 Hello, and good evening. My name is Dan Pleche. I have the pleasure to be the director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy. We're delighted this evening to be hosting this event in partnership with the School of Law here at SOAS and to be able to host Professor Michael Duggan from Liverpool University who's, I think has something like two or three million hits on his video explaining the Brexit lies. So you can eat your heart out, Rihanna. He will be introduced properly by somebody who knows something about law, which I don't, which is Professor, which is, excuse me, Paul O'Connell sitting at the front who will come up in a moment to tell us a little bit more about the speaker. And after his remarks, he and I will have a little exchange in these decorative red chairs and then we'll open it up for questions. Coming from a Centre for Diplomatic Studies, we try to tell ourselves and our students that diplomats have to be prepared for the unlikely. Well, you can tell one thing, the British Foreign Ministry wasn't prepared for the Brexit vote because they were forbidden by legal by dictate of the Prime Minister at the time to do any preparations whatsoever for that event, which kinds of doesn't sit well with all the time energy that we are thought to necessarily spend on contingency planning and the like. So we're now in diplomatic uncharted waters of a one negotiating with a 27 or more with other bystanders. We have a United States that famously sought to use the United Kingdom to limit the European Union. Indeed, if you want to go and look on YouTube, there is a wonderful speech of General De Gaulle shortly after the British government decided that it was going to rent its nuclear deterrent from the United States and rent the Polaris system back in the 1960s. At the point, General De Gaulle went on television and he said that Britain was now going to be a vassal state of America and he wasn't going to have an American vassal state included in the European community as it then was and that was why he was going to veto British membership. He said that there was no connection between continuing the vassal status with renting trident and that tutelage or loss of sovereignty over bombs seems to have entirely escaped the entire leave campaign concerned not so much with bombs but with bananas. And this is one of the cognitive distances one might say inherited certainly in the British elite in that they can be obsessed by the bananas and have no willingness to acknowledge that sovereignty and taking back control of that. Well that sovereignty was handed to Washington essentially after the defeat at Dunkirk in 1940 but now we are obsessed with the bananas debate and exiting. So while Washington looks on after a few plaintive remarks from the president which no one really seemed to take much heed of, we now have this situation which the foreign office for one didn't expect and wasn't allowed to expect. So those are some of the vagaries of diplomacy but we'll hear more in more detail shortly. So enough from me, I hope you'll give it up to Paul O'Connell from the Law School. Thanks very much Dan. I'll keep it very brief because like the rest of you I'm here to hear Michael Duggan speak and I'll just get this out away as quickly as I can. So I want to start off first of all by thanking Dan and colleagues in the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy for all the work they have done in putting this event together. Some of you may or may not have already seen Michael's video which in the space of a few days had a half a million hits on YouTube and has gone up exponentially since then from a public who were desperate for some sort of sanity and some sort of well reasoned argument in the context of a very divisive and polarised referendum debate. So I'm really looking forward to hear what Michael has to say. I suppose by way of introduction I just want to say that one of the key phrases that struck me from Michael's video was that the leave campaign in the Brexit debate engaged in dishonesty on an industrial scale, dishonesty on an industrial scale and it's an important point and again it's something that Michael set out to counteract by trying to set out the facts and the reality of how EU law actually operates and what it looks like. But I think what's interesting is that we situate this in a bigger context because this year has also seen the publication of the Chilcot report which showed that the UK's involvement in the invasion of Iraq was also based on lies and dishonesty on industrial scale. It's interesting, Tennessee Williams, the playwright in his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof from 1955 has a lovely line where he says, mendacity is the system that we live in. And so dishonesty on an industrial and on a structural scale in some ways marks every aspect of our political life and has done for some time. But as I said, Michael brings a particular voice of sanity to this debate or brought a particular voice of sanity to this debate. I personally take great pride in the fact that you've got two Irish people on this stage talking about the Brexit referendum. I do also, I do also like that just technically speaking because I'm trying to copyright this, if the issue ever arises in the Republic of Ireland because the official name of the state is Aira it would just be the exit debate. It would be much more simple and much more straightforward so we can come back to that. So Michael again, and again some of you already know this, Michael is a sort of well-renowned and established expert in European law and particularly European constitutional law. The very key issues of the Brexit debate raised without ever fully addressing them. And today he's going to speak to us about the future of Britain in Europe after the referendum. And it's important because I think it's become bait in the obvious and Dan has hinted at this, that the Conservative Party ran this referendum without much expectation of having to confront this result. That the actual result caught most people by surprise. And now the realities of exactly what it means are starting to confront us. And for those of you who study law here, who study public law, you know that this is a central debate and we're coming back to time and time again this year in our course. So if I want them, well we've got the great repeal bill looming over us, but we've got the pound sterling crashing around us. I'm really looking forward to hear what Michael has to say on the future of Britain in Europe post Brexit. So I'll hand it over to Michael. Thank you very much for the, well first of all for the invitation to be here. It's so secondly for the really lovely introductions and thirdly for so many of you for giving up your time to come here. It's a real privilege for me especially to have such a knowledgeable audience. Dan was telling me about the character of the students who predominantly make up the audience here, the backgrounds, the courses that you're studying. So it's really lovely to have such a knowledgeable audience. A couple of quick discly emers being a lawyer and all that. First of all just to point out obviously, well it's obvious to me it might not be obvious to everybody that I'm not a member of any political party. I'm not a member of any political campaign group. I don't have any particularly settled political views or perspectives on many things actually. I'm just a lawyer. Being a lawyer means that I get asked a lot of questions which are essentially about political commentary or economic forecasting or whatever. And to be honest it's not really within my capacity to give anything other than an informed personal opinion. My discipline is law. I have all the strengths of a lawyer but I also have the limitations of a lawyer. So when it comes to questions and so on please don't be too offended or disappointed if you ask me a question and I shrug my shoulders and say I don't know. Try asking somebody who works in a more specialist field or a different field than I do. But I think that's better than simply lying and that will be another theme of my talk here. So the UK government is politically committed to leaving the EU. The Prime Minister in her speech in Birmingham on 2 October said that we will give our notification to withdraw from the EU no later than the end of March 2017. And I think just by way of sort of a brief overview or introduction it's useful to just remind ourselves of the key challenges that will become even more pressing at the point of notification than they are already. And we can divide them into the internal challenges for the UK and then the external challenges. Internally the first thing we've got to do from a very legal perspective obviously is prepare the legal system for withdrawal. We have spent 40 years as members of the EU. Our legal system has evolved in close cooperation under the influence of and tandem with European law. And we have to make provision for the finality of public decisions. We have to make provision for the stability of individual relationships. We have to stop the legal system from simply imploding into a state of uncertainty and chaos. Second challenge is that we have to start making substantive decisions about what we want to do with all of that EU law that will be or is already part of the UK legal system. There are large amounts of EU rules, large amounts of EU principles which are fully embedded into our own UK legal system. We were told that these rules were ruining the country. So we assume that somebody will want to do something about them otherwise why are we bloody leaving. So what about all of those substantive decisions? Which bits of EU law do they want to get rid of? Which bits of EU law do they want to change? And that will be a task that will occupy us not for years for decades. And the third internal challenge of course is what about the relationships between the constituent nations and countries of the UK itself. We all see of course the Scottish referendum and Nicola Sturgeon is very keen if there is a sort of unsatisfactory deal between the UK and the EU. She's very keen to have a second referendum in Scotland. I can guarantee you as somebody who is a patriotic northerner that if Scotland goes independent there will have to be a new constitutional settlement for the north of England because northerners do not want to be shackled to southerners with no prospect whatsoever of a Labour government in anyone's lifetime. That simply isn't politically acceptable in the north of England. Then we have Northern Ireland, we have Wales, we have Gibraltar and we have another set of territories which are easily overlooked but actually still have a right to be involved in this that UK oversees countries and territories which currently enjoy various privileges and advantages through the UK's membership of the EU which will also be stripped away depending on what happens upon withdrawal. We're talking about places like the Falkland Islands or Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. So a whole series of internal challenges for the UK as a country, as a legal system. Externally then we have an equally daunting set of challenges. The first and most pressing immediate one is to agree a suitable withdrawal treaty with the other Member States of the EU. Secondly and distinctly and I'll come back to this repeatedly there's the much more long term and difficult process of agreeing a future framework relationship with the EU on issues like trade or the environment or security cooperation. Thirdly there is the issue of bilateral relations with particular EU Member States. Ireland is a very good example what to do with the frontier in Northern Ireland and more generally in relations between Ireland and the UK when it comes to the various types of border that one imagines exist between the two countries. Another example would be France and the idea of how the French currently carry out UK border controls on behalf of the UK in France and the main candidates for the French presidential election have said that they would stop that system if they won the election so there are important bilateral issues with individual states. And then finally there's just the small matter of our relations with the rest of the world. Both bilateral for those relationships which will be disrupted by our withdrawal from the EU and multilaterally as regards those organisations where we'll have to reorientate ourselves and make provision for our future membership for example of the WTO. Now that's a gigantic set of challenges and it's a set of challenges which makes your head swirl when you actually try and think about them but there are two features in common. The first one is uncertainty and unpredictability. People like me can use basic constitutional principles, can use legal experience to try and map out what possibilities exist, what their advantages and disadvantages might be, what their likelihood is or unlikely hood but ultimately this is about unpredictable political decision making which none of us really have much control over. And the second common feature is interconnectedness. None of these problems exists on its own, none of these challenges can be resolved without affecting any of the others, they are all strictly interconnected. For example the nature of the future relationship that the UK might strike with the EU will have a decisive impact upon the status of EU law within the UK but it will equally have a decisive impact upon the way that the other countries and regions of the UK respond to withdraw. So these issues are both uncertain and interconnected. But hopefully from that brief summary probably the key point to take away from this entire evening is that voting to leave the EU was not just a vote to leave the EU. Voting to leave the EU has been a vote to fundamentally reorient it and transform the UK as a country both internally and externally. I think that many people didn't grasp that when they were voting and certainly it's only beginning to dawn on many people since the vote. Now any one of those challenges is worth a lecture in itself but given the nature of the audience, given the nature of Suas we thought it would be more useful, more important, more interesting to focus on one of the challenges relations with the EU, the UK's future in Europe as it were. And let's start with some general remarks on the overall context of the UK-EU relationship at the moment and we'll start with a few observations about the EU side. And in particular we can identify three main sets of limits to what the EU will respond to when the UK finally gives its notification to withdraw. Remember that at the moment the EU is waiting. It's waiting for the UK to give its notification. It's waiting for the UK to tell the EU what the UK wants. Despite what some politicians might say, the EU is in the absolutely dominant position here. It is quite happy to wait and see what we have to say. And then the EU will respond. But the EU's response will be shaped by three main sets of limitations, legal, technical and political. Now the legal limits to what the EU can offer the UK are relatively clear. The treaty set down the relevant decision making procedures for these negotiations. They identify the institutions which will be involved. They describe the voting requirements for approving any agreements. But remember as well that the EU treaty is also contained a set of constitutional principles which place more substantive limits on what the EU can offer the UK. Principles like the principle of attributed powers. The EU only has the competencies which exist under the treaties. It has no inherent or general power to do anything. It can only do what the treaties authorise it to do. So for example people talk about an associate member status for the UK. That the UK can somehow become an associate member. Not quite a full member but not quite out. There's no such thing. It doesn't exist under the treaties. It's alien to EU constitutional law. It's simply not even a possibility. So legal limits to what the EU can offer. Secondly then there are technical limits to what the EU can offer the UK. Participation in much of EU law, in much of EU policy making is about being integrated into whole systems of institutions of frameworks of networks of rules of processes. And the simple fact is if you're not part of those institutions, networks, frameworks, processes you're not part of the system. And if the UK isn't willing to participate fully in all of those strictures and requirements to sign up to those technical specifications institutionally, procedurally and in terms of the actual rules then you can't participate. It's not nasty, it's not vindictive, it's not being hateful to poor little Britain. If you're not part of a club you don't get the benefits of the club. And if we won't sign up to these technical requirements we can't play with the others. That's true particularly in the field of the single market but it's also true in other forms of cooperation on things like public safety, on things like police and security cooperation. Now thirdly then if we have our legal limits and our technical limits we have our political limits. Now one of the things that irks me, many things irks me about your average leave campaigner but one of the things that irks me in particular is that they pretend that only the UK has a national interest and only the UK is allowed to defend its national interests and its international relations. Every country has a national interest and every country will defend its interests in its international relations. And that's true of EU countries just as it's true of the UK. And that's true of EU countries both individually and collectively. By individually every single of the 27 other member states will have their interests to be brought to the table. And the simple fact is the UK can't stop them. If Spain wants to make an enormous issue about joint sovereignty of Gibraltar welcome UK to the reality of international relations when you're not a member of the club. The interests of each state might pull in very different directions. France has a very strong interest in good security and defence cooperation with the UK. Maybe France would be quite happy to steal the city of London over to Paris. A single country will have competing interests. And equally and importantly these interests can change over time. And that's true of EU countries and secondly these interests can change over time. Every time there's an election somewhere in the EU suddenly a new administration will be at the table and the balance and configuration of interests will change. And given that we have both French and German elections coming up during the early stages of these negotiations there might well be very significant changes. So the individual countries have their interests to defend and they are entitled to defend them but there's also a common bottom line for the EU member states as a whole because so many times it's still unbelievable that so many politicians and Westminster haven't grasped it. The UK cannot get a better deal by leaving the EU than it had as a member. And that is the simple basic bottom line for the EU as a whole. It's not moralistic, it's not being nasty, it's obvious collective national interests of the 27 countries. The EU is a system built on compromise and getting things done together. You lose out 5% of the time because 95% of the time you get your way. Now remember that the UK for many years for many decades has been a particularly indulged member state within the EU. The UK has extracted a whole series of special benefits and privileges which other member states were not allowed to have relating to the single currency relating to the area of freedom, security and justice relating to budgetary contributions for example. And let's not forget that the Treaty of Lisbon so despised here in the UK was seen everywhere else in Europe as a triumph of UK diplomacy, a triumph of the UK's vision of a Europe of sovereign states rather than a federalised Europe which was a state in itself. And yet we still weren't happy. And so the member states simply don't have any option but to prevent the UK from cherry picking because if the UK is allowed to just pick the best bits and reject the rest the fundamental principle that binds the whole system together is being called into question. So on the EU side we have a whole series of limitations which we can identify quite readily the legal, the technical, the political. Now on the UK side it's actually much more difficult to identify what our interests might be what it is we're going to try to achieve out of these negotiations. Now our starting point immediately after the referendum as has already been pointed out was not a promising one. It's clear that the UK had no political vision whatsoever for what it meant to be leaving the EU it's clear that the UK had done new diplomatic or bureaucratic preparations it's clear that the UK didn't even have diplomatic or bureaucratic capacity to do the job which is going to be done. And also of course we didn't really understand the complex and no doubt contradictory motives which drove lots of people to vote leave. So that didn't bode well in terms of constructing a coherent and obvious national policy in which to pursue these negotiations. Now the problem is that that void at the centre of national policy appears to have been occupied by people who are effectively ideologs. And in particular it's quite easy I think to identify how exactly the same tactics which leave campaigners used in the build up to the referendum are now being used exactly the same tactics since the referendum. Only two things have changed. First of all it's about steering the nature of the UK's withdrawal rather than producing withdrawal in itself it's about determining how the UK's withdrawal will look and how it will happen and secondly they're actually in government charge. So let's run through the main tactics if you like of the current national policy insofar as we can identify it at all. And the first one is to misrepresent the situation to simply lie about how life actually works. Every time that for example I hear the leave vote was an overwhelming result actually it wasn't. It was 52% versus 48%. That's not overwhelming. That's a relatively narrow margin. We're told that it was a revolution by the angry disenfranchised working classes of the north. 52% of the British population are not angry working class northerners. All of the research so far suggests that the core of the leave vote were middle class, bourgeois, Tory voting people living in towns and villages all across England. We're told that this was a vote to sever ties with the EU. Actually it was just a vote to leave. It doesn't tell us anything about the manner in which we leave whether it should be a close leave or a nasty leave. And in particular we're told that the leave vote was a vote to reject EU immigration. Well actually given that the whole narrative constructed around EU immigration was built on a tissue of whoppers it's not particularly helpful to continue to align that tissue of whoppers to dictate your national policy. So misrepresenting what the current situation is and sadly I'm afraid a lot of the opposition to this position has simply bought into this narrative as well. You're just as likely to hear a Labour politician say these things as you are to hear a UKIP MEP. Second tactic, make false promises about the future. This was a feature of leave before the referendum it's still a feature of leave since the referendum. For example, when you hear a politician say that the European single market is just a slogan that doesn't really have any meaning that is virtually interchangeable with the WTO they are lying, they are lying and fantasising about what the single market is and what our prospects are for trade outside it. Similarly when you hear various leave campaigners talk about how we could join the European Economic Area Agreement and then destroy it from within by changing it into our agreement. Fantasy, absolute fantasy because we've already done enough damage there to make sure that we'll never be allowed to join the European Economic Area Agreement. In some cases the detachment from reality is so extreme that it's difficult to comprehend that these people live in the real world. When you hear a minister say that they expect confidently to have concluded a full round of global trade deals within the next 12 to 24 months you simply think this is somebody who doesn't live in the real world. So lie about the current situation fantasise about the future third tactic, attack anybody who dares to disagree with you and there are two aspects to this tactic which I think are particularly difficult. The first is to appropriate what are essentially contested concepts and make them your own so that anybody who doesn't disagree with you becomes an enemy. Decent people voted leave by implication anyone who didn't vote leave is indecent or undecent. Patriotism is what leave was all about by implication anybody who wasn't hostile to EU membership must have been unpatriotic and worst of all democracy. Suddenly there's only one concept of democracy and if you didn't vote leave you're anti-democratic. Secondly create narratives as we said already whereby anybody any other member state who doesn't want to comply with the UK's will or give way to its demands is being unreasonable, is being vindictive, is being punitive. And basic problems of international relations, international trade become reconstructed into a sort of moralistic confrontation which can only really serve one purpose which is to try and thrust the blame of inevitable failure in some of these negotiations on to everybody else. Fourth tactic then, undermining the quality of our national democracy not least in the virtual debasement of our elected parliament funnily enough by the very people who claim to have been defending it all of these years and a very obvious attempt to bolster executive power at the expense of the elected representatives. Now we saw this of course in the government's position on triggering the article 50 withdrawal process the government will not give parliament any say or any involvement unless the courts ultimately require them to do so. But we also see it in the proposals for the great repeal bill. The Prime Minister was very careful having full debate and scrutiny. What she didn't say was real parliamentary control or real parliamentary input into this gigantic and incredibly important process of recasting our legal system. And similarly parliament's input into the negotiations and the final deal with the EU the government begrudgingly has conceded that there may well be a vote on the final deal but will not give parliament any particular say in the rest of the process. Now the problem is I suppose for the UK as a country it's one thing for us to tell ourselves these lies it's one thing for us to believe these fantasies it's one thing for us to do all of these things to us they will fall apart as soon as you go out there into the big world and realise that other people don't share your fantasies and they don't believe your lies and actually the real world is a much more brutal place than the one that you've constructed collectively in your own head. Now that's the general context of the EU-UK negotiation the EU is waiting for us but it has a very clear list of what it's prepared to do and what it's not. Meanwhile we're twiddling our thumbs and constructing mental fantasies for ourselves and that fantasy may well fall apart upon reality. Now against that general background I'm just going to focus in the time that I have left on a few of the more detailed issues about the negotiations and I'll try and break this down into four. First of all there's the process of withdrawal the actual process of leaving the EU under article 50. Secondly there's the nature of the withdrawal agreement which is provided for under article 50 of the EU treaty. Thirdly there's the relationship between that withdrawal agreement and the future agreement on relations between the UK and the EU and finally a few comments about that future relationship. So basically we have withdrawal process, withdrawal agreement leading to a future agreement. Now as for the withdrawal process we probably all know it already once the UK gives its notification that it's going to leave the EU will try and reach a withdrawal agreement with the UK. The European Council will set the parameters for those negotiations the Commission will mix various recommendations the Council will appoint the negotiating team and so on. But basically we'll have a negotiation to reach this withdrawal agreement and it then has to be approved by the UK on the one side by the EU on the other. The Council will do the approval for the EU and the European Parliament also has to approve. Now a little funny thing here the UK does not participate in the Council voting or deliberations about its own withdrawal of course but British MEPs are still fully entitled to participate in the parliamentary processes relating to the UK's withdrawal. So it may well be that the British MEPs hold a balance of power for good or for ill over a conclusion of this final agreement. Now article 50 says that the UK will leave the EU from the date of entry into force of this withdrawal agreement. If this withdrawal agreement says we will leave in ten years time we will leave in ten years time if it says we'll leave in six months we'll leave in six months. By default if there is no withdrawal agreement which has actually been concluded or secured the necessary approvals then we're out after two years unless it's unanimously decided otherwise. Now that's all that article 50 says it's a very short text like most law it wasn't written to cover every eventuality we've never used it before so we don't have any previous practice to draw upon there are lots of open questions about article 50 and we can debate and speculate as lawyers about how to interpret for example whether you can rescind a notification whether you can change your mind and not leave and there are various legal arguments on both sides as a matter of interpretation the reality is that these are going to be driven by politics if the UK were to turn around and say we've changed our mind we want to stay and the other 27 member states said well we haven't by there's not very much the UK can do about it a lot of this will be driven as much by politics as by law. What is very clear is that if the UK does change its mind after leaving and wants to rejoin the EU it will be treated like any other country who wants to join the EU and that means you must adopt a single currency and you must fully participate in the area of freedom, security and justice and in effect we are leaving forever because we will never do either of those two things now there are one particular issue which it is worth discussing about this article 50 agreement and it's come up partly because the Gibraltarians are quite worried that Spain will try and veto even this withdrawal agreement unless they get joint sovereignty over Gibraltar on its face that doesn't look like a very plausible argument the treaty says you need to have a majority voting council the consent of the European Parliament is clearly designed that a single member state or even several member states can't stop the withdrawal agreement from being concluded but maybe the picture isn't quite as easy as that because this withdrawal agreement as we'll mention shortly might well involve issues such as residency rights for UK nationals abroad or EU nationals here which relate to national competence not EU competence, national competence and the usual position under EU law is that if an international agreement covers both EU and national competence it has to be ratified by every single country and in those countries such as Belgium which have their sub national parliaments as well as the national parliament by all of the sub national parliaments as well in other words exactly what we see at the moment with the Canadian trade deal now the question is could this be possible with our withdrawal agreement as well and there are basically three interpretations when I say three interpretations these were three ideas that we hammered out over dinner a couple of nights ago because nobody had ever really thought about it before one extreme is to say article 50 is meant to exclude the normal rules of mixity we call these agreements mixed agreements mixity implicitly it's excluded any mixity it's solely for the EU to do this according to the EU's voting rules and the Member States have no say individually at the other extreme you could say well sorry but these rules can't by implication without doing it clearly and expressly infringe upon national competencies this would involve the EU institutions taking away national power and they're not allowed to do that unless there's an express conferral of power by the treaties and clearly the withdrawal agreement if it touches on anything national needs full unanimous ratification by all of the Member States as well in between there's an interpretation which says the withdrawal agreement can't be mixed it can't involve national vetoes because clearly we can't allow a single state to veto the withdrawal procedure of another country but at the same time you can't take away national competence which basically means that the withdrawal agreement can only cover a very small number of issues and lots of other issues which might well involve national competence simply can't be dealt with in the context of these negotiations they have to be dealt with through a separate treaty in the future now who knows which of those three interpretations will turn out to be true initially it will be a matter of politics ultimately if there's a dispute for the European Court of Justice but there are different possibilities at play here even in the apparently very very simple provisions of article 50 now the withdrawal agreement itself if we set aside difficulties about the procedure the withdrawal agreement itself is probably going to be a relatively narrow agreement with two possible exceptions it has to deal with the budget it has to deal with spend and commitments and receipts that might go past withdrawal itself it has to deal with all of those poor people who are losing their jobs unless they change citizenship and they'll be sent back to the UK who pays their pensions, who's going to be responsible for them it has to have some form of dispute settlement mechanism in case there are disagreements it has to have some way of resolving disputes over these issues but there are two more important issues which the withdrawal agreement will probably have to deal with and the first one is this issue of residency now we could talk a lot about this I'll just flag it up the residency issue what do we do with the 3 million EU nationals living and working lawfully in the UK under EU law what do we do with the 2 million or so UK nationals lawfully living and working and studying in other EU countries lawfully under EU law and that's the first major contentious issue which might have to be dealt with under the withdrawal agreement we'll come back to the second separately let's move on then to the relationship between the withdrawal agreement and the future framework agreement they are entirely separate things and there's no possibility on earth that we are going to agree our future trade relations our future environmental and security cooperation our fisheries cooperation our agriculture there's no way on earth that that is going to be sorted out under the two year framework set out in article 50 and it can't be because legally and constitutionally that is not the withdrawal agreement is it a separate future association or trade agreement with its own procedural rules its own substantive rules its own limitations and restrictions now although the two are separate they are closely intertwined together because obviously the nature of the relationship that you want with the EU into the future determines the nature of the withdrawal if we just want to cut ties and just drift off then we can have a very small unambitious withdrawal agreement that simply deals with budget commitments and staff but if we do want to have a stronger more close cooperative relationship with the EU into the future then we don't want to have a situation where we cut cooperation for an indefinite period of time while we negotiate the bigger treaty into the future and so that's the second thing that the withdrawal agreement will have to address is a set of transitional provisions a way of trying to maintain a situation in the links between the UK and its authorities and the EU and its networks and authorities as well and there are some very difficult issues about what those transitional provisions might consist of but that brings us on then to the final issue the future relationship with the EU and this is in a way the most uncertain and the most difficult because in the absence of any future agreement with the EU we'll be no different from America or China or anywhere else and that means for example in the field of trade until we have a separate bilateral trade agreement with the EU if we ever do we'll just be dealt with under the rules of the WTO now when it comes to reaching a better agreement than that there are two main models for privileged access to EU structures and benefits and advantages without being a member state of the EU the Norway option the European Economic Area Agreement or the Swiss option the sort of gigantic catalogue of bilateral treaties covering all sorts of things now on the one hand the UK is clearly not comparable to Norway or Switzerland the UK will try and negotiate its own deal it will try and negotiate a more bespoke deal on the other hand first of all the UK will still be negotiating against one of the largest richest most prosperous and influential trading blocks on earth we have to be realistic about what we're going to get out of them we do not hold all of the cards far from it secondly we cannot simply wish away as Liam Fox and David Davis and Boris Johnson would like us to do we cannot simply wish away the fact that international trade is a complex politically sensitive technically challenging problem if other countries have spent 60 years struggling to agree the parameters of international trade and they still haven't done a very good job of it why do we think that we will simply swan on to the international stage and solve all of these problems for everybody in this phase of 12 to 24 months it's ridiculous but in particular the UK we have to recognise that we are not trying to gain something we are trying to minimise losing something we are going to be walking away from a fully privileged relationship with the EU what we are trying to do is minimise the damage and disruption not to try and gain advantage because it's simply technically not possible to gain advantage it's fantasy second point this agreement will definitely be a mixed agreement of course it will cover issues which touch upon national competence and it therefore needs full ratification by all of the member states and we only need to look around at what has happened recently to show what that means the Ukrainian association agreement was endangered and remains endangered because of a populist referendum in the Netherlands claiming all sorts of things, lots of parallels of our own referendum and the Dutch who turned out in very small numbers voted against it sorry that's international trade for you countries are entitled to reject treaties if they want to for good reason or for bad and we have the current situation with CETA with Canada where the Wallonian Parliament in the Brussels capital region have said no and so the whole seven years of work is in limbo and the simple fact is this is sovereignty for you this is demonstration, this is proof that the EU is not a super state the EU is made up of sovereign countries which exercise their sovereignty this is sovereignty in action it's just that we're going to be the victims of that sovereignty rather than just moaning about it all the time by the way it's also very widely assumed that any agreement which does involve a degree of privileged access to the single market will also need the approval of Norway, Lichtenstein and Iceland even if we don't want to join the EEA ourselves anything which affects the rights or obligations of the parties to the EEA as privileged treatment for us would will also require the approval of Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein obviously the scope of the agreement is another matter altogether what will it cover, will it trade environment, competitions and consumer rights, workers' rights what will be its procedural frameworks, will we have joint decision making bodies like the Norwegians do what sort of court will we have the EU will insist upon a court we seem to have a problem suddenly with international courts what will be the legal status of this agreement under UK law will it basically be just like EU law it's just that we didn't help make it a whole host of questions but what we can do is draw upon the experience of Norway and Switzerland even if we're not going to copy those agreements and point to several basic lessons first lesson, formally being outside the EU makes you look more independent in practice you have to do everything that the EU says if you want privileged access to the single market you obey the single market's rules and that rule is unwavering secondly for privileged access to the single market to be meaningful it means that you have to keep your national law constantly aligned with EU law you have to promise that you'll update your national law automatically every time the EU rules change you have to promise that you'll set up independent surveillance mechanisms to ensure that you're applying and forcing that law in the way that the EU does itself you have to promise that your national courts will follow what the EU does as well thirdly the EU doesn't hand out access to the single market as free competition without also guaranteeing that it's fair competition you don't just obey the EU rules on trade you obey the EU rules on workers, on the environment, on consumers, on public health you have to agree that you will not compete on a deregulatory basis with other European countries fourthly the EU's attitude on free movement of persons has been pretty on yielding if you want all the benefits of the single market those include the free movement of workers and again quite reconciled herself to this have we within the UK and finally of course you pay your fee like everyone else does you pay your fee if you want access to the single market you pay billions of pounds for the privilege of it now basically what all of that means is that any any agreement which tries to minimise the degree of economic disruption of economic rupture between the UK and the EU will effectively be politically unacceptable in the UK, politically unacceptable for the fantastical reasons which I've already identified before for reasons which in many cases have no real relationship to any evidence based reality for example on EU migration and what that means is that I don't think it's very likely that we're going to agree a particularly favourable deal or any particularly ambitious deal with the EU it is much more likely that we're going to walk away in a huff blaming them for giving us a relatively boring and unambitious agreement if any agreement at all and that does mean that large parts of the UK economy, large parts of manufacturing of service provision financial services will simply have to get used to the idea that their regulatory environment for doing cross-border trade is seriously undermined and disrupted to conclude then it's quite clear to me that many of those who campaigned so vigorously for us to leave the EU did so on the basis of lying to other people they did it on the basis of lying more particularly to themselves and the challenges really are enormous, they're enormous technically they're enormous politically, things are extremely uncertain, things are very predictable and yet they are also very interconnected and I think most of all what's really clear is that this process, this decision was about changing fundamentally the entire orientation of our country internally and externally we have chosen to fundamentally change the direction of our country and its destiny and the sad thing is that we've chosen an option which means that that orientation will be as much determined for us by other people as it will be by us and this has all been done in the name of sovereignty that's probably enough for me and I'm really looking forward as opposed to the questions and the discussion well thank you so much that was hugely innovating, educational and your good humour made up for the more or less unremittingly disastrous nature of your content this being so as though of course so as in general is concerned by the ravages to the planet caused by western imperialism in general and neoliberalism in particular and the United Kingdom is usually characterised as a principal engine of neocolonialism neoimperialism and neoliberalism and what you're describing is a country which has essentially decided to if not commit suicide to take itself off the international stage so perhaps slightly counterintuitively I could ask you whether from the point of view of large parts of the developing world in particular and indeed people on the rough end of neoimperialism and neoliberalism that seeing the United Kingdom removed from the map removed as a principal creator of these negative trends internationally that in fact the whole Brexit thing is perhaps bad for Britain perhaps bad for Europe but for large parts of the poor and developing world it might be seen as a good thing this definitely is so as isn't it um yeah I think I could be a real chicken and just say this is outside my field of competence it's not a legal question I suppose I'll just ask the equally in a way equally rhetorical question does anyone really think that life is going to be better for the developing world does anyone really think that the UK is going to be a better partner to work with does it really think that EU is going to be a better partner to work with to be weakened there's no doubt about that the UK will be weakened but I somehow suspect that that weakness will not be reflected in a better deal for people living in the global south I really doubt it very much I think that void will be filled by America, Russia and China it's not going to be filled by a better deal for the global south but I'm speaking merely as an informed citizen I'm not speaking with any professional idea about that I will say though of course I fully recognise the historical and continuing injustices of colonialism remember that I come from I come from a country which was effectively colonised for a period of 800 years so I sort of feel like I'm entitled to say this maybe but let's also not say that the UK isn't a force for good in the world you know that the EU isn't a force for good in the world of course capitalism western capitalism has its problems and its serious injustices but it does also stick up for certain important values in the world the values of human rights the values of liberty of tolerance and while it may not be perfect I think it's worth just balancing out that observation by saying that does it serve anyone's interests in the world the sort of tenor of world dialogue is being set by Russia and America and a weakened European voice I'm not sure that does many people good in the world either Okay well a couple more from me if I might I mean as a prominent academic at Liverpool your life must have changed considerably since you became much more national prominence as a result of your remarks on the referendum debate and I wondered if you could just share with us not as a lawyer but as a human being what's that's been like To be honest I've already noticed because I'm not on any social media at all so the main thing I've noticed is that I sort of walk through the street and someone will come up to me and either say ah you're great, you're great and I go oh thanks very much which is very nice or they'll say people like you I'm not sure which characteristic they're talking about, I have many faults but I'll assume it's because I criticised the leave campaign it's nice to be asked these things but to be honest in the big scheme of life the relative inconvenience of me having lots of emails in my inbox compared to the issues which are facing the country my life is a very little importance in the scheme of this it's my job to do a good job professionally and not to sort of worry about whether I have too many emails that's the sort of level of self-indulgence which I don't think any human being should be entitled to Well let's upgrade the question a little bit then there's been something of a silence from political leaders outside the Conservative party on these issues if one could criticise that up or down but how would you frame the British debate on the situation with respect to the EU and Brexit now I mean how can one deal with the negative aspects which you this evening and earlier have outlined extremely clearly to us how can one reformulate a positive response that actually has a chance of resonating in those parts of England in particular that you describe voted for this I think I'll probably answer the question slightly more broadly than that because I recognise that a lot of the things I said sound very depressing but I think actually in some respects I don't think the message should be depressing I think we've taken a decision but lots of people don't like this decision 48% of people didn't vote for it and many of the 52 who did may well be regretting their vote but forget about that the decision has been taken the government is committed I don't think there's a cat's chance in hell of stopping this so I think we've got to live with it but I'm not going to use that awful phrase make the best of Brexit because it turns my stomach I think what it is is not making the best of Brexit I think it's throwing out a challenge to all of us about the country that we end up living in because we're now going to be on our room in this country all of the safety nets, all of the disciplines all of the things of being part of the EU which control and limit the way that public power can be exercised, the way that private power can be exercised they are going to disappear in a couple of years time and for the first time most of the people in this room have never even been born we're going to be a country which is completely left in a way to ruin itself and my real worry is that the people who are currently in the Ascendant who are setting the agenda are capable of doing an enormous amount of damage to us as a country and we're not just talking about EU membership here we're talking about the environment we're talking about workers rights we're talking about decent standards of welfare we're talking about a huge range of issues where the EU has positively helped structure the way that those policies evolve across its member states and we're going to take that away and I think in a way the message is not a depressing one the message is we should not surrender our own national future to ideological fanatics because they are still capable of doing an enormous amount of damage way into the future so we should always remember it was only 52% that's not a gigantic tsunami of support they can do a lot of damage if we let them but we don't have to let them and I think that's probably the more important message OK, well I'll open it up and see what we've got there's a gentleman with a snazzy red tie sitting there who's got his hand up first there's microphones coming around we can hear you without them but the recording which will be making it technically possible for those of you who have been taking notes you can see it again soon we do need the microphones for that OK, thank you for so much for that and your previous pre referendum YouTube thing was hugely inspirational I think for lots of us but now we find ourselves in this position and I feel and I think I don't just speak for myself a sort of desperation in the absence of leadership aggressive leadership and absence of pro-European leadership and so on where should I be looking what are we going to do about this it's fine for you to say as you just have that we mustn't let this happen and so on but what's the next stage for people like us that's it I tried not to answer that question try to take a couple more let's see if we can give you a chance to get breath let's see there you go and then over there next Professor Duggan I suppose to get back to the legalistic area it's funny why are there people this evening well I'll be deported soon don't worry what can I say there's been some discourse since the actual referendum result from various legal experts as to the legality of the UK government the present government effectively taking Britain out or the UK out of the EU without a vote in Parliament we had an eminent QC speaking last week Michael Messe and he's obviously been having discussions among his among the bar about the legalities and he's some of the comments mentioned obviously it's all legal argument that legally speaking the British government may be in danger of breaking EU law if it doesn't get a vote if it doesn't get a vote in Parliament on this and so it's whether or not you agree or disagree with that and secondly is there a breach of British constitutional law in any way maybe going back to the 1972 treaty as to whether or not by not putting it to a vote in Parliament the British government is actually breaking its own law and just your thoughts on that OK and there's a purple there you go Hi I was just wondering as well where you think it Yn y gallu. Yn y gallu gyda'r cerddwyr, ymgyrchurau ar y cyfrifodau erioed wedi'i garwch ffordd yma, a'r prosesl o'r prospectau rhanifu. Mae'r April Fygar. Mae'r April Fygar, mae'n rhanifu ar y cyfrifodau ar y cyfrifodau ar y cyfrifodau. Mae'r April Fygar, mae'n rhanifu ar y cyfrifodau ar y cyfrifodau. Mae'n rhanifu ar y cyfrifodau ar yr unifu. i gael ei wneud. You've got a chance to have a breather on the first one, so we've got to come back less knowledgeable audiences as long as we're given. On the lack of leadership, this is a political question, isn't it? I think many people take off academic hat put on personal hat. Many of people in this room are really disappointed that there is no leadership We have been giving voice to the 40% of the voters who didn't want this. And like I said before, in a way I am most disappointed that the opposition such as it is has bought hook line and sinker into the dishonest narratives which have been pedalled by the victorious leave campaign. Because they have. And it's really depressing to hear Labour politicians stand up and blame the leave vote on EU migrants. yw'r eu migran yn ei gael i'r ffordd iawn. Mae'r ffordd iawn wedi'i hyfforddi am rhan ffodol, gweld i'r ffordd iawn i eu migran, sy'n bod hynny'n gwybod y ffordd iawn. Bydd pob yn yw'r ffordd iawn. Y inghylch y ffordd iawn yn y rhan ffordd iawn i'r ffordd iawn eich amser yn y rhan a'r ffordd iawn y torri. Fynd o'r torri yn ei gweithio mae'r ffordd iawn a'r ffordd iawn yn y ffordd iawn i'r gweithio o'r ddweud ar yr ysgwrdd, fyddai'n cael ei wneud, ond gallwn gwneud o'r ddweud yn cael eu sgwrdd aron nhw yn arwinellu. Rydyn ni'n gallu bod yn gwneud o gwasgwyr, o'r ddweud ar y cofodol o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Ond mae'n darparu o'r ddweud. Fy enw i'r ddweud, mae'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. The Lib Dems are doing as best a job as the Lib Dems can do with such a tiny number of MPs. It has to come from Labour. The legality of the UK activating article 50 without a parliamentary vote. I'll preface this with a couple of words of caution for lawyers. I think we've got to recognise that this is uncharted territory, that there are no real precedents, that it's very difficult for lawyers to confidently make a search in those types of circumstances, just as lawyers. But I think we also need to be a bit careful that we don't feed in to the anti-democratic narrative. And I say that not just in an accusatory way against the people who've hijacked the concept of democracy for the wrong purposes. I think also just being honest with ourselves that this is a politically momentous set of proceedings. And I think we have to be careful as lawyers that we don't try and use technical arguments to somehow dictate the way that politics works out this enormous set of challenges. And one of my worries is that that's what lawyers tend to do a lot of the time, is to think that lawyers have the answers and everyone else is wrong because they don't have the lawyer's skills to answer back. In terms of breaching EU law, the EU will never touch this with a barge poll and I think it's utterly wishful thinking for anyone to think that that will happen. Whatever we, whatever notification the UK gives, the EU will say, thank you very much, let's then start our negotiations. They will not question our own internal constitutional rights or wrongs about it. And can you imagine the propaganda coup that it would give the Daily Express and the Daily Mail for the judges in Luxembourg to have blocked the UK's withdrawal from the EU. It's self-defeating, I think, even to encourage it as a possibility when it's not a possibility at all realistically. As for UK constitutional law, I suppose the best thing we can all do is wait a few more days and get an answer from the judges who are going to decide. The arguments are not equally balanced on both sides but they're convincing on both sides. The judges will do what judges do and decide one way or the other. It will go to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will give a definitive answer. I think for me, setting aside the legal arguments, there are two factors which really persuade me that this should be a matter of a parliamentary vote. First of all, we have already seen the debasement of parliament take place before our very eyes since June 23. And I think we should arrest that extremely worrying development and we should remind everybody that we are a representative democracy. We are not some sort of demagogues and charlatans plaything, we are a representative democracy. The sovereignty of parliament is the very cornerstone of our constitution and that should be respected. We don't care whether it's extraordinary circumstances and I don't care whether parliament then votes to withdraw. It should be in a representative democracy that the most important decision the country has taken in 60, 70 years should be approved by our elected sovereign parliament. And the second factor that persuades me that that is politically the right way forward is when we look at the European Union Act 2011, the lawyers in the room I'm sure will know the European Union Act 2011. It sets out roughly, it depends on your calculations, about 150 different circumstances in which the UK would have had to hold a national referendum together with an act of parliament in order to approve certain decisions relating to the EU. It covered everything from join the single currency, a very obvious example. If we wanted to join the single currency it would have required a national referendum plus an act of parliament. If we wanted to join fully the area of freedom, security and justice, in other words to join the Schengen area, national referendum plus act of parliament. If we wanted to change the voting rules on identifying the products, the military products that should be exempt from the free movement of goods rules, national referendum plus act of parliament, what decision did they not include leaving the EU? They didn't include that, but why is leaving the EU any less important than any of the things I've just said? If it requires a national referendum plus a positive vote in parliament in order to change the voting rules on military products within the free movement of goods rules, it should require a national referendum plus act of parliament to leave the EU at all. I think otherwise our constitution just looks bizarre. Northern Ireland. Thank you for the legal niceness. We all know the situation in Northern Ireland is potentially critical. Being legalistic about it, there are four men. First of all, for Northern Ireland, there is the withdrawal of agricultural funding was potentially catastrophic. Northern Ireland receives substantially more EU agricultural support than any other part of the UK. A large part of the economy is dependent on it. Secondly, Northern Ireland more than almost anywhere else in the UK is dependent on public sector employment in order to keep vast numbers of people in a job. If the economy goes to pot, public funding will be reduced, large numbers of people will lose their jobs. So economically, regardless of any border issues, Northern Ireland is in a very precarious place. There are four borders that Northern Ireland has to worry about. The first border is the customs border relating to the movement of goods. There is no doubt at all that the customs border will become live at Northern Ireland unless some amazing negotiations happen. The border will become hardened to a degree. Now, that doesn't mean that every car that passes through the checks of Northern Ireland will be stopped and searched, but it means that the Republic will have to carry out border controls of some sort or another on goods. It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the number of formal border crossings across the whole of Eastern Europe, the whole of the Eastern border of the EU comes to something like 250. I can't remember the exact figure, but it's about 250. The number of formal border crossings between Northern Ireland and the Republic is in excess of 300. There are more formal border crossings between that tiny little bit of land than there are in the whole of Eastern Europe. So that's a very difficult problem. The second border is the Persians border, the actual physical movement of people across the frontier. Now, that's unlikely, I think, to lead to frontier checks for people. The main proposal at the minute is that Ireland and the UK will maintain some sort of common travel area with passport-free travel within the two islands, and that Ireland will effectively become responsible for policing the UK's borders. It's brilliant how bringing back control of our borders basically means that in France and Ireland do it for us. That Ireland will effectively police the UK's borders by handing huge amounts of data to the UK authorities as people enter Ireland. The UK will then basically operate a hunt and destroy policy for those awful EU migrants if they get into this territory. Both of those are potential problems, but neither of them are insurmountable. The other two borders aren't so important. They're regulatory borders and residency borders, but they're not so important. That means that the situation in Northern Ireland is very delicate, but it's not necessarily catastrophic, as long as politicians reach a reasonable deal. Do you trust Northern Irish politicians to reach a reasonable deal? Thank you very much. Well, that was great. Let's have a few more questions. There's a gentleman in the corner there. There's a woman in black here afterwards, and then we'll take those two and see what we get on. Good evening, Professor. I know we talked a lot tonight about the UK, but I actually wanted to talk about the future of the EU for a second. Do you think it's possible that they could lose any other members, and if not, what is the damage to the EU as an institution currently because of the referendum here in the UK? Great, and then we'll take those two and then get some more. Thank you. Sir, I'm on the CISD course, and I had the pleasure of going to Geneva in February with the department. We had the opportunity to speak to the WTO and the UK mission in Geneva. This was before the 23rd of June, and we were able to put across some of the arguments that have been put across by the opponents as to the leave campaign, as to why we should leave. The WTO seemed quite relaxed, but they did make a clear point that there would need to be a long period of renegotiations, and the UK mission in Geneva basically said that we follow the direction of the Prime Minister, and we don't actually talk about this. This is what our policy is. So just if you, from looking at what's going on in America at the moment with this whole dirty campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton, and people are asking why has Trump got to where he has, and again it's that fear and some degree xenophobia as well in the country, but I think that that, if you see that Nigel Farage has gone to America and he stood on a platform and endorsed Trump, we can see that that same sort of hysteria was here in Britain at the time. So I voted to remain, but my concern was that this idea of Tories that you mentioned earlier about the Tories being in these little hamlets and villages that were voting for it, there were a lot of people that voted that were not Tories, I mean Conservatives, not this Tory ideology of being Boris Johnson. Not that I've got anything against Boris, but you know what I mean. So when I went to the grassroots campaign I went to go and see it to understand what the other side was talking about. There was Nigel Farage, there was Kate Hoey, there was George Galloway. Do you want to ask a question? It's very interesting to hear, but do you want to ask a question? So I just wanted to ask whether or not that is, if we could have predicted that that would have happened. And now that we have the hindsight as to what has actually happened, what do we need to do in order to lobby Parliament in order to stop it from happening? Okay. I'll take one from Paul as your privilege is as a user. Just thought I wouldn't be right to have a round of questions without another Irish person chipping in. So Michael, thanks again for a very interesting talk and again I admire all of your interventions throughout this campaign and discussion. The question I have I suppose is one of the questions from the back mentioned. Those of us who would be against the Tories and so forth and then kind of conflated that would have been pro-Europe and pro-EU and I'd like to disentangle that and sort of register the idea that the EU is not an unmitigated good. More than there have just been a couple of technical problems with the EU that there are some inherent deep structural problems. You mentioned Wallonia at the moment, frustrating the adoption of the CETA treaty and that's true and that's one instance of sovereignty. We also had the Greek people vote by an overwhelming majority, much more than 52%, to reject austerity and elect the government but mandate to do that and we had Jan Claude Junker, the chair of the EU commission say that we shouldn't be under any illusions or be any democratic choice against the treaties established in the European Union. So the question I have and I come from a much more skeptical position on the nature of the European Union, not by any way from a little England mindset, from a very different mindset, and so the question I have is do you think it's possible that this referendum result will provoke any sort of critical self-reflection within the institutions of the EU and a recognition and an engagement with the deeper structural problems and crises of the EU which makes the EU itself a regressive and undesirable institution in certain key respects? So will it damage the EU, will it cause the EU to change, might that change you positive? Okay, in a way I think both the questions at both sides of the room are quite related to each other so I'll try and answer both together. Has this provoked a sort of crisis in the EU? Yes but it's only one of about ten crises for the EU at the minute and I'll give a little anecdote to illustrate that but then I'll talk about it a bit more. I was at one of the big annual EU law conferences last week, lots of lawyers there from all across Europe. You mentioned the EU, I mean obviously all we are, I do is talk about the EU, you mentioned it there and it's got your parochial problems, you're gone, you're gone now anyway. In the minds of a lot of Europeans, we've made our choice, sorry, goodbye, you're just one problem in a long list of problems that the EU has to deal with and it's a long list. Will it affect other countries to sort of vote to do the same? Who knows, but we should remember that Euroscepticism has a different variant in every Member State. The types of Euroscepticism that you see in the UK is not necessarily the type of Euroscepticism that you see in other countries. Take Germany as a good example. The main Eurosceptic party in Germany, the alternative for Germany, started life as an anti-Euro party, not anti-EU, it's very pro-EU, it's just anti-Euro. It's since morphed into a sort of we can live with the Euro as long as we can do something about the Muslims party and that's Euroscepticism in Germany. It doesn't actually have very much to do with the EU, it's sort of anti-EU in a general we hold the EU responsible for lots of things we don't like about our country way, but we don't want to leave it. And you'll find the same in other countries, there are different types of Euroscepticism, so who knows, but I think we should bear that in mind, that they're not all, Euroscepticism in other countries doesn't mean leaving the EU necessarily. I think more important is this idea of how the EU itself will change and the EU will change. The sovereign debt crisis, the financial crisis, the migration crisis, the rule of law crisis with Poland and Hungary, the EU is beset by problems at the minute. It's very difficult to disentangle how far the additional crisis posed by the UK will drive that process of change, will affect it, will ship the way that the EU emerges, but there is no doubt whatsoever that the EU will change and will change as we're negotiating with it. It won't even necessarily be the same institution that we're negotiating with in two years' time as we're negotiating with in three months' time. But I think what the UK's leaving will do is affect the nature of how the EU evolves for two main reasons. First of all, take away the UK and you fundamentally change the balance of power within the EU. Three Member States dominated the EU, Britain, France and Germany, and each of them had their constituency of countries who naturally followed them and supported them and looked at them for leadership. The UK will be taken out of the equation. You'll get Italy, Spain and Poland trying to jostle to become the next one of the big three, whether ready of them or managed or not, who knows. And then you have a whole raft of countries, Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, half of Eastern Europe, who are effectively leaderless and will be looking to realign themselves in some ship or form. So the whole internal dynamic of the EU will change quite radically. But also the EU's decision-making procedures might well change quite significantly as well. The UK, remember, has been one of the main blockers in EU law. We tend to veto things quite happily. And the European Union Act that I mentioned before meant that the UK veto was effectively the deaf hand upon treaty reform in Europe. Any treaty reform in the EU needed a national referendum in the UK and the government was virtually guaranteed to lose it. So EU treaty reform had effectively died thanks to us and our European Union Act. Take us out of the equation and actually the possibilities for EU reform become much more tangible. And a good example of that are the Franco-German defence proposals which came out about a month ago. Franco-German proposals to really bolster and enhance European defence cooperation, European defence capacities. Would they ever have brought forward proposals like that before the referendum? No, because they knew that we would have killed them dead in the water. The fact that they feel confident about bringing forward proposals that only a couple of months ago vetoed without even thinking about it illustrates how much the balance of power in the EU has changed. So I think that's part of the answer that the EU will change. It is already changing. We're not the main drivers of that. Other crises and problems are, but our removal from the equation really drastically will affect the way that the EU deals with those crises. Thank you. Does that add one or two points to that? Going back a generation, I was a journalist at NATO in the Yugoslav Wars, and there were three points of American policy which were often written about but never joined up, which was that the European Union should never be allowed to have a defence capability to arrive on NATO. The second was that the Balkans was an EU responsibility and the third was the EU was failing because it wasn't doing anything militarily. If you go back and look at the newspaper archives, you will find 2,000-word articles in the New York Times on both of these topics in parallel, never interrelated, because essentially the EU was not to be permitted to solve an issue and tell America to determine the outcome. The discussions between the EU and NATO and with the British involvement have been frozen for a generation. As you said, bye-bye, let's get on with it, there will be a lot of people going back to De Gaulle's point who say, well, actually we need to be able to operate politically and militarily without the Americans always telling us what to do, particularly through their British surrogate, and I think that will be, for good or ill, will be a dynamic that we will see, particularly as the French will look to bolster their status, which is declining economically through being the only nuclear power, and the primary power prepared to carry out expeditionary warfare. You had one too? No, and also, we can foresee that we'll have effects in other fora as well. In the United Nations, we can expect that the departure of the UK from the EU will affect the way that France and Britain operate and cooperate within the UN Security Council. We don't know how it will happen or what will emerge, but the reverberations will ripple out into all sorts of contexts for sure. On the EU as an unmitigated good, no, of course it's not. I'm not trying to suggest that. My main problem in this entire debate has never been people criticising the EU. I've said on several occasions there is a principled case for leaving the EU. I just haven't heard anyone make it, but there is a principled case for leaving the EU, and of course the EU has its problems and its disadvantages. Every organisation does and every country does. My main problem is lying through your teeth, and that's my main problem in this entire debate. When people lie through their teeth and mislead millions of people in order to advance their own ideological world view, regardless of the consequences, that's my main problem. Again, I feel obliged, maybe it's the lawyer in me, to balance out the Suez perspective, shall we put it that way? By just saying that the situation of Greece is a good example, it's natural I think for many people who might be left of centre to feel that Greece is the victim in all of this. There is another narrative which in its own way is just as powerful and probably has a better evidence base which says Greece behaved abysmally and Greece was offered a choice and Greece, it wasn't a nice choice but it was a choice that Greece brought upon itself. Greece defrauded its way into the single currency, Greece cooked its books for decades and then they got found out and their economy collapsed and they were presented with a choice. Do you want Eid or do you want to go bankrupt? If you want Eid, there will be conditions attached. I'm not saying I agree with that, I'm just saying there is a different perspective on the Greek situation and it can call upon evidence as well. I think many of these issues are contestable issues but of course the EU is not an unmitigated good, it has its problems. It's funny how I spent most of my professional life criticising the EU and the only time I ever really defend it is when we have a referendum and then suddenly I found myself defending it. I suppose at the same point in response to your question I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that only Tory voters voted Leave. What I said was that the backbone of the Leave vote was comfortable bourgeois Tories and I'm sorry if this is going to sound unpleasant. I met quite a few of them on my travels and many of them had nothing to worry about in their lives, had no real problems to speak of. We're talking socially or politically. They were just bigots. I have to say I met a lot of just bigots while I was involved in this referendum campaign but that's not to say that 52% of those voters were all like that. Of course they weren't. The group that worries me the most are the angry working class disenfranchised people who've been conned into believing that the EU caused their problems. Sorry, it was decades of neglect and by their own governments which caused their problems. A decade of austerity which sought to systematically dismantle welfare support and deny people decent opportunities in life caused their problems. What we saw with the Leave campaign was deliberately trying to feed people a fantasy in order to hijack and redirect their anger and disenfranchisement towards a different political ideological purpose and that again is the thing that makes me really angry. What we've ended up in a situation is that the Leave campaign promised totally irreconcilable and contradictory things to different groups of people and I actually heard this with my own ears at different groups and I'm not going to name any names but there were two events which I did in Mergyside to two quite different audiences but me and the Leave speaker were the same. To the working class audience there was all of the anti-immigrant rhetoric all of the sort of nasty xenophobic and luckily in Liverpool of course this goes down like a lead balloon and he got booed. To the nice middle class bourgeois audience of course immigration brings enormous benefits to the economy and society and we never want to restrict it. This isn't about immigration at all. They lied to different groups of people and promised them irreconcilable things. My worry is lots of people are going to be unhappy even if Leave gets the victory it wanted Leave promised five or six different victories and you can't have them all. There's one particular lie that always stuck for me the first Vote Iowa exercise was in the 72 referendum and there the posters supported by Margaret Thatcher said better to lose some sovereignty than to lose a son or a daughter in a war. Now there are two points from this. The lie is that the 70s referendum was only about economics. It wasn't. It was about sovereignty. And the other is that for X years we have not had to worry about war in Europe and World War III and with this decision and what we see happening in Eastern Europe I'm afraid that in addition to the other issues we now have to worry about that problem again not tomorrow or the day after but sometime after that. Now we are I think just about out of time and one or two people are voting with their feet. Now I know you'll be around for a bit just to chat informally but I think we'll bring questions to an end now and I'd like you to join with me in thanking you for a marvellous evening.