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'Disaster' five years on: Brexit 'is doing so much damage to British economy which needs to grow'
FRANCE 24 English
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1/31/2025
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00:00
Today marks five years since the United Kingdom finally left the European Union following lengthy Brexit negotiations.
00:07
In 2016, Britons voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU.
00:12
It was not a legally binding referendum, but the Conservative government promised to respect it.
00:17
Now, polls show that a majority of Britons think that leaving the EU was the wrong decision.
00:22
To discuss this more, I'm joined by Dennis McShane,
00:25
former UK Europe minister under Tony Blair's Labour government.
00:30
Good morning, Dennis, and thank you for joining us.
00:33
Five years on from Brexit, how is it viewed in the UK?
00:37
A disaster, just negative, negative, negative.
00:43
As you rightly said, 2016, we voted to leave very narrowly after a big campaign,
00:49
a lot of Russian money, Rupert Murdoch money and populist right wing
00:53
Marine Le Pen activity to vote to leave.
00:57
But it was agreed we would stay in a single market, stay in the customs union.
01:01
We'd still be able to travel, live, retire.
01:04
And then along comes Boris Johnson 2020 with his deal.
01:08
And all of that's thrown out of the window.
01:10
And since then, we've seen a big impact on the economy.
01:13
I can list lots of stats, a million fewer cars produced,
01:18
thousands of small enterprises going out of business, unable to export,
01:23
impossible for Brits to go as before to retire to Spain or the south of France in the warm,
01:31
and massive majorities in all the opinion polls now saying, please, can we rejoin?
01:37
Now, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves,
01:39
has said that Brexit has had negative effects on the UK economy.
01:44
And without delivering any of the promised benefits, of course, as well,
01:50
how has it changed the British political landscape, though?
01:54
The fact is, we now have 500 MPs out of 650 who are from the left,
02:00
from the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats,
02:02
who are much more centre left than the Liberals in France,
02:06
from the Scottish Nationalists, from Greens, the Green Party.
02:10
And those 500 MPs all were elected opposed to Brexit.
02:15
But Sir Gustavo believes, because he said in his manifesto
02:19
that Britain would not rejoin the single market or the customs union
02:24
or accept free movement of citizens between Britain and the rest of Europe,
02:29
he's boxed in.
02:31
Many of us think it's time to change that position.
02:35
Now, British voters in a poll last week said that they wanted more trade with the EU,
02:40
particularly with regards to Donald Trump's new administration in the US.
02:45
Will Starmer be moved to actually take any action on this?
02:50
Well, he's caught between his own rock and his own hard place,
02:53
in the sense it was a manifesto commitment.
02:55
And if you are elected on a given position, then it's hard to move from that.
03:02
The famous Lord Maynard Keynes, the world's greatest economist in the mid-century,
03:07
said, the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do?
03:12
We are now seeing the facts of the crowd, the big damage,
03:16
for example, the City of London, the Lord Mayor,
03:18
that's not the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan,
03:20
but the City of London tearing out their hair at the loss to the financial sector.
03:26
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also wants to return.
03:30
The Mayor of Manchester wants a sort of return.
03:33
So it's up now to Sir Keir Starmer to work out.
03:37
In politics, you can decide something, you can correct it.
03:41
But when it's shown to doing such damage to the nation,
03:45
then I think the duty of a politician is to find ways of persuading people,
03:50
it's time to move on, in this case, to move back.
03:53
Not fully, not fully rejoin, maybe like Switzerland, maybe like Norway.
03:57
But it's just doing so much damage to the British economy, which needs to grow.
04:01
We've inherited from the Conservative Party,
04:04
the worst British economy ever in our economic history.
04:08
Don't want to go into party political details.
04:10
We want to grow, the Chancellor wants Britain to grow.
04:14
How can you grow when you refuse to trade with the biggest market in the world,
04:19
20 kilometres across the Channel?
04:21
Now, finally, one of the sticking points is mutual freedom of movement,
04:25
which Starmer's government has been reluctant to revisit,
04:28
but the EU will insist on it for a wholesale resumption of trade.
04:33
Is this non-negotiable for the UK?
04:36
It's very, very hard because the Brexit referendum
04:40
was fought in 2016 on immigration, not on anything else.
04:44
So many people came in from Europe, they were working,
04:48
they were doing jobs here in Britain.
04:49
Every town had a Polish food shop, a Slovakian number plates.
04:54
And it caused that real resentment, exactly the same resentment
04:58
that has given rise in France to Marine Le Pen,
05:01
to the IFJ in Germany,
05:03
to Madame Maloney's become prime minister on 28th century vote in Italy.
05:09
Immigration is the number one global issue.
05:12
It helped Donald Trump to become president a second time.
05:17
So it's too easy to say, oh, simply go back to what it was
05:20
because the politics of that no longer work.
05:23
So I think with all affection and respect for my friends in Europe, in Brussels,
05:28
they have to put on their thinking caps
05:30
and work out how we control immigration.
05:34
Thank you very much for that, Dennis McShane, the former UK Europe minister.
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