'Disaster' five years on: Brexit 'is doing so much damage to British economy which needs to grow'

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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.

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