Henry L. Stimson Lectures on World Affairs: Brexit means Brexit. Britain out of Europe

welcome to the third of this series in her Stimson lectures on Britain Europe grexit the future year of future Britain by our distinguished doctor who is currently or husband for while now professor - university of london after his time at Brasenose College in Oxford where many of you been to either place no no him over oh he is an author of so many books on British constitution of history an abridged Constitution he was introduced in the first super Simpson lectures this time last week and against in the second lecture so I think I'm going to save time we needed to go running around getting extra chairs that he's in general so we're starting a bit late this particular lecture is on brexit means brexit so we're getting getting closer and closer to what you all can to get the news about many what on earth is going to happen over there the fourth lecture is going to be in the auditorium because we expect we will get a further search of controls in the lectures it would be chiefly on whether Europe and where's Europe going there will be time I hope a Q&A session after this as her husband in the previous two so please just join me in welcoming back to the lecture podium Burnham bog to normal inverter please take over well thank you very much and I suppose I ought to begin by apologizing for bringing British weather with me across the Atlantic but a colleague of mine at King's College London professor of European law tak East redeemeth said that the referendum in 2016 which voted to brexit by 52 to 48 percent but this was the most significant constitutional event in Britain since the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 because it showed or perhaps confirmed that on the issue of Europe the sovereignty of the people Trump's the sovereignty of Parliament now the referendum Act passed in 2015 which provided for the referendum provided it should be an advisory referendum and it was not legally binding on Parliament but nevertheless the government had said in advance that it would be bound by the result and the outcome even though the majority was narrow was regarded by almost all MPs as binding on them as well and what it meant was that the House of Commons for the first time in its history was enacting legislation in which it did not believe because around 75% of the members of parliament are remain as a majority even if the Conservative MPs had supported remain a majority of the cabinet and a very large majority of the House of Lords so the sovereignty of parliament was now being constrained not legally but practically not by Brussels but by the people and this is very fundamental because parliament has traditionally been at the center of British constitutionalism in the sense that it is not for the legislature of any other country except possibly New Zealand it certainly has a more central place in Britain than the Continental legislatures in the countries of the European Union and the principle of parliamentary sovereignty explains why we don't have a Constitution there's no point having one if Polland is sovereign but even more than that Parliament lies at the core of British nationhood unlike for example the Americans the British do not define themselves in terms of values or in terms of allegiance to a document much less in terms of ethnicity but the British define themselves as perhaps you would expect in strictly empirical terms to be British is to be represented in Parliament now in the 18th century of course the Americans could not be represented in Parliament but it was said that they were virtually represented by British MPs and that fiction of course was destroyed by the Boston Tea Party and the British learnt from that it was clear that Canadians and Australians for example could not be represented at Westminster that meant they had to be represented in their own local legislatures under the aegis of what was called the Imperial Parliament and that phrase the Imperial Parliament was last used quite late by the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson as late as the 1970s when talking about legislative devolution but it follows I think from this the ideal of self-government for all colonies was in logic implicit in the constitutional structure of the British Empire so to be British is to be represented the Scottish National Party who don't wish to be represented because they wish to be represented in a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh they come to Westminster precisely to say that that they come to say they do not want to be there the Irish nationalist party shin Fane go even further and do not recognize Westminster at all they don't attend and they say to be Irish is incompatible with being British whereas the unionist party in northern and say that being Irish is like being shall we say Welsh or as most Scottish unionists and say Scottish and is as it were a subspecies of being British so if to be British is to be represented in Parliament the people give their representatives a mandate to act on their behalf indeed it used to be held that the people were actually present in Parliament through their representatives but suppose these representatives seek to transfer their powers away either downwards through legislative devolution or more important for our purposes upwards to the European Union a superior legal order the representatives have no mandate to transfer those powers away to get it the only way to get it is by means of a referendum which gives them a specific mandate from the people to transfer their powers and therefore whenever we have enacted legislation devolution since the war at least or whenever we had the decision about joining the European Union or leaving that is can only be achieved through a referendum so from this point of view the referendum in Britain far from being a populist instrument populist instrument follows the logic of liberal Constitution ISM but the question is why did the 2016 referendum lead to a rejection of membership and that is the question which I shall try to answer now a Britain benefited considerably in terms of economics from joining the European Union in the form access to a larger market and then in terms of inward investment and once the effects of the Middle East war of the 1970s and the oil crisis were over these were until the credit crunch golden years for the European Union and Britain benefited from those golden years but there were problems almost from the beginning the first was Britain's net contribution which seemed out of kilter with its its standard of living and there was a long battle under margaret thatcher's premiership until that was resolved in 1984 in the Fontainebleau agreement but then came a much more serious problem of whether Britain should join the European monetary system and that was a system which linked together the currencies of the Member States to prevent fluctuations between them and assist trade established in 1979 it was intended as a prelude to creation of a common currency of the euro and as Americans know better than anyone an internal market requires a common currency but the issue of whether we should join that monetary system divided the conservative cabinet down the middle in the night late 1980s Margaret Thatcher was against joining but her leading ministers Sir Geoffrey Howe who was foreign secretary then Deputy Prime Minister and her Chancellor John Major whose seat her of prime minister said that we should join and gradually they wore Margaret Thatcher down and we entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European monetary system in October 1990 just a few weeks before Margaret Thatcher's downfall in November 1990 which was also precipitated by a European issue ironically by her insistence on a view which most people in Britain would now think was correct by her insistence that Britain should never join the euro now during the 1980s party allegiances towards Europe changed hitherto labour had been the more Euroskeptic party believing that an integrated Europe would inhibit the development of socialism in Britain and that is still the view of some on the Left of the Labor Party but sadly for pro Europeans that small number includes the current leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn and his allies have done their best to inhibit the pro-european sentiment of the majority of Labour MPs and a majority of party members but labor in general began to swing towards greater sympathy to the European issue in the 1980s under the modernizing leadership of Neil Kinnock whose period of leader may be regarded as a prelude to the so-called new labor era of Tony Blair in the 1990s the Labour Party came to believe that the European community far from being antagonistic to its aims might actually assist them and this change of view was greatly helped by the President of the European Commission dr. law who in 1988 spoke to the trade union Congress and told them that many of the policies sought by the trade unions which were rejected by Margaret Thatcher's broadly neoliberal conservative government could be achieved through the social policies of the European Community and the law was a former socialist minister under the government of France ometer are in France and he said the trade unions could get advances from Europe which they couldn't get from Margaret Thatcher Europe he said it had a social dimension as well as an economic and political one there had to be a balance any instant as an example of this its policy of providing protection at work declaring it is impossible to build Europe only on deregulation the internal market should be designed to benefit each and every citizen of the community it is therefore necessary to improve workers living and working conditions and provide better protection for their health and safety at work now as you can imagine that speech help to bring labour supporters around the idea of the European community was a good thing but it had perhaps the more serious disadvantage of alienating market Thatcher and many in her conservative government and just a few weeks later Margaret Thatcher responded to the law in her bruised lecture of 1988 a lecture which has attracted iconic status among Euroskeptics and in her lecture she said the character of the European community had changed from the world since the Treaty of Rome in 1957 the treaty she said had been intended as a charter for economic liberty but that philosophy was now being undermined by the development of monetary union and proposals for a common currency and also by proposals of the kind that the law was advocating for a so called social Europe we have not she said successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimpose at a European level with the European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels but the law speech led her to believe that European integration meant socialism and that was a mirror image of the earlier view of a labor left still held by Corbin that European integration meant domination by the free market that it was a neoliberal project she said domination by government they said domination by the market but I think both were wrong now although the Bruges speech was welcomed by Euroskeptics Margaret Thatcher insisted she was not European or anti European Britain she said does not dream of some cosy isolated existence on the fringes of the community Britain's destiny is in Europe a part of the community indeed if you read a speech today it's conceived can seem positively pro-european so much as opinion shifted she called for example for stronger defence and foreign policy cooperation between member states and insist in just a year before the collapse of the Berlin Wall that and I quote we shall always look on Warsaw Prague and Budapest as great European cities city cities the speech prefigured has support for the enlargement of the European Union to include the ex communist states and enlargement largely completed in 2004 and he's very ironic that the two major contributions to the European Union made by Britain were both made by Margaret Thatcher the single internal market in in in Europe and enlargement but she wasn't as it were prepared to take the credit for these constructive achievements and nor was anyone else and the pro-european parts of the Bruges speech made little impact because its significance of the speech was quite different that it was the first frontal attack in Europe on what might be called the community method integration for money method the Schumann method if you like what Margaret Thatcher was attacking was the idea of supranational tea and a sharing of sovereignty Europe she said instead should develop through inter governmental cooperation between independent sovereign states nation states were intractable political realities she said which it would be folly to seek to override or suppress in favor of a wider but as yet theoretical European nation hood she therefore offered an alternative intergovernmental vision of Europe a goalless division of a Europe des 8r and that was in many respects prescient the eurozone crisis of 2012 was resolved less by the integrationist institutions the Commission and Parliament which were pushed in the background but the European Council composed of Heads of Government and Margaret Thatcher's view of Europe came to be espouse to some extent in another bruise lecture which is much less often read but I think is at least as important by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010 in which she too emphasized the intergovernmental method as opposed to the integrationist method but before the Bruges speech Margaret Thatcher had made this most important contribution to Europe by the single European Act of 1986 an amendment to the Treaty of Rome arguably the most important of all the amendments and that was an integrationist development but championed by Margaret Thatcher because she believed it was in Britain's interests and it transformed the European Union from what it had been before a free trade area and a customs union into an internal market that is the removal of non-tariff barriers to trade which in the modern world are I believe more important than tatev so it converted as it were external markets in the various member states into a single internal market I suppose that was also an American process in the nineteenth century now Margaret Thatcher favored that because she believed it was in Britain's interest but the preamble to the single European Act refers to another aim namely the progressive realization of European monetary union which the Continental leaders took to be a corollary of internal markets and to that ambition now get fatter remains adamantly opposed this however did not prevent her from signing the act and she made no objection at the time in her memoirs she does not take the easy way out of saying that she was deceived by her officials instead what she says is this I had one overriding positive goal this was to create a single common market the price weak which we should have to pay to achieve a single market with all its economic benefits was more majority voting in the community there was no escape from that because otherwise particular countries would succumb to domestic pressures and prevent the opening up of their markets it also required more power for the European Commission but that power must be used in order to create and maintain a single market rather than to advance other objectives so for her qualified majority voting should be restricted to matters connected with a single market not for example matters such as health and safety at work or taxation policy but that was not the view of the other Member States Margaret Thatcher saw the internal market as in a sense a kind of World Trade Organization arrangement for non-tariff barriers as a kind of extension of a free trade agreement but a single internal market requires as of course Americans have discovered political and juridical regulation it requires for example effective competition law if the market is to be effectively policed it is therefore not possible in my opinion to make margaret thatcher's distinction between the creation of a single market and further integration the single market requires integration but on the continent integration was not deplored but welcomed to help secure the aim of Greater European unity the aim of ever closer Union but this was the issue the question of whether the internal market required further integration that was the issue which divided her from the conservative Pro Europeans though the real issue so it seems to me was what shape and form integration should take there are many nuances to the notion of integration as again Americans have discovered and are very aware and the question was whether Britain would be able to play a part in helping to decide the shape and form of that integration or whether she would not now most important of all amongst the Continental leaders that de lor the most activist president the European commissioners had he he insisted that the logic of the market internal market entailed monetary union and a common currency and the first step in that exercise was to create a European monetary system of fixed exchange rates and the zone of monetary stability in Europe and the law believed this was absolutely necessary if the common price system of the Common Agricultural Policy was to be effective to encourage trade between member states and above all to give Europe more weight in a world economy dominated by a volatile American dollar so for this reason he favored a European system of fixed exchange rates and in fact monetary union had long been an aim of the community indeed since 1969 before Britain had actually joined now some leading conservatives supported this first step towards currency union though most were opposed to the single currency itself because they believed that membership of the monetary system would help to control inflation in Britain by locking Britain into the monetary discipline of the continent particularly Germany with its strong anti inflationary stance Margaret Thatcher's view was that fixed exchange rates were a mistake because they led to market distortion in her attempt the exchange rate mechanisms an attempt to control the market and so went against economic rationality it sought to yoke together two very different economies the British and the German and what was right for one might not be right for the other and given Germany's powerful economic position the danger was that Britain's economic policy might be determined not by what was in Britain's interests but by what was in Germany's or by an economic standard that Britain could not match and one of Margaret Thatcher's favorite aphorisms was if you try to back the market the market will buck you now Europe was to be the occasion though perhaps not the sole cause of Margaret Thatcher's downfall because her growing euro skepticism was arousing the ire of her Deputy Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Howe who'd been foreign secretary from 1983 to 1989 then was Deputy Prime Minister and he resigned in November 1990 and he said it was the issue of Europe that had caused him to resign it bled for tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled Thor perhaps too long and he called his memoirs conflicts of loyalties on the last page of which he says I wanted to change the policies not the leader but if that meant the leader had to go so then it had to be now at that time as I've said Britain had just joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism of a monetary system and that was very widely welcomed by almost all elements of British society by the Labour Party the Liberal Democrats the main employer and trade union organisations and Federation of Rhodesia Industry Trade Union Congress it was imposed by just eleven Conservative MPs who voted against joining and a few MPs from the left wing of a Labour Party but some years later one of Margaret Thatcher's allies said when Margaret Thatcher is dead and opened it will be those three letters Exchange Rate Mechanism erm that will be lying on her heart now whether that was so or not joining was one of the last significant decision she made six weeks later she was removed from office in her resentment against joining she said at an EU summit in Rome that the EU leaders were living in cloud cuckoo-land and Britain would never agree to the single currency and would seek to veto it a declaration she repeated in the House of Commons and that broke the cabinet consensus on policy which was that while Britain should certainly not join in the immediate future it should not be ruled out because ruling it out would in the view of the cabinet leave Britain isolated in the European Union and Geoffrey Howe in particular believed it was important for Britain to as it were stay in the game and not be seen specifically to choose a different destiny in his resignation speech which was devastating how said the Prime Minister's perceived attitude towards Europe is running increasingly serious risks for the future of our country and this precipitated a leadership challenge which proved fatal to Margaret Thatcher out of office she became more Euroskeptic and in her book statecraft which is well worth reading that I myself to not agree with it but it's well worth reading he published in the mid-1990s she wrote that in the 20th century Britain's problems had all been caused by Europe but had been resolved by the anglo-saxons amongst whom she counted the Americans British membership of the European Community she went on had been and I quote a political error of historic magnitude Britain should therefore renegotiate so as to recover her sovereignty and he that proved impossible to achieve of it most certainly would be she should leave what had become the European Union and many years later Nigel Farage the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party said that were Margaret Thatcher still alive there would be no need for you Kip at all it's a paradox as I say that Margaret Thatcher to whom the EU largely owes Britain's to constructive achievements to the enterprise a single market in enlargement was to turn against Europe and this Illustrated an internal tension or perhaps contradiction within Thatcherism now the internal market brought economic success to Britain and gave her some of the benefits of globalization and often seen it often seen as a per blind nationalist Margaret Thatcher but her championing of the single market was a move towards internationalism but it was achieved as we've seen at the expense of both national and parliamentary sovereignty so one component of Thatcherism the development of a free market in Europe was polarized against another which is national sovereignty and the question therefore was was Britain prepared to pay a price in terms of that loss of sovereignty to secure economic benefits and also no doubt the very real geo political and diplomatic benefits that Britain gained from being a member of the European Union now it fell to the Conservative Party to balance these very real benefits against each other and different conservatives do driven through different conclusions some said yes the price is worth paying others said it was not and this tension I think was bound to implode in the Conservative Party and cause divisions which are still very much present Margaret Thatcher's successor as Prime Minister was a chancellor John Major he immediately struck a new note declaring my aim for Britain in the community can be simply stated I want to be where we belong at the very heart of Europe he successfully negotiated the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 which also extended the European Union's right of initiative into many new airs of policy and showed that the European Union was moving from a concerned solely with economics to the political area and there were provisions in the Maastricht Treaty requiring every member state to join the common currency but John Major through very skillful negotiation secured an opt-out for Britain and this meant that Britain would not unlike all the other member states except Denmark which also had an opt-out Britain would not be legally required to join the Euro it's fair to say at some of the other member states which are legally required have no intention whatever of doing so and one senior polish officials said to me the polls are five years away from joining the Euro and always will be but Britain's troubles were by no means over with the opt-out from Maastricht because membership of the European monetary system was proven increasingly difficult as a result in large part of German reunification and this proved to be inflationary since wages and social benefits in the depressed East had to be raised to the same level as in the West and the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl chose a rate of exchange or one-to-one between the West German deutsche mark and the East German Ostmark although obviously Ostmark was worth much less than a Dutch mark in addition Kohl shows to finance reunification not by raising tax Asian but by borrowing and in consequence Germany had to raise interest rates now higher interest rates might have been appropriate for Britain in 1990 when she was still suffering from the effects of a property fuelled boom but by 1992 Britain was in recession and the need was to reduce interest rates not to raise them so as Margaret Thatcher had predicted the Exchange Rate Mechanism was leading not to the convergence of the British and German economies but to their divergence and British policy was being influenced not by what might be right for Britain but by what was right for Germany and of course many of argue that would have and if Britain had joined the eurozone now by the summer of 1992 the markets had come to the view the British government lacked the resolve to implement the necessary measures of economic and financial discipline needed to sustain her continued membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism market predictions proved self-fulfilling and as Margaret Thatcher had predicted the attempt to batma market led to Britain being backed by the market Britain sought help from the German central bank the Bundesbank and from German politicians she did not get it the Bundesbank refused to lower interest rates below a token amount and indeed on the day before Britain left Exchange Rate Mechanism the head of the Bundesbank very kindly declared that weak currencies might have to be devalued he did not want the Bundys the Bundesbank to be tied to a weak pound Germany had in any case been less sympathetic to the project of monetary union and France since she believed she would lose control over inflation and come to be at the mercy of the financial indiscipline of other European countries perhaps the Greek crisis of 2011 shows she was right and during the discussions with Britain the head of the Bundesbank a Helmut Schlessinger told the German Finance Minister Tara vagal not to weaken he said in 1948 remember we had nothing and look what we have now we achieved it by pursuing our own line of policies we mustn't weaken now Germany was to be much criticized by the British who believed as I said in my last lecture that since Britain was the center of the world it was a duty of other countries and in particular in post-war years the American Congress to act as charitable institutions towards her and Germany was much criticized for acting according to her own self-interest in his autobiography John Major tells the story of phoning the head of his policy unit who was on a walking tour of Scotland and this was before the days of the internet or mobile phones and the head of the policy unit had to go to a police phone to answer the Prime Minister's call and she said Prime Minister I don't think we can rely on the Germans the two police constables standing nearby who had overheard replied without knowing what she was talking about dead right and in his memoirs John Major comments that they certainly knew what was what in world affairs now the British criticism and did have something to be said for it because after all the Germans were a hegemonic power within the system and surely had responsibilities other than national self-interest which went along with that hegemonic power but a very obvious from historical reasons the Germans do not like exercising that hegemonic power and do not wish to accept the responsibilities that go with a hegemon and Americans can understand that because they too have conflicts about being a hegemonic power but the Germans always insisted they were committed Europeans and favoured European solutions to problems though by a happy coincidence those European solutions always seem to be those which suited German national interests but anyway they became the convenient scapegoat for British problems now on what was called Black Wednesday though the Euroskeptics called it white Wednesday Britain was forced out of the European monetary system with a lot of around 3.3 billion pounds in foreign currency reserves conservative opinion poll ratings fell from 43 to 29 percent and did not recover even though leaving the European monetary system did not have the catastrophic consequences that many predicted indeed it led to a period of low inflation though whether this was a result of membership remains a matter of dispute amongst economists I think it was President Truman who said he wanted to meet a one-handed economist because every economist said that on the one hand is this and on the other hand that and and that's true of the effects of a monetary system but perhaps best summed up by Sir Alan Budds who was chief economic adviser to the Treasury from 1991 to 1997 and he later wrote the period of membership of the exchange rate may was not a very worthy episode a slightly cruel summary of it would be to say that we went into the Exchange Rate Mechanism in despair and left in disgrace nevertheless we are still enjoying the benefits of it but the benefits took time to arrive the immediate economic consequences were catastrophic during the first nine months of 1992 there were nearly 36,000 bankruptcies and nearly 25,000 company liquidations over 68,000 properties were repossessed and over 200,000 property owners found themselves in mortgage payment arrears GDP growth was negative - 2.2 percent in 1991 and minus 0.6 percent in 1992 and the hardship was felt most strongly amongst the core conservative or Thatcherite constituency small businesses and the self-employed they were devastated by the economic collapse and the repossessions and mortgage arrears seemed to put an end to the conservative dream of a property-owning democracy the political consequences were as you can imagine very serious and one conservative backbencher declared for the departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism was the biggest humiliation for Britain since Suez it was a political chess trophy for the major government ruining the reputation for good economic management that conservative governments had on the whole enjoyed since 1951 and it was largely for this reason the party remained in opposition for so long after 1997 in the aftermath of withdrawal taxes had to be raised and this prevented the Conservatives from tagging labour in the 1997 election as they'd done in 1992 as the party of high taxation the Conservatives were now tagged as the party of devaluation and labour for the first time since the 1970s was coming to be seen by the voters as more competent in Economic Affairs than the Conservatives in the 2005 election campaign labour Prime Minister Tony Blair said the Conservatives used to run on the economy now they run away from it they were not to recover their reputation for nearly twenty years until they'd lost three general elections and perhaps most important from our point of view the exits from the Exchange Rate Mechanism D legitimized to pro Europeans in the Conservative Party they the euro skeptic said that leaving it enabled Britain to devalue and led to economic recovery and they called it not black Wednesday but white Wednesday since it restored to Britain the freedom to make her own economic policy and the ERM debarked have made it absolutely certain that Britain would not join the eurozone and not one opinion poll has ever shown in Britain a majority for joining and the Euro skeptics pointed out if we were to join the Euro we could not devalue as the Greeks Italians and others have discovered so be locked into something that was not suitable with British economy during the Greek eurozone crisis of 2011 Foreign Secretary William Hague was to compare the eurozone to a building on fire with no exit the euro skeptic said the commitment to Europe was a policy of the pre Thatcher days of failed conservatism an aberration a departure from true conservatism which depended not on integration but the primacy of the nation so true conserved his must be Euroskeptics Margaret Thatcher shared that view in her maiden speech in the Lord's she said the Maastricht Treaty was retreated too far there should be a referendum on it she said and if there was she would vote against it and departure from the Exchange Rate Mechanism started a civil war in the Conservative Party which still rages at the 1992 party conference the first after we left the Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd pleaded with delegates to remember the disastrous effects of two previous splits in the party both on issues connected with free trade and protection and issues which raised profound issues of national identity the split over the Corn Laws in 1846 and the split over tariffs reform in nineteen three the first kept the Conservatives out of a majority government for 28 years second for 17 years let us decide to give that madness amiss he pleaded but his plea fell on deaf ears and Europe was to keep the Conservatives out for 13 years a former Conservative Minister very close to Margaret Thatcher a former chairman of the Conservative Party Norman Tebbit called the Exchange Rate Mechanism the eternal recession mechanism and he asked the delegates and a very rabble-rousing speech three questions do you want to be citizens of a European Union to which of course they all shouted out no do you want to see a single currency they will shout Downton No do you want to let other countries decide Britain's immigration policy to which they all shouted out no and these years began the chain of events which led to the brexit referendum of 2016 now the European issue was relatively quiescent during the period of the Pro European labour governments of Blair and Gordon Brown but then until 2008 but in 2010 the Labour government was replaced with a conservative Liberal Democrat coalition government led by David Cameron and that was the first peacetime coalition government we've had since 1931 and who could only be formed because Europe at that moment was quiescent because the conservative the euro skeptic but Liberal Democrats the most Pro European Party in Britain and David Cameron when he became leader of the Conservative Party's first conference speech as leader in 2006 he said he wanted to stop the Conservatives in his own words banging on about Europe to forget about an issue which was dividing the party in which he thought had little resonance with the British public and he said the concerti should concentrate on the problems really worrying people like the condition of the public services and particularly the National Health Service but Europe was to become a salient issue again very rapidly after that coalition government was formed the prime reason being mass immigration from Central and Eastern Europe following enlargement in 2004 now the ex communist countries had a far lower standard than almost all of the existing Member States and its people felt a magnetic attraction towards the west and particular to Britain with it developed welfare provisions and National Health Service in British governments seriously underestimated the scale of the immigration which was to occur between 1881 and 1914 around three hundred and twenty five thousand Jews immigrated into Britain from Eastern Europe between the years 1933 and 1939 around a further fifty thousand came from Nazi Germany by the time of a 1971 immigration act which stopped the permanent migration of workers from the Commonwealth there were around 600,000 British citizens born in the Commonwealth living in Britain and these includes a very small number would come to Britain before 1939 but mostly post-war in 1972 around 30,000 Ugandan Asians expelled by President Amin were emitted admitted to Britain but there are now in Britain around 3.7 million migrants from the European Union so it's been of a quite different level of magnitude from previous waves of immigration and whereas from 1962 immigration from the Commonwealth could be controlled immigration from the European Union could not be so controlled and this had not been foreseen in the Treaty of Rome which had been signed by six countries of roughly similar living standards and before the age of mass transit but the admission of the ex communist countries in the poorest of which Romania income per head was just over one-fifth of that in Britain all - the situation now most economists believe that India emigration was good for Britain and indeed Tony Blair's Labour government had encouraged it to overcome shortages of labour but many in the poorest sections of the community felt it to be discerned for advantageous and for them immigration seemed primarily to have benefited the elite who could hire efficient polish builders and lithuanian up airs the benefits seemed less obvious for the left behind on low incomes even though the economists said they were there because they believe that an unlimited supply of immigrant labor kept wages low and the benefits in the form of an increase in tax revenues were not visible while difficulties in the public service like long hospital waiting lists waiting times at doctors surgeries overcrowded classrooms were very visible and were largely mistakenly attributed to the incursion of immigrants in addition many amongst the poorest sections of the community found it difficult to cope with the social effects of immigration the transformation of their communities by people whose first language is not English unlike the Commonwealth immigrants and this had occurred so they said without their consent without their having been asked and they argued that it undermined the sense of reciprocity which was the basis of the welfare state because they took the view that access to benefits should depend upon contributions and not be available on the same basis to recent immigrants who had not had the chance to contribute and they said the basis of citizenship was a joint enterprise between citizens so mass emigration yielded a disconnect between the elites and the people and it was symbolized in an iconic and in my view very important episode in the 2010 general election campaign in which the Prime Minister Gordon Brown defending his position was campaigning in Rochdale where he met a Labour voter who told him she was worried about the scale of immigration he gave her a standard defense of the benefits which immigration and brought when he returned his car he did not realize that his microphone was still on and he complained about having been brought to face to face with someone he called and I quote a bigoted woman widely reported on the media this comment did little for brown's election campaign and confirmed in the minds of many working-class voters that the Labour leadership indeed the political class as a whole took little interest in the worries of ordinary people and were happy to ignore them and these concerns of high immigration became particularly prominent after the credit crunch of 2008 and that financial collapse led to fundamental changes in political alignments and attitudes in many democracies including I I believe America changes which have by no means yet worked themselves out and which are still being felt because the credit crunch resulted in those on low incomes seeing their standard living stagnate while the wealth of a better off seemed to remain untouched the political and financial elites had seemed less than confident than competence I beg a pardon in dealing with the fallout from the crisis which cast doubt on a neoliberal premise that allowing finances and bankers to earn large sums of money would be of benefit to the whole community the credit crunch also seemed to cast doubt on the wisdom of experts economists who had explained that inequality of income and wealth were beneficial since they would help to raise a standard of living of more less well-off and the queen who often represented the popular mood the queen was visiting the London School of Economics shortly after the credit crunch and she asked the economist why did neither you foresee this and that was a question they found difficult to answer so the experts were in the popular mind discredited and it's therefore not surprising that the prediction of the experts about the economic consequences of brexit in 2016 were also disregarded in the referendum now Social Democrats in Britain and I think elsewhere hope the credit crunch would prove a social democratic moment that it would lead to a fundamental change in attitudes to the free market a strong electoral constituency of a greater regulation of markets and the banks and in favor of redistributed taxation now it's true the philosophy of market liberalism has suffered a battering and to show that I will quote from the serve tea parties manifesto for the general election of 2017 it declared remarkably we must reject the ideological templates provided by the Socialist Left and the libertarian right in other words they were creating Margaret Thatcher with Jeremy Corbyn and instead embrace the mainstream view that recognizes of the good that government can do and later the manifesto declared the government's agenda will not be allowed to drift the right to reason may the Prime Minister was as far away from the economic liberals and Margaret Thatcher Jeremy Corbyn was from Tony Blair's new labour because the beneficiary of the weakness in the philosophy of market liberalism was not social democracy but in Britain as in so much of the continent and possibly in America the two internationalist philosophies associated with the previous regime of economic progress namely economic liberalism and social democracy found themselves in retreat and in decline and there was a change of regime in many European countries and also possibly in America Jeremy Corbyn reacted against social democracy to reason may reacted against neoliberalism the 2000 election in Britain 2017 election marked a movement away from the consensus on those two philosophies which had ruled Britain from the days of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to David Cameron who resigned the Premiership in 2016 just after the brexit referendum and what the credit crunch led to was not a social democratic moment but as after the Wall Street Crash a nationalist and protectionist moment it strengthened national feeling while weakening class feeling and social solidarity in the alienation and sense of disfranchisement which arose benefited the right more than the left as it had done in 1930s Europe where many socialists had wrongly predicted the collapse of capitalism but although the financial crash benefited the right it gave rise to a mood which is radical and anything but conservative on the continent the main effect was to weaken parties of the center in favor of parties of the extreme right in the Mediterranean countries often the beneficiaries have been parties of the extreme left but the main ideological victims in both cases were internationalist doctrines which has been the governing ideologies for many years and the credit crunch may be said to have inaugurated a crisis of economic and political liberalism and this was bound to have considerable effects on British membership of the European Union and it led to a sea change and the politics of many of the advanced democracies because until 2008 politics in Britain and many other democracies was largely dominated by economics by the role of the state in economic affairs but after 2008 politics came to be dominated by questions of identity and in Britain a key question came to be less what ought to be the role of the state but rather what does it mean to be British and in particular was being British compatible with being European and was being Scottish compatible with being British in the 2015 general election just a year before the referendum on the European Union the only two parties to make significant progress well the United Kingdom Independence Party dedicated to taking taking Britain out of the European Union and the Scottish National Party dedicated of taking Scotland out of the United Kingdom both emphasised identity rather than economics they complained not that their political opponents were too left-wing or to right-wing but they were insufficiently British or insufficiently Scottish and these concerns about identity were felt most strongly by the disadvantaged and insecure the victims of social and economic change alienated from a bank King financial and political establishment which seemed to weather the crisis with hardly any difficulty the elite to them seemed not only socially mobile benefiting from a meritocratic society but also geographically mobile they were located in large conurbations such as London Manchester and Newcastle all of which supported remain the elites in Britain perhaps our countries too is internationalist it is more comfortable in Brussels than it is in Blackpool or Burnley perhaps in the United States more comfortable in New York or Nassau than Iowa or Idaho but lows left behind by the decline of manufacturing industry are neither socially nor geographically mobile they remain rooted to their decaying communities remarkably around 60% of the British population live within 20 miles of where they grew up they did not share the multicultural perspective of Londoners who welcomed emigration and favoured the European Union and the contrast between London and the rest of England may be one of the reasons as you know Britain is highly centralised it may be one of the reasons why so many media commentators based in the capital mister significance of the grassroots insurgency in provincial England which is leading to brexit many of those who voted for brexit felt they'd been ignored and felt anger at the political and economic establishment the referendum was an opportunity to display that anger now this growth of nationalism was bound to have its effect shortly after David Cameron's coalition government took office in 2010 Europe once again became a salient issue indeed in that election of 2010 brexit gained 3 percent of the vote now that may not seem high to you but nearly a million votes its percentage of the vote is the highest recorded for any minor party in Britain not allied to a major party since the rise of labour before the first world war in 2015 it gained 1/8 of ohh though under our rather old electoral system just one out of 650 seats in 2010 the near fascist British National Party gained 2% of the vote a much better performance than Oswald Moses British Union of fascists between the wars which despite the depression was never strong enough to contest a general election now in 2011 the Cameron government established a petition system providing with any petition on a matter of government responsibility which attracted a hundred thousand signatures would be eligible for debate at Westminster and the first such petition demanding a referendum on the European Union the second demanded a curb on immigration at the same time a survey by the polling company YouGov showed that 4/5 of the population in England believed the country was too crowded perhaps I should add that the petition to STOP president trumps state visit to Britain in 2017 attracted over a million and a half signatures in October 2011 a Commons debate was held on whether there should be a referendum on British membership of the European Union eighty-one Conservative MPs nearly half of all conservatives not on the government payroll broke a three-line whip to support a referendum grassroots pressure on Cameron increased and in January 2013 in his Bloomberg speech he committed the Conservatives to fundamental reform I quote of the EU and then a referendum on whether Britain should remain democratic consent for Europe he declared was now wafer-thin if the people were not to be consulted he believed that would make more likely our eventual exit since anti-eu feeling would grow and fester he spoke of negotiating a new settlement for Britain in the EU and concluded with the following words I want the EU to be a success and I want a relationship between Britain and the EU that keeps us in it if we can negotiate such an arrangement I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul because I believe something very deeply that Britain's national interest is best served in a flexible adaptable and open EU and that certain EU is best with Britain in it now his Bloomberg speech was a pro-european speech though few appreciate at a time and he was more successful in his renegotiation than his often thought what he wanted to achieve was to ensure that the rights of the non eurozone members of which Britain of course was one could not be overruled by the majority of members who were in the eurozone and seemed to be moving through closer integration the banking Union perhaps also fiscal union he sought in particular to protect the City of London which brought in much tax revenue and he was successful but of course the interests of the city could not be brought to the fore in the referendum since its image had been so tarnished in the credit crunch vote to remain in Europe now that the interests of the city have been protected would not have been a very inspiring slogan the emotive issue was immigration and on this although Cameron's occurred some minor concessions they did not seem sufficient to secure that it would be radically curbed now this speech of Cameron's at Bloomberg marked a turning point in Britain's relations with the EU because until then governments had managed successfully a balancing act they didn't favor the aims of the European Union in ever closing you ever closer Union but they thought Britain's economic interest would be best served by Britain remaining in so they're balanced it out with the euro sketch of the British public by securing all sorts of opt out from from from the central policies and in this governments were very successful they got as I said knocked out from the eurozone they've got an opt-out from the Schengen Agreement which came into force in March 2006 abolishing internal border checks within the European Union but Cameron's speech and the European referendum of 2016 showed the balancing act could no longer be maintained now in the 2016 referendum the dog that had failed to bark in 1975 barked very loudly remember I said the puzzle of that referendum was why there wasn't a national populist movement of the kind there was in Norway that kept Norway out of the European Union in 2016 there was it was you Kip led by Nigel Farage who proved himself a brilliant communicator in the media and in the European Parliament elections of 2014 you kicked was the largest party with 27% of the vote the first time in British history any party other than a major party had won an election in 2016 the fear element which had played so large a part in 1975 in keeping Britain in the European Union now played them a major part in pushing Britain out because there was a fear being dragged into integrationist projects and above all a fear of uncontrolled immigration and that was more important for most voters than the economic consequences of brexit and the referendum took place against the background of a million refugees being admitted to Germany and terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels and that was legitimately linked up in many people's minds with EU immigration now Oxford University's migrant Observatory I'm sorry migration Observatory declared in the year or so before the EU referendum immigration was consistently named the most salient issue facing the country peaking at 56% in September 2015 these fears were played upon by the brexit ears some of whom put forward the blatant falsehoods that the EU would short the EU would shortly be admitting turkey that Britain would have no veto over that decision and that consequently 80 million Turks would be able to come to Britain but fair to say who had to look quite hard in Britain to find any Turks and it's also fair to say there were distortions on both sides of the campaign because after all referendums like general elections are not academic seminars and never like it to be but fears concerning immigration were given effect by the slogan of the brexit ears take back control and furthermore deference towards political leaders which have been present in 1975 was no longer present in 2006 many were conscious of the economic risk but prepared to take them and some felt they had listened to lose because their own income had been stagnating and when one political leader spoke in the northeast and said that GDP would fall if we left the European Union one question I asked him whose GDP are you talking about house has been stagnant for many years now the referendum showed that the country was deeply divided a long a mutually reinforcing cleavage of geography culture and education and Britain remained deeply divided almost down the middle along these fault lines nearly three years after the referendum and very remarkably brexit identity remains much more powerful than party identity 21 percent of British voters say they have no party identity don't identify with any party only six percent of British voters say they don't identify on brexit issue one way or the other and that I think is a great change the referendum outcome was confirmed by the 200 2017 election in which both major parties the conservative and Labour Party said they would implement the outcome and those two parties gained 84 percent of the vote between them the Liberal Democrat Party which campaign has campaigned consistently for a further referendum and four remain 112 seats with 8% of the vote the Scottish National Party which also campaigns for the same lost farm was down from 56 seats to 35 seats and its vote was down 50% in Scotland to 37% in Scotland and Parliament passed a European withdrawal act which over 400 MPs voted for over last year in which it was said that we would withdraw from the European Union on the 29th of March this year that date has now been extended - Halloween - October the 31st but it is not clear of course not wholly clear whether we will in fact leave now the outcome of this referendum in 2016 was unexpected by most commentators and it will be seismic in its effects already has been I think I'm at the only complement in Britain in the 20th century with probably the general election of 1945 in which Winston Churchill was dismissed by the British public after winning the war and at that time one elderly disappointed voter said that the people had elected a Labour government but the country would never stand for it and you may say the same about the brexit referendum and there's a sense in which like the 1945 election the referendum was a victory for working-class power because around 37% of labour voters who would normally have followed the cues of their party to vote for Europe voted against it and this helped to swing the balance in favor of brexit in recent general elections the working-class vote had seemed to count for little because many working-class voters live in safe labour seats and under our first past the post system there's no point campaigning in them so the campaigning goes in the marginal seats we're broadly the aspiration rules live in the referendum every vote counted and there was no such thing as a safe seat and this no doubt was run reasons for the high turnout 72% the highest since the 1992 general election and some voters were voting for the first time since the general election of 1987 turnout was highest in the leave areas there were three remain remain errors Northern Ireland Scotland and London and they were in the in the four lowest errors of turnout but ironically it was voters in those areas who are most sympathetic to the call for a second referendum not having turned out in the first now the referendum showed that the European Union had lost the confidence of the British people though some liberal I suppose elitists one would say and I think financial times which perhaps many of you read has taken an opposite view and has said that the people have forfeited the confidence of the European Union and will have to struggle hard to regain it they might have borne in mind a poem written by the German playwright Berthold Brecht after the East German uprising of 1953 which cited a leaflet by the secretary of the Writers Union East Germany stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could only win it back by redoubled efforts would it not be easier in that case Brecht asked for the government to dissolve the people and elect another now the 2016 referendum was an emphatic repudiation not only of the government but of the political class as a whole all three major political parties favored remaining as did the nationalist parties in the non-english parts of the United Kingdom in the 1970s as I said last time Edward Heath took the British establishment into Europe but it needed Harold Wilson to take the British people into Europe through his referendum now it appeared the British establishment remained in Europe but the people did not now the government having been repudiated Cameron resigned and the referendum had become an effect to recall he was replaced by the Home Secretary Theresa May also a remainer but one committed to carrying out the referendum verdict the high turnout in the referendum seems to me a striking illustration of Democratic commitment on the part of the least fortunate in Britain greatest threat to democracy we always used to say was an inert electorate one that has ceased to think about public issues or to take part in politics John Stuart Mill once wrote that we learn to swim or cycle not by reading books about swimming or cycling but by undertaking the activity and similarly we learn about democracy not by reading books about it but by participating in making decisions but the outcome of the referendum confirmed the doubts that many liberals feel concerning the doctrines of the sovereignty of the people and these doubts have been shared before the first referendum by Ralph a ex-president of the European Commission who had deplored the coming referendum he said a referendum on this matter consists of consulting people who don't know the problems instead of consulting people who know them I would deplore a situation in which the policy of this great country should be left to housewives it should be decided instead by trained and informed people and modern liberals find themselves in curious alliance with 19th century conservatives who opposed the extension of the franchise arguing the people were too ill educated too prone to be moved by demagogues and unable to understand complex political issues some have come ruefully to sympathize with the view of a great French reactionary and opponent of the French Revolution and Joseph de Maistre who said the principle of the sovereignty of the people is so dangerous that even if it were true it would be necessary to conceal it now as well as the vote against the political class the referendum was a cry of Rage by those who saw themselves as the victims of globalization it was the revenge of the betrayed they sought protection against the excesses of globalization in which the EU's internal market was a symbol protection against market forces which so they believed were costing their jobs and holding down their wages but bad terrible irony brexit is likely to strengthen those very forces in Britain and not we and indeed most of the leaders of the brexit campaign apart from you Kip were conservatives of the right who while agreeing that if the new immigration would be restricted had a totally different agenda they thought brexit for basically neoliberal reasons to ensure a more effective operation of the market economy freed from the constraints of the EU and the restrictions of wracked the laws social Europe they agreed with Margaret Thatcher that the EU would prevent Britain benefiting from the workings of the market economy they believed of Britain free of EU regulations and restrictions could be a powerful global trading force they wanted to create Singapore on Thames in London as it were and this economically liberal view of brexit is bound to prevail in my view it is the logic of brexit because economic success outside the European Union requires Britain to be more competitive by opening up markets and embracing free trade encouraging enterprise by lowering corporation tax and personal tax as well to be financed only by reducing public expenditure this will put further pressure on social and welfare expenditure already reeling from some years of austerity it means a radical shrinking of the state which is likely to disadvantage those very voters who believe that brexit would protect them from the excesses of globalization far from gaining shelter from world economic forces they will find themselves even more exposed to them they will have to sink or swim in the harsher economic climate in which post brexit will find herself so brexit will lead for Britain more not less exposed to the forces of globalization it will prove to be the Revenge of Margaret Thatcher from beyond the grave one writer when just before Britain entered the European Union delivered the wreath lectures and he gave them on the BBC prestigious lectures and gained the title journey to an unknown destination this journey is still unknown although in my last lecture on Wednesday I shall be discussing what that destination might be but whatever that destination is Britain will almost certainly not be part of it she is not part of what Robert Schuman spoke of that destiny shared in common of the European states and she has probably never been part of it in a poll in 2016 the British came 28th out of the 28 member states of identifying themselves as Europeans nearly two-thirds of British did not identify as Europeans as compared with an average of 62% who did identify themselves as Europeans in the EU as a whole only countries approaching Britain's low level of identification with Europe were Greece and Cyprus which had suffered serious financial crises in recent years Europe therefore has caused a deep conflict between the facts of economics which seem to point to continued membership and the sentiments of nationhood which point to brexit perhaps it is not wholly surprising that the sentiment of nationhood has triumphed but the process of breaks it whatever its difficulties has not shaken the foundations of the British political system and she still remains probably the most stable country in Western Europe among the most stable countries in the world and they've been all sorts of dire predictions but it's worth remembering what was said in 1777 after general Burgoyne's surrendered the Americans at Saratoga and a young British aristocrat set Adam Smith this is going to ruin the country and Smith said there was a great deal of ruin in an ocean and I think those are wides words and perhaps worth remembering amidst the tumult brexit thank you [Applause] ladies and gentlemen the fourth one will be in the auditorium downstairs on Wednesday we have we started late and I apologized for that it was trying to get the chairs now those things around there will be a little time for a few questions however I just want to say myself I not heard so insightful and remarkable empathetic way of describing the reasons for EMEA alienation of that British electorate that working-class electric over these time so I myself learned a great deal thank you for ladies and gentlemen Justin if you get identified by the speaker somebody now I'm asking a question could he also identify yourself please please far away I'm sorry I've gone a bit too long I stunned them into silence yeah okay sorry political science with an interesting history is coefficient politics but you may be getting from the exit and you talked about the tension in Margaret Thatcher's days between the economics the pro-business right and the nationalism for Britain but in your characterization of the king the contemporary conservative parties it seems like you're describing those aligning again even though there's been such an opposition to your exit from established business interests and I just wondering how you see that working within the ideology and the mindset of the current conservative party if there is still attention to the seat or if somehow it's come together in some unforeseen week that's a difficult question to answer the tension now is between those as you say the financial and business interests who are best represented by the chancellor who want what is called a fairly soft brexit maintaining close ties to the European Union and what you might call the harder people and there's a very difficult balance and perhaps not a very happy one because if you're very close to the European Union and remain let's say to take an extreme model you remain in the customs union and the internal market that makes it a pointless brexit what's the point of leaving but accepting the same rules but you will get reasonably frictionless trade on the other hand if you want to strike out to become Singapore on Thames which is what the right wing of the Conservative Party to you will not get frictionless trade now given that the continent is Britain's closest market it's an unhappy dilemma situation to be in which practice wasn't thought about much when the vote took place and the the conflict within the Conservative Party now is on that it's fair to say one gets a very false picture of opinion by reading the Financial Times for example amongst conservative members and it's worth remembering we have a leadership election very shortly because to reason may said you'll go once the deal is passed and see I in my opinion she may go before that I think her days of out numbered the election for leader is determined by the parliamentary party voting for two candidates who are then put to the members now the members are very untypical of british opinion they're only a hundred twenty four thousand of them the average age is over sixty and they are strong brexit ears fifty percent favor britain leaving the european union without a deal fewer than ten percent are remainders or favor of second referendum and given that is a situation the candidates for the leadership of which it said they're about twenty are varying to that position and teresa may is in a sense out on a limb towards the soft people and particularly in my view annoyed people by opening discussions with corbin they say she should be talking the right wing of her own party and not legitimizing someone they see as a marxist who's with threats of the security of the country so I think her days are very much numb but I don't know that answers your question the nationalist right of the Conservative Party ignoring the CBI for example oh yeah now that that that's absolutely right they are and one of the leaders of the nationalist right Boris Johnson said of business a word beginning with F and then business and that's a bit on perhaps on typical conservative view but they they say it's it's fair to say they say the CBI is representative of large business which can cope with EU bureaucracy and paperwork and small businesses can't but it's certainly true that the rep that those are the closest to the business and financial community like the chance of the Exchequer are very soft brexit ears that absolutely right but there's a the basis of the Conservative Party is and always has been and the basis of the Thatcherite partially consent politically not very wealthy but those with small amounts of capital and fear losing it small shopkeepers small businessmen aspiring SI toos and so are not very rich the the constituency is not that and those are the people are going to elect the leader and that's the the basis of the modern Conservative Party I think yes gentlemen here it's almost three years since we had a very close when this occurred almost three years ago there was less information we diffused in the country people went to the Falls anyway and made a decision and you had a close election why not go back well the art the argument was this that both major parties in the elections said they would respect the result now there are calls and the Labour Party is moving towards the position new suggests and if it was another leader than Corbin I think the Labour Party would have come out for that position but the the and I I would say my own position for what it's worth I used to favor that option but I don't anymore for a reason I'll explain the argument against is this that opinion seems to have changed slightly towards the remain side since that referendum but that is not there's been a huge churning of opinion and some people who are leave are now remain and simply remain leave but the new element is the to two things of people who didn't vote last time because but they couldn't be bothered to vote and the young who were too young to vote and would vote this time and those two elements give remain a small majority now there are a lot of people I think rather foolish people who say perhaps lightly tactlessly we lock the older dying out and the young growing up from bed a vote and therefore there'll be a movement of opinion towards Europe well not to be careful saying that because after all 1975 gave a two-to-one majority for Europe now that cohort which is now much older is very hostile to at the old of much more hostile to Europe from the young but it's that same cohort that gave Europe a huge majority 975 but anyway let's assume that the polls are right and that remain had a small majority let's say for argument's sake 5446 which probably best think of it would that actually resolve it all the people say well wait a minute this is also reasonably narrow immature let's have a third referendum yeah this we can ignore the big question in a democracy would be let's do what the Civil War yeah and almost three years ago we had an outcome there has been a lot of debate there has been a fiasco you without president administered by the Prime Minister I'm quoting the FT in the Economist I think they're both in favor of having certain people declares no absolutely absolutely our liberal elitist in Britain are very bad losers they don't like losing votes they say have enough people couldn't really mean it another one but no I take a point and the difficulty isn't say if it was a narrow majority this too would be seen as provisional and the point was that before that first referendum the government sent a information leaf it's every house saying the result whatever it is would be respected and you may say it's famous in the Scottish nationalists are in a way in two minds about this for this reason but they say if we had a referendum on independence people would want to won on the principle and won on the deal now if we'd had that if it had had been known the leave vote in the 2016 referendum would've been high because people say it wasn't no harm in voting and let's see what deal we get we can always change our mind so I'm a bit of a problem there and another problem with it is this that um what are the options to be put them so you may say leave on the basis of the deal or remain but the right wing of the conservative party say no no we want to leave on the basis of No Deal and then the Labour Party says no we want to leave on the basis of a customs union and some set on the Norway option so what option you can put in but despite that I was in favor of the referendum I now think it is too late a referendum bill that the 2015 one took seven months to get through Parliament and you can imagine how it would be fought over with MPs and might in my view it may not be shared I think the MPs have behaved appallingly because if they favored a referendum they should have pushed that through earlier not left it to the last minute and suddenly on the other issues and what the end piece have done is to vote for the withdrawal act to take us out but then vote against every means to implement it it reminds me of the old Groucho Marx film in the nineteen thirties when Groucho's and academic with a a group a governing body of academics and he starts a discussion by saying I don't care what you say whatever it is I'm against it and this is what the MPs have done tying her hands so there is it's a very difficult issue there is some case of logic and again that's dividing the country almost down the middle on balance now I'm against it yeah sorry I've talked too much meets witching hour for this Monday's lecture the final lecture where everything is ladies and gentlemen but you cheap euro reminds me that to tell you about it's going to be in the auditorium downstairs Wednesday [Applause] [Music]

Channel: YaleUniversity

Views: 110,753

Keywords: brexit, europe, european union, uk, eu, united kingdom, england, ireland, northern ireland, vernon bogdanor, theresa may, brexit delay, macmillan center, yale, yale university, wales, scotland, parliament, jeremy corbyn, brexit deal, withdrawl agreement, transition period, no-deal, no-deal brexit, no deal, Yale

Id: 3EGVDJF2zY4

Length: 87min 0sec (5220 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019