 So, we are having now a half an hour session with Lord Care on an interesting question, which is essentially, where is the UK heading? But it's not only the, it goes beyond the UK. Well, let me start. I think you all know about the bio of Lord Care, so I will not go back to that except to say that he is a real, genuine, deep, sincere, open-minded European. And as some of you know, he worked for a number of months with Valérie Giscard d'Estaing on the drafting of the Ex-Future European Constitution, and which shows also that he's a very good diplomat because working with Mr. Giscard d'Estaing for a number of months and to remain friends is also a great achievement, John. John, so after the referendum of June 23, John was slightly depressed, but he has recovered now, I think. And my first question to launch the discussion, John will be a very simple one, but there is still a lot of confusion everywhere about the legal status of a referendum in the UK. It's very different that many other countries, including France, so in your view, is the Brexit totally irreversible? Thank you, Thierry. Being asked to talk about Brexit, they're asking me to talk about Brexit, reminds me of the story of the slightly tactless person who came up to Mrs. Lincoln after the assassination in the theater and said, apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? I didn't enjoy the referendum, I didn't enjoy the outcome. Is it irrevocable? Is it irreversible? Well, you must assume that whatever the outcome in the Supreme Court, the government will have a majority in both houses of parliament for triggering the Article 50 procedure. The case in the Supreme Court is an interesting one in domestic constitutional law over the powers of the executive in relation to the powers of parliament. I predict the government will lose it, but even if they win it, they will still pass a motion. If they lose it, they will pass a bill through both houses of parliament and there is a majority there for triggering the Article. Why? The government largely consists of people who did not want to leave the European Union. There is a majority in the House of Commons for not leaving the European Union. There is a huge majority in the House of Lords where I say for not leaving the European Union. But since you French invented this appalling idea of referenda, since we have allowed it to creep into our constitution which ran on Berkey and principles of parliamentary representative democracy, since we've left it crept in, we can't ignore it. And the people said by 52 to 48 that they wanted us to leave and we cannot say, well, we heard you and we're going to ignore you. So we will trigger the procedure. Next question, is that triggering irrevocable? No, legally it is not irrevocable. Legally it would be perfectly possible for the British to say in 18 months time, the more we think about it and the more we understand the terms that our partners have prepared to offer us, the less we like the idea of leaving, may we think again and withdraw the notification under Article 50. Whether the 27 would agree to its withdrawal would be a political issue and there might be a political price to pay. In my view, there would be a political price to pay. But legally it would be perfectly possible and I believe in practice an agreement would be found and politically it would be possible. But I think you must assume that the central case is that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union greatly to my regret. But the die will not be cast irrevocably when by March the government trigger the withdrawal procedure. Thank you for this clear answer. The next obvious question is, does anybody or I should say, do you have a clear idea of how the negotiation of the Brexit can work? Is there, all the people who are working on this, are they converging with even a method to deal with the problem? And do you think it is possible to conclude within the time span of two years, which is supposed to be the relevant one? Yeah, it's, one has to think about a sequence here and one has to think about a number of negotiations. This in my view is a very unpleasant thing to contemplate, but I think it goes like this. The Article 15 negotiation is a divorce negotiation. It's about the terms of departure. It's about the division of the property. It's about the acquired rights on either side of citizens of the 27, citizens of the UK. It's about money. It's about the budget. It's about when contributions stop, when payments stop. It will be very nasty. All money negotiations are, it will be in my view, quite short. I think it is not very difficult to see that coming to a conclusion within the two year time span. The more difficult element in the negotiation arises from a requirement in the text of the article, which I know quite well, because as it happens, I wrote it when I was working for Valerie Giscard d'Estaim, a requirement to take account during the divorce talks of quote, the framework for the future relationship between the EU and the country it has left. Now don't ask me what exactly that framework means. I only wrote the article. I have no idea what it means, but it is necessary. It is clearly necessary for one to have a view to the future. And that makes sense if you're thinking about the money, for example, if the United Kingdom were to want to stay inside European research programs, as I'm confident it will, and if the EU as a whole would like to retain the UK within European research programs, as I believe it would, because I think links to UK universities are welcomed by continental universities. Then it would obviously be necessary for the United Kingdom to go on putting some money in. And you could not settle the budget cliff edge without deciding whether anything was going to carry on in the future. So the framework which I imagine would have a number of pillars, quite close cooperation on security matters, interior matters, justice matters, fights against drug running, terrorism, crime, possibly quite close relations, I hope so, on foreign policy, conceivably close relations on environmental policy and energy policy. These are relations from outside the room. These are how far away is the United Kingdom. Is it in the room next door or is it further down the corridor or not there at all? I think that framework and negotiation will be more difficult and it will be legally necessary to have taken account of something which can be presented as the framework before the Article 50 negotiations complete. Then the difficult bit starts. I don't believe that the future trade relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom could be negotiated in parallel with the Article 50 negotiation. I think it will come next and I think that process takes us two years plus at least three years, five years out into the future. Only then will it be possible for the UK to trigger its full voting membership in WTO and only then its schedule will have to be accepted unanimously by 168 members of WTO. Only then will the UK be able to make new trade agreements with third countries. So I'm afraid I see, sounds rather gloomy, but this is realistic, I think, a decade of uncertainty stretching ahead. And I think this is extremely worrying for my country. But on the Article 50 process itself, I think it is perfectly possible, even though there is the complication of needing to agree the framework to see that done in two years. I would be ashamed if I didn't think that was possible because the two-year period was written into the treaty in the article which I drafted. Thank you very much again. This is a very clear answer. So the third obvious question is, well, let's suppose that the whole process takes a decade, as you say, or at least six or seven years. I have met no one who believes that the whole process, including renegotiating trade agreements and so forth and so on, I have met no one who thinks it could be less than six years altogether, as you say, a decade. But during that time, can the UK be proactive or even active in other foreign policy areas? Yes, I think so. I mean, there is a difficult period going on at the moment where the government is trying to decide what it wants. The government is a curious coalition. The majority of members of the government did not want us to leave the European Union. The minority were divided amongst themselves about what they saw as our future outside the European Union. A minority of the minority saw us as a Singapore, a low-tax, low-welfare, free trade, free movement of persons challenge offshore the European Union. A larger group probably agree with Mrs. May that welfare in the UK needs to grow, not shrink, and that the left behind need to be better looked after, and that the closest possible relationship with the EU from outside is what will be best. But it is not clear yet whether the United Kingdom believes that it can leave the European Union and remain a member of the single market, or whether it can leave the European Union and remain a member of the single market and the customs union. Mrs. May's own speeches rather suggest that for her, the most important lesson to be drawn from the referendum is the need to control immigration, and free movement of persons may be the most difficult thing for her to accept. If she doesn't accept free movement of persons, and more seriously, I think, if she doesn't accept the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice and the right of Brussels to make regulations for the whole of the EEA, then it seems to me that it would not be possible to leave the European Union and remain a member of the single market or the customs union. I must say, I think that's an unlikely scenario anyway. It seems to me that you're either in the club or you're not. I'm very much afraid that Mr. Tusk was right when he said it's either a hard Brexit or no Brexit. I don't really believe that soft Brexit are workable. But I speak only as an observer. I do not know what is going on inside the British government and I'm not privy to what is going on in Brussels either. So last question before we enlarge the debate. Do you think that there could be another referendum under Scotland? There could. I would predict that there won't be, Tilly. The Scots have a genuine grievance. The Scots voted by a large majority to remain in the European Union, as did London and Northern Ireland. It was the English countryside and smaller English towns which voted to leave. And this is quite paradoxical in a way because the Prime Minister seems to believe that immigration was the core of the grievance of those who wanted to leave. That control of our frontiers was the most important thing to get. The areas which voted most strongly to leave were, in fact, the areas with fewest immigrants, areas like the Northeast, which was the area which voted most strongly to leave and is the area which has the fewest immigrants. London, on the other hand, was the area of England which voted most strongly to remain. And London is, of course, the place with by far the largest proportion of immigrants. So it is quite complex. But in Scotland, they voted by a large majority to remain. And there is a devolved government in Scotland headed by a nationalist government, a government that in 2014 secured a referendum for independence in Scotland, a referendum that they didn't win, but was quite close, 55, 45. This new grievance, the reluctance to be dragged against their will out of the European Union, propels enthusiasts in that party to argue for another referendum, which would result in the breakup with the United Kingdom. I myself think this is very unlikely in the short term. The price of oil being where it is, and the Scottish economy still being quite considerably North Sea dependent, there is a huge hole in the Scottish budget, which is much bigger than it was at the time of the 2014 referendum. So I believe that the First Minister in Scotland, who is a very clever lady, will manage successfully the task of having a grievance without bringing it to her head until the polls show that she could win a referendum. The polls at present show that she would not win one. Well, thank you very much. And now the floor is open. Who would like to, Monsieur, like should be? Second, OK. No. Mohammed, you are first as a honorary member of the European Union. You are the first, because you are here as a member of the European Union. Thank you very much. I listened with a lot of attention, an extremely interesting intervention. I have, for my part, a question at two or three votes. The first is that you would like to know the deep reasons according to you of disenchantment in the eyes of the European Union. That is the first question. And the additional question, you also noted, apparently, a rupture between the political personnel since you said that a majority of parliamentarians were to stay and that the members of the government, a majority also were to stay. But manifestly, the opinion was wrong. So do you think that there is a rupture between a popular dynamic and the political personnel? And my third question is in general more general. It is always complementary. Do you think that there is a humiliation and that there is a remit of the model of political professionalization and its incapacity to manage the new dynamics of opinion in Europe, especially and in the United States? And thank you. Thank you very much. John, I suggest that I take two or three because since we are so short of time, so do you want to move your hand? Is this working? Yes. We deduce from Washington, D.C. So devil's advocate question, if I may, even though I'm a Europeanist. Are we making too big a deal of Brexit in the sense that you have a 15% devaluation of sterling which is hugely larger than any potential MFN tariff, most favored nation tariff that would be applied to the UK by the European Union. Basically, the UK has become a lot more competitive than it was before. And even if you raise the tariff, it would still remain far more competitive. And the issue about regulations, which is the other vole, as they say, is that the regulations have to be harmonized. But to a large degree, that is up to the UK to harmonize or to keep the regulations that it wants to keep. So are we making too much of it? Thank you, Yuri. And I can take one third question, if there is. I don't see. Yes, Mr. Tabet. Left your hand, left your hand. You posed a question on the consequences of Brexit on the financial place of London. And is there going to be a displacement of financial political places from London to other European capitals, such as Paris or Berlin or Frankfurt? Yes. Very good. Well, let's start with the last first, because I think it's the easiest to answer. I think the one great gainer from Brexit will be New York. It seems to me that quite a lot of business will go back across the Atlantic. Business that came to London from the United States in the 70s and 80s, I think that will go back. I don't see huge gains for Paris or Frankfurt, to be honest. I think that there is the loss of the reduction in the size of the city. And I don't want to exaggerate this. A lot of it will remain and flourish. But there will be some reduction in size. And I think that is the loss of a major European asset. I don't think it will be easy to replace that in Frankfurt or Milan or Paris. That does worry me. I think that some business will certainly go, I think that the clearinghouse's case will appear again. And I think it is not unreasonable that those who run the euro should want clearing of euro transactions to be in institutions regulated by the eurozone. That seems to me to be not unreasonable and likely to happen. So I think this is, I don't see a sort of a cliff edge. I don't see a sudden shock. But I think the size of the city will probably reduce over time. And the biggest beneficiary will, in my view, be New York. As for are we, are we making too much of it all? Devaluation. The British have a wonderful track record of devaluation. We devalue and we devalue and we devalue. And it never does us any good, because our productivity record is lousy. I agree. This is a big devaluation this time. The effects will come through next year when inflation will rise from, at present, it's about 1%. It'll go up to about three, three and a half. Prices will go up. I think that inward investment for the same sort of reason that I think about the city, inward investment would likely to turn down. I don't think people will go away, but the new flow of investment will be down. I would expect prices in the shops to be up, partly as a result of devaluation. And I would expect this to make the Brexit story rather unpopular with the man in the street in about 18 months, two years time. But as for regulation, yes, of course, regulation in the British market is precisely the same as it is in the European Union as a whole now, and the British have a better record than most are actually implementing laws written in Brussels. But what are we talking about, Lee? The idea was to take back control. Can you see British ministers going down to parliament every time there's a new law written in Brussels? British ministers going down and proposing an identical law or an identical change in regulation in order to retain the access which regulatory equivalents would require. I think that's quite difficult to see. I think it's, on a static analysis, there would be no difficulty, but over a dynamic analysis, it seems to me it's likely to go wrong. I turn now to the first question, which really is a deeper question. It's about what caused all this, why are we where we are? And I think the reasons are many. It is absolutely true that the educated voted to stay and the less well educated voted to leave. It is perfectly true that the young voted to stay and the old voted to leave. The tipping point was age 34, which I think is exactly the same as the tipping point in the United States, so presidential election. So I think you can see some resemblance there. I wouldn't want to exaggerate that. I don't think we've voted to leave because of the economy, stupid. I really don't think so. The Conservative government's handling of the economy was rather successful. The deficit is still too big, but the growth rate was quite good and unemployment is at an 11-year low at the moment. So I think the idea that it was a protest about inequality or about economic decline doesn't really work. I think it was partly about immigration. I think it was partly about David Cameron. And there I think there is a resemblance to the referendum that defeated Giscard d'Esther's Constitutional Treaty and the re-election of President Schiouac in 2002. David Cameron was voted back in 2015 as Prime Minister, which he did not expect to happen. He was voted back because the Labour Party was seen by the country at large to have an unelectable leader. But in 2016, people chose to vote against Mr Cameron, I think partly to show him that they didn't really like him. They had to vote for him, but they didn't really like him, which is I think what happened to Giscard d'Esther's Treaty with people who had been with no left candidate in the second round had been required to vote for Schiouac, showing their disagreement. I may be wrong about that, but I think it wasn't any demerit in my beautiful treaty. I think it was more French politics than the Polish plumber. I think that Cameron had got himself into a tactical fix. He did not expect to have to carry out this referendum when he promised it in 2013. He expected that either he would not be back in power or he would be again in coalition with the Liberal Democrat Party who would prevent him from having a referendum. He, in his years in number 10, he never made a single speech in favour of the European Union. He was always critical of it. He liked to cast himself as the heroic defender of an isolated Britain coming under continual attack in Brussels, which is sometimes the case, but not always the case. He distanced the UK quite a bit from Europe. He refused to join in any bailouts. He refused to accept any refugees who had reached Italy or Greece. These were a mistake. His negotiation in the early months of the year was a very minor negotiation, not the talk of reform of Europe as a whole, which he'd originally presented, but further UK specific changes that he sought, some of which he achieved, but they cut no ice in the country at large. I think I am arguing, I think, that the referendum result was more accidental than existential. Unfortunately, its consequences go very deep. And I think a further cause that I should mention is that there definitely was, resemblance to the United States, in that there was a curious, nativist, anti-globalization, nostalgic tinge to the Leave campaign. They were looking for a Britain that existed at some mythical time in the past. And I think there's quite a lot of that behind the vote for Trump in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So I think there are some resemblances. I don't think that the elite, the Oxford and Cambridge, London, where there is a strong majority in favor of remaining, I don't think that the elite really feels that it can resist what the referendum result. I think it feels that it, and I think Mrs. May is correct in this, that it really has to act on the result and start the process. Some, like me, believe that as the economic consequences become clear and as it becomes clear that the levers disagree amongst themselves and told the country a number of things that were not true, as that becomes clear, it may be possible to revisit this at some future date. But I go back to what I said before. The central assumption evidence should make is that sadly Britain will leave the European Union. Thank you very much. Normally we should stop here, but I can take one or two more questions and then we wind up. So just in the back, yes, first, and then, Philip, okay, second. Wait, wait, you have the floor. Well, you have the, and you even have the microphone. Yes, thank you. I'm Ludicke from Morocco. First of all, I would like to thank the panelists for his insight. And even if he used the word divorce, which gives the impression that's something is irreversible or definitive, I would like to see to him to tell us what is the likelihood of a reverse of this process of Brexit. I think that the last elections in the United States proved that the inexpectable can be possible. So in case of change of heart, we might consider also that the unpredictable could happen before the 10 years that you referred to. Thank you. Thank you. You will ask because, so Philip, very short, please. And Masoud, then very short. And then we, John will answer, yeah. Philip Shalma, very quickly. Don't you think that if the remain at one, the negotiation of the Brussels Agreement of February would have been a nightmare for Europe? Masoud. Question for you. If I understand correctly your timetable, the time by which disillusionment could set in is a few years down the road because that's when the trade post-Brexit deal will become clearer and that's when the economic consequences will be clearer. But the decision on leaving has to be made within two years of the initiation of Article 50. So you will have to decide to leave before the full costs of leaving are clear. Is there a way in your mind where you could square the circle on the timetable so that when people make the decision, they know what they are deciding? So if you can answer all that in two minutes, because it is you, two minutes and a half. Yes, it is legally reversible. I believe that a British change of mind would be accepted by our partners. The question is how to create the political situation in Britain which makes the British government of the day decide to withdraw the notification. Yes, I agree that the sequence is hard to see. Though I believe the economic consequence is at least the uncertainty and the economic effects of uncertainty will become clear within two years. I actually didn't at all like the negotiation that the British conducted up to February of this year. I thought that we were arguing for completely the wrong things. That negotiation is completely dead as soon as the referendum result came through, the 27 agreed that they would not proceed with any of the concessions that had been made to Mr Cameron correctly in my view. I think it would have been difficult. I feel a huge opportunity was missed. Mr Cameron made a speech at Bloomberg's in 2013 which called for the completion of the single market, action on the digital single market. A increase in democratic accountability. It was rather a good speech and it was quite widely supported in large parts of the EU. But unfortunately we never put forward any concrete proposals and when it came to negotiation we were not arguing for reforms for all Europe. We were arguing for further singularizing the United Kingdom in ways which were, I mean it was a strange negotiation. He argued give me this or I shall lose my referendum. He was given part of it and he lost his referendum. He now says if he'd been given more he might not have lost his referendum. This is silly. We need to make up our minds as a country what it is we want to do and I think it is not at all surprising that the Eurozone didn't feel it could give him all he was asking for or that Eastern Europe felt it could give him all he was asking for on free movement of persons. It seems to me that was an unfortunate negotiation. I think it was also very silly to try to present that in Britain as the government did as changing everything and reforming the European Union because plainly it did not and actually as a tactic it worked very badly because the leave campaign were able to criticise it as not living up to what he had promised he would do and I think it damaged the government. I do think it was a series of accidents like that that led to this. I always annoy political scientists by saying that it's very easy after the event to detect great trends and tints and the affairs of man. I think it's mistakes that usually do the trick. I remember arguing that John Major's great success in the Maastricht negotiation in 1991 was principally because Helmut Karl liked him because he wasn't Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand fell asleep at the crucial moment. Well, you have finished. Just for today. Well, let me thank you very much, John. I think you were neither pessimistic nor optimistic, I was going to say of course, but I think you were very realistic, very precise and I'm sure that many of us will have understood better actually the stakes in the next few months and probably years. So thank you very much. I hope that next year when we meet for the 10th WPC, we will have a clear view. Thank you very much.