Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Today marks five years since the United Kingdom finally left the European Union following lengthy Brexit negotiations.
00:07In 2016, Britons voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU.
00:12It was not a legally binding referendum, but the Conservative government promised to respect it.
00:17Now, polls show that a majority of Britons think that leaving the EU was the wrong decision.
00:22To discuss this more, I'm joined by Dennis McShane,
00:25former UK Europe minister under Tony Blair's Labour government.
00:30Good morning, Dennis, and thank you for joining us.
00:33Five years on from Brexit, how is it viewed in the UK?
00:37A disaster, just negative, negative, negative.
00:43As you rightly said, 2016, we voted to leave very narrowly after a big campaign,
00:49a lot of Russian money, Rupert Murdoch money and populist right wing
00:53Marine Le Pen activity to vote to leave.
00:57But it was agreed we would stay in a single market, stay in the customs union.
01:01We'd still be able to travel, live, retire.
01:04And then along comes Boris Johnson 2020 with his deal.
01:08And all of that's thrown out of the window.
01:10And since then, we've seen a big impact on the economy.
01:13I can list lots of stats, a million fewer cars produced,
01:18thousands of small enterprises going out of business, unable to export,
01:23impossible for Brits to go as before to retire to Spain or the south of France in the warm,
01:31and massive majorities in all the opinion polls now saying, please, can we rejoin?
01:37Now, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves,
01:39has said that Brexit has had negative effects on the UK economy.
01:44And without delivering any of the promised benefits, of course, as well,
01:50how has it changed the British political landscape, though?
01:54The fact is, we now have 500 MPs out of 650 who are from the left,
02:00from the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats,
02:02who are much more centre left than the Liberals in France,
02:06from the Scottish Nationalists, from Greens, the Green Party.
02:10And those 500 MPs all were elected opposed to Brexit.
02:15But Sir Gustavo believes, because he said in his manifesto
02:19that Britain would not rejoin the single market or the customs union
02:24or accept free movement of citizens between Britain and the rest of Europe,
02:29he's boxed in.
02:31Many of us think it's time to change that position.
02:35Now, British voters in a poll last week said that they wanted more trade with the EU,
02:40particularly with regards to Donald Trump's new administration in the US.
02:45Will Starmer be moved to actually take any action on this?
02:50Well, he's caught between his own rock and his own hard place,
02:53in the sense it was a manifesto commitment.
02:55And if you are elected on a given position, then it's hard to move from that.
03:02The famous Lord Maynard Keynes, the world's greatest economist in the mid-century,
03:07said, the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do?
03:12We are now seeing the facts of the crowd, the big damage,
03:16for example, the City of London, the Lord Mayor,
03:18that's not the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan,
03:20but the City of London tearing out their hair at the loss to the financial sector.
03:26The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also wants to return.
03:30The Mayor of Manchester wants a sort of return.
03:33So it's up now to Sir Keir Starmer to work out.
03:37In politics, you can decide something, you can correct it.
03:41But when it's shown to doing such damage to the nation,
03:45then I think the duty of a politician is to find ways of persuading people,
03:50it's time to move on, in this case, to move back.
03:53Not fully, not fully rejoin, maybe like Switzerland, maybe like Norway.
03:57But it's just doing so much damage to the British economy, which needs to grow.
04:01We've inherited from the Conservative Party,
04:04the worst British economy ever in our economic history.
04:08Don't want to go into party political details.
04:10We want to grow, the Chancellor wants Britain to grow.
04:14How can you grow when you refuse to trade with the biggest market in the world,
04:1920 kilometres across the Channel?
04:21Now, finally, one of the sticking points is mutual freedom of movement,
04:25which Starmer's government has been reluctant to revisit,
04:28but the EU will insist on it for a wholesale resumption of trade.
04:33Is this non-negotiable for the UK?
04:36It's very, very hard because the Brexit referendum
04:40was fought in 2016 on immigration, not on anything else.
04:44So many people came in from Europe, they were working,
04:48they were doing jobs here in Britain.
04:49Every town had a Polish food shop, a Slovakian number plates.
04:54And it caused that real resentment, exactly the same resentment
04:58that has given rise in France to Marine Le Pen,
05:01to the IFJ in Germany,
05:03to Madame Maloney's become prime minister on 28th century vote in Italy.
05:09Immigration is the number one global issue.
05:12It helped Donald Trump to become president a second time.
05:17So it's too easy to say, oh, simply go back to what it was
05:20because the politics of that no longer work.
05:23So I think with all affection and respect for my friends in Europe, in Brussels,
05:28they have to put on their thinking caps
05:30and work out how we control immigration.
05:34Thank you very much for that, Dennis McShane, the former UK Europe minister.