Europe,
about sort of the decision about British immigration policy.
Whereas on the remain campaign, you had that sort of official remain campaign
that was almost apologetic, that was sort of saying,
well, we're not really in favor of the European Union,
but we don't want to leave 'cause that could be damaging to the economy.
The leave campaign was highly effective,
and of course the remainers would say
they weren't telling the truth.
I think it's bad for democracy
that the government keeps pretending everything is fine
because it won't be fine for some period.
And of course, small traders
who are facing problems with that,
problems with selling their goods,
they know that the reality is
it's not all fine at the moment.
But for so many people,
and we don't see a lot of buyer's remorse at the moment,
many people say, actually we voted for it,
we're gonna take the financial hit
and we will get stronger as time goes by.
Fact that we don't normally do referendum in this country
suddenly presented people with a chance
to kick the government, the elite, the political class.
And that's not an opportunity that comes along very often.
The referendum allow people
to shove two fingers up to the government,
up to the people who they felt had sold them down the river,
betrayed them for so long.
Certainly true that we are not as familiar
with referendums as some other countries,
and they are not embedded in our constitution
the way they are in some other countries,
and hence it's never quite clear.
There is always a debate about
what the question should be, what it means.
And that was true here to some extent.
But I did think that fundamentally
people did understand this was a referendum
about our membership of the EU,
indeed not the first referendum we had
about our membership of the EU.
It was a reasonably clear question.
Now it may be that since then people have discovered that
being a member of the EU was a bit more complicated
and the implications of leaving
are rather different than they thought.
But I'm not sure I would blame that on lack of education
or having a referendum in the first place.
These are very complicated topics.
(soft music)
On average, the British public were less educated
or understand less or had less information about Europe.
If you ask them questions, for example, about
how many member states there were in the EU,
or where does the European Parliament meet
or these sorts of questions.
So you can argue that
successive generations of British elites,
whether it's labor or conservatives in power, have
not made a big effort to educate the British public.
(soft music)
When the process of European integration
was really mainly about economics,
that sort of identity dynamic in the UK
was never really a problem.
As the process of European integration
became more about politics and political integration,
political powers of the commission,
powers of the European Parliament,
European foreign policies and so on,
the more political the project became,
the more that was a challenge to the British identity.
(soft music)
Social media could have made a difference.
It was a very narrow result after all.
It's also true to say that the British people
have never really known very much about Europe
or indeed been very interested in it.
(soft music)
People in Britain were never enthusiastic about Europe.
They were always fairly skeptical.
But it was never really a salient issue, an important issue.
But it's also fair to say that Brexit has very deep roots.
One of the key iconic moments of British history is 1940
when we stood alone against Nazi Germany.
And because of our island position,
we could be defeated but carried on the fight,
whereas the French, for example,
when they were defeated, simply had to surrender
Belgium, Dutch, and so on.
(orchestral music)
If you look at Britain, say, in 1900,
we had the largest land empire the world has ever seen,
about a fifth of the world was under British rule.
And our main links were with those countries
with India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, not with Europe.
We had no alliances with Europe.
We were in what some people called splendid isolation.
Because of our maritime position, we had hardly an army.
We didn't have conscription which continental countries had.
We defended ourselves through the Navy.
Now that imperial experience ended
fairly rapidly after the Second World War
in 1947 when India became independent.
I think there is a nostalgia
in this country among some people for empire.
I think the feeling that
we've never really been part of Europe
because we're an island nation is quite strong.
I think the fact that in some ways we, quote unquote,
"won the Second World War" has always made a difference.
Somehow we have this superiority complex perhaps
to the rest of Europe.
All of that I think fed into the vote in 2016.
In 1938 when there was dispute
between Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany
on the rights of the German minority in Czechoslovakia,
it looked as if we were going to go to war,
and the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
gave a radio broadcast in which he said it was fantastic,
incredible that we were going to war
for what he called a far away country
of which we know nothing, namely Czechoslovakia.
Now Australia and Canada
are much further away than Czechoslovakia,
but people would have found their links with those countries
rather than with Czechoslovakia.
Even today there are more British people living in Australia
than in all of the 27 EU member states put together.
So Australia is not a far away country,
but the countries of the continent are far away countries.
(soft music)
Britain saw herself as semi-detached from Europe.
But of course in both World Wars,
she found she wasn't.
The First World War was fought
because of a crisis that began in Serbia,
and then the Second World War because of Poland.
So we could in part be involved in the continent.
And you could argue
that if we'd been more closely attached to the continent,
if we'd had a strong alliance with France,
if we'd had a large army,
that that might have deterred Germany both in 1914 and 1939.
So this is a powerful point certainly.
Geographically, we are still very much together.
The United Kingdom hasn't suddenly been jettisoned
into a different part of the globe.
So I don't know that we can really think
of being without each other.
We are still very close to each other.
We are still very much part of each other.
It will be beneficial for citizens,
for consumers, for traders here in the United Kingdom
to retain a close relationship with the European Union.
There's no downside thinking
thinking about being without the other.
We are where we are geographically.
Even if politically and legally
our relationship has changed,
we are still very much part of each other.
And that's essentially what this new agreement is all about.
It's really just setting out how we are going to be together
and work together in a new way.
We mustn't think that the European Union is a panacea.
So in as much as there are a number of good things
that the European Union did for us,
there were actually also a number of areas
where our law was, in fact, more advanced.
And one particular area
is in relation to protection from racial discrimination.
So we have had a legal framework
for protection from racial discrimination since the 1960s,
whereas the European Union
only introduced these laws in the late 1990s.
And so that's one area where we are actually more advanced
and the law of the European Union has to catch up with us.
(soft music)
United Kingdom is part of Europe,
of course, historically.
So culturally, historically, it's part of Europe.
Economically, it's part of Europe.
And the United Kingdom inherently
is part of the long history of the development of Europe,
economically and politically and socially, and it always will be.
So Brexit in a sense is not about that.
Brexit is about the UK
having a different path of governance of itself
within the European construction.
So although I think a lot of the debate
was about the UK perhaps being aligned with the US
or elsewhere in the world,
all the underlying reasons
why the UK joined the EU in the first place,
the close economic relations,
the close security relations,
the close political relations are still going to be there.
So although we might drift apart now,
I think inevitably we're gonna have to start
building bridges back again,
because the UK cannot deny its history, its economy,
its society, its trajectory,
that it is physically, geographically, and socially,
and culturally part of Europe writ large.
What our relationship will be, how European we feel,
I mean this has been problematic
and difficult for us for centuries.
And this is yet another episode.
And I genuinely do not know where it will lead,
but the UK does have a genuinely difficult
and conflicted relationship.
We're of Europe but not quite part of it,
and that will continue.
Similarly for the EU,
most of the main problems and issues
that the EU confronts in the short term
are not to do with Britain or Brexit.
Did people really understand the benefits of the European Union?
Quite a lot of people thought
that ending freedom of movement
just in one direction is it meant that
EU migrants couldn't come here.
I'm not sure people fully realize necessarily
that it meant they couldn't have the option that they'd had,
since we joined the EU,
of retiring down to Southern Spain if they wanted to.
So I think people are just waking up now
to some of the implications for UK citizens.
So it's gonna come as a bit of a shock that those warnings
that actually this wasn't a one-way move came true.
(soft music)
It's a serious matter
when an international organization
loses a large and important member state.
There are two different viewpoints
about Britain outside Europe.
The first was those who voted for Brexit,
the foot soldiers, if you like, in the campaign.
What they wanted was more protection.
On the whole, the areas which were strongest to Brexit
were the so-called left-behind areas,
the areas that hadn't wholly shared in general prosperity.
They said we want protection
against European competition really.
And we want Britain to run our own affairs
and be left alone.
European Union without the UK
has lost a force for arguing for a more liberal economy.
It's also lost a major world power.
It's lost a diplomatic
as well as a military power in that sense.
It's obviously lost part of its market.
We are a country of 60 old million consumers
and that makes a big difference.
The departure of the UK from the EU
is the equivalent of about 18 smaller states leaving the EU.
So they're losing a big economy.
But they're also losing
a Anglo-Saxon liberal approach to regulation.
And what you'll see is that the EU
will become more protectionist.
I think the loss of that kind of more free market,
libertarian voice within Europe
will actually be costly to Europe in the long run,
because that is a good,
you want a balance of policy between things
that are a little bit more left-wing socialists,
things that are a little bit more right-wing conservative,
together getting a nice balance in the middle
can be very healthy for liberal democracy.
What does the UK lose
with its closure of its relationship with Europe?
I think the UK has had a sort of special place
in that there's so many Europeans who come to the UK,
and some aspects of UK life
I think are really enriched by it,
but particular sectors.
So the financial sector here
was quite large and quite dynamic,
and some of that was coming
from having all of these Europeans
coming in with different ideas.
But also a lot of high tech areas
that the UK excels at in engineering and in the sciences,
all these scientists from across Europe
who have flocked to the UK for decades
because of the sort of very high level in these fields,
we'll still see scientists coming from Europe,
but the flow and the intensity I think will stop.
And so I think that's something
where some of the dynamism that the UK enjoyed
because of its relationship with the European Union,
that's gonna go.
(soft music)
The EU will suffer to some extent
economically from Brexit,
not as much as we will,
but it will be negative for the EU economy.
But the EU confronts much bigger problems,
internally in particular
on the democracy rule of law issues,
which it confronts with Poland and Hungary.
In some sense these are much more fundamental
to the character of the European Union than Brexit.
I think for both sides,
given the nature of the relationship,
separation is going to change things.
For the UK, it changes the way we trade
with our largest and closest trading partner,
it changes the nature of our security relations,
and it changes the accountability of politics.
If you are a leaver, you say it's liberation,
it's independence, it's freedom.
If you are a remainer,
you would say actually the country is diminished
because it no longer has access to those fundamental rights
like free movement,
and of course it is now more difficult to trade with the EU.
That was the inevitable consequence
of entering into a free trade agreement,
which is what we've got,
as opposed to the single market customs union
which we had previously.
All of the polling evidence shows
that the country is still divided
in exactly the same way as it was in 2016.
And so it's very difficult to get a clear view
as to whether the UK will be better off in or out.
It's very much colored by your political perspective.
It very much depends on if you are a leaver or a remainer.
(soft music)
As far as the UK is concerned, I think the loss is bigger.
The EU represents about the destination
for about 50% of UK exports.
That's very important.
We also, I think to be honest,
perhaps have slightly gone back in time
by leaving the European Union.
We've regressed, if you like,
to a nation that believes its illusions,
that believes that it can, in some senses, rekindle empire,
rekindle the kind of role that we used to play
before Europe came along.
And I think that's a dangerous illusion.
(suspenseful music)
What is the EU?
Is it just a club of states for economic purposes
or is it genuinely about something bigger than that?
Common ideals, common sense of what democracy means.
That is what is being confronted with Poland and Hungary.
And that really wasn't quite the issue with Brexit
which was more transactional.
So the EU also faces other big economic challenges.
Can it be competitive with the US, with China and so on?
Again Brexit does not help.
In fact, it hurts to some extent,
but it's perhaps not the central thrust of the challenge
that the EU faces in the next few years.
The EU doesn't seem to have done a lot of public thinking
about how to accommodate awkward squad states,
the UK being the first,
but Switzerland as well on the other border.
And even within the EU, Denmark, Sweden, Norway
always finding it difficult
to see this highly integrated European Union.
The EU is very reluctant to engage with these difficulties.
And of course the UK too has not really thought about
what the future relationship it wants with the EU.
(soft music)
We know that the average UK household
is going to be poorer,
but I think people were skeptical of that
at the time these estimates
were being presented before Brexit,
and some of that has to do
just with the general level of people
not necessarily understanding
this kind of boring technical economic studies,
not understanding that there was a huge consensus
among all types of economists
from across the political spectrum
that there really wasn't a lot to be had
in terms of economic gains from Brexit.
And I think at the end of the day,
we are understanding more and more
this was an emotional response that people had
to sort of dissatisfaction with their life.
And you see this around the world with more populist type policies rising.
I think there was misinformation that came out.
I think even among politicians
would say with a lot of conviction
things like, oh, we're gonna have a lot of opportunities
for economic growth after we leave the European Union,
but when pressed on what those policies precisely would be,
there really wasn't a clear statement ever
of precisely what those policies would be
and how they could generate gains for the country.
And I think it's really too bad
that we couldn't hold people to greater account on this.
But ultimately I think what people were voting for
was not clearly about economic policy
and these economic forecasts.
(soft music)
The impact of Brexit may be bigger on the UK
than it is actually on the EU as a whole.
(soft music)
Scottish fishermen have lost out in Brexit,
and therefore there needs to be another referendum.
The problem is it's for Westminster
to grant a second referendum. And at the moment, Boris Johnson,
the prime minister, is saying, no, we're not going to offer a second referendum
because you had one in 2014,
and it was meant to be once in a generation.
So then the question is
can Scotland go ahead and host their own referendum
a bit like they did in Catalonia
which doesn't have the force
of a referendum sanctioned by Westminster.
And then what happens
when you've got this constitutional clash?
(soft music)
I think the Parliament and Westminster
will resist as much as possible
giving the Scottish public a second referendum.
But I think British political culture are quite a liberal
culture, and I think it's gonna be very, very difficult to resist.
Brexit has reopened the question of Scottish independence
and also the question of Irish unity.
These are last questions, but of course, in one sense,
Brexit makes Scottish independence a less happy proposition
because it would mean a hard border
between Scotland and England.
And just in the EU is Britain's main export market,
so England is Scotland's main export market,
so there would be very serious problems with that.
But of course nationalism is not always or even often
a matter of rational academic calculation, if you like.
It's a matter of deep emotion.
And it's certainly true
that Brexit has reawakened that in Scotland.
(soft music)
The problem is that any state that wishes to join the EU
needs to have the unanimous agreement of the remaining 27,
and of course, that raises the question
which way will Spain vote on something as sensitive as this.
Also worth bearing in mind that in the TCA,
the Trading Corporation Agreement,
that's the deal that was concluded on the 24th of December,
the UK has the opportunity to express their view
on any accession to the EU,
but the UK itself cannot block any accession to the EU.
So the UK wouldn't be able to block
Scotland acceding to the EU.
It won't be long before there's enormous pressure, I think, to have a
second Scottish referendum. And the opinion polls are
definitely trending towards the vote for Scottish independence.
But ironically, it's not gonna be easy to win.
The weakest argument that Scottish nationalists
have always had for Scottish independence
was about economics.
They said the worry for a lot of low income Scottish people
was would their pensions be protected?
Would prices go up if there was Scottish independence?
Currently Scottish taxpayers are not covering
all of the bills that Scotland is paying
in terms of welfare payments,
unemployment benefits, and so on.
So there's a large redistribution of wealth
from England to Scotland in that sense.
So the big question is an economic question.
What could change that calculation
is if Brexit is seen as really damaging
to the British economy,
because then Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish nationalist,
would be able to say vote for Scottish independence
to save the Scottish economy
so that we can rejoin the single market in some way,
either not, may perhaps not full members of the EU,
perhaps the EEA model, the Norwegian model.
I actually think the Norwegian model is probably
more likely to be the direction of travel for Scotland.
And that I think is where we like
to see the battle going about.
Could Scotland have a better economic relationship
with the EU than even England has?
(soft music)
It's not clear in Northern Ireland
that necessary they want to be part of the Republic.
And there's some things
that are not really part of this debate now.
For example, Northern Ireland
has much better quality healthcare
than the Republic of Ireland.
Republic of Ireland doesn't have an NHS.
And so actually this is one of the big issues
for lower income people in Northern Ireland
who are opposed to becoming part of the Irish Republic
for things like that.
Although that one of the beauties
of the Good Friday Agreement was it allowed Protestants in Northern Ireland
to feel British without it being a problem,
and allowed Catholics in Northern Ireland to feel Irish
without it being a problem.
And anything that upsets the Good Friday Agreement
and its status in Northern Ireland could well lead
to a poll in Northern Ireland on united Ireland.
I think it's a little early now,
but I think over the next decade,
we're gonna have to see what happens in terms of the relationships between
particularly the Protestant middle class in Northern Ireland, and the Irish Republic.
The Irish Republic is much more liberal
than it was 20 or 30 years ago,
which makes it much more attractive
to sort of middle class
secular Protestant population in Northern Ireland,
who always historically were very opposed
to being part of the Republic.
That I think might change over the next decade.
(suspenseful music)
What's interesting is to watch the Sinn Fein leader
and the Democratic Unionist party leader
working quite effectively together in government.
Remember the DUP advocated the vote to leave,
Sinn Fein wanted to stay,
and yet they are seeing the consequences of this.
The DUP now finds itself in a very difficult position,
and it may be in their economic interest
to actually stay as part of the broader island of Ireland.
Now of course that's a big step for the DUP too
because of course their entire raison d'etre
is to stay as part of United Kingdom,
but it may be that particularly
as the population make-up changes in Northern Ireland,
and they see the problems of being
in this rather unusual situation
with a foot in both camps,
they are one foot in the Great Britain customs union,
and the other foot in the EU customs union,
that may put them in a brilliant strategic position,
or it may ultimately be too difficult
to straddle those two horses,
and they're going to have to opt one way or another.
Now of course the withdrawal agreement,
the divorce text had the Northern Ireland Protocol,
and the consequence of the Northern Ireland Protocol
is not a border across the island of Ireland,
but a de facto border down the Irish Sea.
Now of course it's not a physical border, so that's important
because physical borders in Ireland are very symbolic.
We are all still really getting used
to what this new law means.
The European Union tried to activate
a clause within the Protocol agreement
which sets out the relationship
between the territory of Northern Island
and the European Union.
Now Northern Ireland will be treated under the agreement
as a territory which remains within the European Union
for the purposes of trade in specific areas.
And within that Protocol,
there was a clause that the European Union,
well, either side could trigger this clause,
but the European Union decided to trigger it
in relation to the vaccine.
Ultimately it withdrew.
So the triggering was more of a threat than a reality.
When the European Union saw
that the response was so negative,
it decided to move away from that cause of action.
But this is something that we might see
more regularly in the future.
I think it would be negative for both sides actually
if this were to become a feature
of the relationship between the EU and the UK.
I think the two sides were so close to each other
and we remain dependent on each other,
it would be disadvantageous for both
if they were to become, if they were to develop
a very antagonistic relationship in the future.
That's not the way to go for the sake of traders
and citizens and consumers in both areas.
(soft music)
(suspenseful music)
A trade deal with America will take some time.
These things aren't rapid.
Some people in Britain believe
that they depend on whether the president likes us or not.
Of course it doesn't. It has to go through Congress,
and Congress, unlike the British House of Commons,
it's a very decentralized body,
and all sorts of pressure groups
can get into the committee structure,
and they may say, well, unless we get special favors
for the export of chicken, shall we say,
we'll try and veto it.
And there's a story, I don't whether it's true or not,
that Singapore has a ban on chewing gum or did have,
and for trade deal with America, the Americans said, well, look,
we're not gonna have it unless that ban is rescinded, so you have to rescind it.
So I mean it's not gonna be easy.
(soft music)
There's this idea that's been around in the press
called the UK could be the new Singapore on the Thames.
And what they generally mean by that is the sort of low tax,
low regulation environment.
And so we need to think, first of all,
is it feasible for the UK to become a low tax environment?
That depends.
When they were part of the European Union,
they didn't have the kind of tax haven type policies
that we see in countries like the Netherlands or Ireland.
So as a member of the European Union,
they already had discretion
to do a quite liberal tax policy,
and they chose not to.
If we compare the UK to other members of the European Union,
their tax policy generally looks more like
the US's or Canadians'
It's generally pretty low already, pretty sensible
relative to, say, Germany or France.
So the first question is like
can they really cut taxes that much more
and maintain basic public services that are needed?
So the military, roads, education.
And I think that right now is gonna be much, much harder
for that to happen post-COVID
because the government has actually been
quite reasonable and generous in trying to support
workers who lost their work from COVID.
And this is gonna lead to a huge tax burden
in the future on younger generations.
So it's not really going to be possible
in the short run of like five or 10 years
to have a big tax cut program.
On the regulation side, there's two things.
So they have complete legal sovereignty.
They can do whatever they want with their regulations,
but they just signed this Trade and Cooperation Agreement
with the European Union.
And the European Union was very concerned
about tax and regulatory competition.
So there's a whole chapter to that agreement
called the level playing field.
And what that says is if either the UK or the European Union
pursues government subsidy policies,
particular targeted tax programs,
other types of tax or regulatory environmental changes,
anything like that that distorts investment
into the two different economies,
so for example, attracts Japanese investment
into the UK rather than the EU,
the EU can raise this as a complaint against the UK.
And if they can show that a UK policy or deregulation
drew investment away from Europe to the UK,
they can then restrict UK access to the EU market further.
So there's a sort of punishment mechanism
that they go through a whole series
of dispute and a settlement,
but at the end of the day,
if the UK relaxes its regulations too much
in a way that harms European inward investment,
the Europeans can retaliate
with another type of economic policy.
Similar thing for trading goods.
So if the UK suddenly started subsidizing producers
or had some very lax environmental policy
that allowed producers to have lower costs
and this led to more exports going to the European Union,
the European Union is now authorized to hit back
against the UK with higher taxes.
So they have the freedom,
but now there's a different type of cost benefit analysis
that will have to take place
on the part of the UK government.
(soft music)
The question there is about whether or not
the UK will follow a different trajectory
when it comes to regulation of the market,
when it comes to labor rights, social rights,
environmental standards, and so on.
I think there are some members of the government
who will think that there are elements
of European Union labor regulation that is worth keeping,
but that that will be a decision
for the Conservative Party to make.
And we really don't know.
I mean there are so many different types of labor laws.
So we've got things like the Working Time Directive.
We've got things such as the Equality Directive.
I expect that there will be
a much higher interest in retaining
things to do with the Equality Directive
than there will be to do with things
like the Working Time Directive,
which for the Conservative Party
might be seen to have a more negative impact
upon the ability of firms to make money.
(soft music)
10 years ago I would have said
maybe Britain would choose a more American-style market,
a more liberal open deregulated market.
But actually I think now overwhelmingly the British public
is in fair of very high environment standards,
very high social standards, protection for workers,
public attitudes now increasing in the UK
towards redistribution of wealth,
more social protections in the economy.
I think it's very unlikely
that Britain will diverge significantly
from mainstream European style
or a European regulated economy.
(soft music)
I think the opportunities to trade
with the Commonwealth countries were always there,
and they will continue to be exploited.
Perhaps now the United Kingdom
will pay more attention to those relationships,
especially across the African continent.
There are huge opportunities to trade with Africa.
The important thing of course will be to ensure
that that new trading relationship
is beneficial to both sides.
It may well be that the United Kingdom
decides that now is a moment to up their game
in relation to trading with countries
on the African continent.
And of course that's an opportunity
that exists for the United Kingdom.
And especially if you think about
the many talented people here in the United Kingdom
who have links with countries across the African continent,
that's a resource that the government
might now be able to invest more in
during the coming time-frame.
The United Kingdom has had very rapid growth
in its exports to China over the last 10 years.
So China is a huge market with a rising income.
And so many of the things that the UK produces
will be appealing to Chinese customers
who are becoming wealthier and wealthier over time,
and there's just a lot of them.
But I think the largest volume of trade for the UK
is gonna continue to be with the European Union.
So even though it will become more difficult
to trade with Europe, and more costly,
we'll probably see on the margins
smaller firms both within the United Kingdom
and smaller firms within the European Union
less likely to trade across that border
because it's costly and it's hardest
for small firms with the smallest margins
and the lowest cash flow.
But the bigger firms will continue to trade
and they'll be able to overcome
the cost of additional paperwork and regulation.
So we'll see, I think, in 10 years,
the UK's most important trading partner
will still be the European Union by far.
For the last 10, 20 years,
about half of UK exports go to the European Union.
About 15% of UK exports, 13% go to the United States.
So one of the general regularities in world trade
is you trade more with the countries
that are closest to you.
This is just the simple cost of moving goods
from point A to point B.
The closer you are, the cheaper it gets.
When you add onto that having a simplified regulation
to move things from A to B,
or you have lower taxes at the border,
that also helps.
So realistically there's no possible way
for distant markets like New Zealand or Australia
to ever replace the amount of trade
that the UK has with the European Union.
The European Union is a huge place with a huge population.
And so there's no sense in any way
in which this is realistic.
And just to put some numbers on this,
the benefit of the deal
that the UK just signed with European Union,
so having a future trade agreement
called Trade and Cooperation Agreement
that the government itself estimates
will raise UK GDP by about 2. 2% in about 10 years
relative to having left with no deal.
When we look at the government's estimate
of how beneficial an agreement
with the United States will be
if they have free trade,
the government's own estimate is it will raise UK GDP
in the long run by between seven hundredths of 1%
and 16 hundredths of 1%
So it's almost infinitesimal.
And that's because the market is further away.
It's gonna be that much harder
to build deep trade relationships.
And it's also already the case that sort of dominion markets
of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand,
they all have fairly liberal trade policies
in the first place.
So the UK was already trading
almost as much as it could with them.
So deeper integration,
there's not a lot of scope for that to happen.
There is some, and if they do have deeper trade agreements,
that will help,
but the benefits we're talking about are fractions of 1%
(soft upbeat music)
Lot of people were saying, actually for me,
it was never about the economy.
It was about these issues of control,
these issues of sovereignty.
And actually we've taken a hit,
but we're actually happier off outside.
And I think there'll be quite a lot of people, for whom that may be true.
There are other people though who will feel very clearly
the economic consequences of Brexit.
(soft upbeat music)
Do I think the UK is going to rejoin the European Union?
Not in my lifetime.
(soft music)
Public opinion is still divided.
I suspect it's gonna be a good long time
before the issue of rejoining is back on the political agenda in this country.
I don't think there's gonna be any appetite among any of
our major political parties to be making the case for rejoin
in any election coming up soon.
I think there's a bit of a sense that we need
to get over this. It's been difficult for the UK
to try and sort out the aftermath of this,
so I don't think people are going to go back in.
I don't think there's gonna be much space, for quite some time
for a rejoin campaign, but equally I think you will start to see
a new pattern of relationships
between the EU and its neighboring states,
and Britain will start to fit in into that new pattern.
(soft upbeat music)
We had a lot of advantages that weren't in the euro.
We had knocked out from that. We weren't in Schengen.
A further advantage,
which perhaps I should have mentioned, we had a very large budget rebate,
which Margaret Thatcher had secured
in front end blow in 1984.
Now if we were to join again or seek to join again,
would the EU really be prepared
to make all those exceptions for us
and go through that whole process again?
I doubt it.
It may be that the EU evolves in a way
so that there is a sort of inner core
and maybe an outer circle of less integrated member states.
And that becomes somewhere where ultimately
the UK might find a better home.
So that's always possible as a way
in which this long-term relationship might develop.
Fair, once you've left, you've left.
It may be that some form
of associate membership we could get.
And President Macron has said in his speech
at the Sorbonne in September 2017,
he'd like to see a Europe with concentric circles
in which some countries move more rapidly
to integration than others.
And he then said, well, in that Europe concentric circles,
there might be a place for Britain.
(soft music)
I think there will be a minority of people
who would like to see us rejoin the European Union,
but to be honest, I think it will take years,
probably decades for those people
to gain the majority if they ever do.
I think we will have to fall quite a long way behind
the rest of Europe in terms of our economy
for people to think seriously about
whether we've made a mistake
and whether we in fact should be rejoining again.
So, I mean there may be some people
who would like to see that,
but I think they will be a very small minority
for a number of years to come.
I personally think it's unlikely
that the UK is gonna go back to joining European Union
in the next 10 years.
And I think one of the things that gets lost in the debate
is I think not just in this relationship
between the UK and the EU, but around the world,
we're seeing a lot of people dissatisfied
with their engagement with government.
And I think one of the problems for British people
with the European Union was the sense of direct democracy,
trying to change some type of European regulation.
It was seen as complicated, remote, and distant.
And so if you were unhappy with the fate of your life
and you wanted to see a political solution,
there was always this way in which a government
and any European Union member state could say,
oh, we don't have control over that.
That's controlled by the European Union.
And so this created a lot of confusion
I think in people's minds
as to what levels of government policy
and what government regulations
really were in the control
of their own national legislatures.
So I think that people were dissatisfied
with many aspects of the relationship,
but what they failed to understand
was all the benefit that the UK had
from its relationship with the European Union.
I think what will be interesting though
is to try and work out whether the EU
is thinking about a much more flexible system,
a sort of outer tier
known in the jargon as variable geometry,
a way of trying to accommodate those awkward squad states,
the UK, Switzerland, and inside Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
and how you're actually going to get those people,
those countries to cooperate with the EU
without being part of the inside track, inside machine.
(soft music)
What I think is a big decision for the UK
and which could go either way
is whether we do indeed go down the path
that this government claims that it wants us to go
which is very much to treat the Europe and the EU
as third countries on a par
with Japan or Australia or the US or Canada,
and have a no closer or more distant relationship,
or whether in fact a future government decides
that we seek some form of special relationship
with the EU that is quite different
from the sort that we have with other countries.
Now whether that is,
it comes in something like the EA agreements
or some new form association agreement, I don't know.
There were many pieces of legislation
that we adopted in the United Kingdom
as a result of our membership with the European Union
in many different areas, labor law,
but also in relation to financial regulations
and banking regulation.
So what happens with those laws now really depends
on how the government decides to approach them.
Some of those laws will be retained
on our national statute books,
and some of them will be replaced,
and that will be an ongoing process to be decided
in accordance with the national legislative process.
One of the problems with the Brexit negotiations
has been that both sides have approached them
with a short-term focus on politics and on red lines.
Neither side lifted their sights a bit higher and thought,
okay, we are important allies, partners, collaborators,
how do we arrange Brexit in such a way
that in five years' time,
we can continue to work together as closely as possible?
And I think had both sides started off with that mentality
rather than a how do I defend myself against them mentality,
we'd have had a slightly different outcome.
There'll be a constant debate now in British politics
about Britain's relationship with the EU.
Should we be closer in some area?
Should we be further away in others?
Should we have free movements of people, for high skilled workers?
Should we have more research collaboration
or student exchanges?
Should we adopt European environment standards?
Should we cooperate on data sharing?
Should we have police and judicial cooperation? And so on and so on and so on.
These questions will not go away.
(soft music)
So if there's one member state to watch,
I think it would be Sweden.
Sweden has a very close economic relationship
with Norway and with the UK,
very close political relationship with the UK.
Sweden's not in the Eurozone.
I think similarly in Denmark,
but I think it's probably
less likely to be a big debate in Denmark
because Denmark's economy now
is so closely integrated to the rest of the EU.
Another one to watch of course would be Hungary.
Hungary, of course, with a president
who's feeling under pressure from the rest of Europe,
Hungary and Poland, but mainly Hungary,
where the identity is quite distinct from a
lot of the rest of Central and Eastern Europe,
very different language structure,
very different identity structure.
And I think Hungary, there might be a political debate
within Hungary to say, hang on, we like the UK more.
Do we have to be so closely integrated?
(soft music)
I think the EU also has to consider
what it ought to do about free movement.
Well, that's a sensible principle.
Now a number of the ex-communist states will say privately,
but we don't like free movement much.
We're losing our ablest and brightest people to the West.
But they can't say it in public,
because after all communism restricted free movement,
and they don't want to appear to align themselves
with the former communist regimes.
It also has to consider
whether integration hasn't gone too far
because on a matter like migration
or even on the common currency, the euro,
there's a great danger of entrenching
on national prerogatives.
And people say, well, look,
we can control that national palm.
How do we control the EU who elected Ursula von der Leyen
and the other leading officials of the EU?
So the EU has to be very careful
it doesn't go too rapidly and obliterate
the national feelings which are still strong
in many other member states.
And the latest Eurobarometer survey
shows a very small level of trust
in European Union institutions, about 15%
It's very worrying.
Furthermore, the EU has a problem
on how it's to defend itself.
It's the only one of the four major powers in the world,
the other being America, Russia, and China,
which cannot defend itself.
Still relies on America 75 years after the end of the war.
Now that means if the EU is going to defend itself,
it does need the help of Britain which is a nuclear power,
which does spend the 2% of its GDP on defense as NATO asks.
A lot of European countries don't.
So Britain must be involved in that.
(upbeat music)
It will of course be much harder in future
for Britains to go work, live, retire, marry, study,
and all the rest of it in the EU,
and that is indeed a very big loss to us for the future.
Pensioners may well be better off than people who work
since what people who work will genuinely lose,
if there are Britains living in Europe,
is the ability to work across
or move across borders within the EU.
That's gonna be much more difficult for them.
The UK faces the greatest uncertainty
I can remember in terms of its future for several reasons.
Firstly, we've got a government like no other I've ever seen.
It's a conservative government that came to power
on the back of people's votes
who usually used to vote labor.
So there's an uncertainty
about who this government represents
and so what it will choose to do.
But the other larger uncertainty,
which makes prediction virtually impossible,
as the public health crisis starts,
we're gonna be hit by the post-lockdown economic crisis.
Most economists are expecting
2 1/2 to three million unemployed.
At that point, politics will fundamentally change in nature.
And I'm not willing to hazard a guess
as to which way it will go.
Sorry.
In the end, we are just a middle-sized power
off the edge of the continent of Europe.
And to think we're anything more
I think could be quite problematic.
(upbeat music)
I think leaving the European Union is probably
the worst diplomatic and economic decision of my lifetime.
(upbeat music)