 And you're very welcome to this event with Adam Bolton. I don't think I need to introduce you, Adam. I think everybody in this room watches your shows. Before we start, can I just mention that next Monday we have a joint conference with the ESB, our annual conference with the ESB, and it's called Live Electric Designing a Low Carbon Future. And I just wanted to bring that to your attention before we start. Adam's going to talk about the topic which is consuming everybody in these islands, Brexit. He talked for about 20 minutes or thereabouts and will take questions afterwards, but we have to finish at 2 o'clock on the dot. The question and answers will be under the Chattermouth rule and the main event, of course, the main speech will be on the record. Could you just check that your phones are on silent or whatever? And Adam, thank you for coming. Thank you very much indeed for that introduction. We still miss you in London from your time there. As Ambassador, I have many happy memories of your period. One of them was Seamus Heaney when he bought out his book, District and Circle, a book of poems, and it happened to coincide with the preparations for one of Queen Elizabeth's jubilies. I can't remember which one, the 60th or the 50th or something. And we can hear the bands playing away from the embassy towards Buckingham Palace and Heaney just said very quietly, thank you, Dohee, for giving us something to celebrate. It's the other memories, but perhaps I won't go into those. It's the second time I've spoken at this August institution last time was in the build-up to the Brexit referendum, and I remember I think put some of you off your meal by pointing out that it was entirely possible that the British could actually vote to leave the European Union. It gives me no satisfaction to say that I was correct. One thing I'm going to try and do over the next few minutes is possibly end up with a way in which we might actually end up, not leaving the European Union, but there's a lot to talk about before we get there. Now, the first thing to say is that I'm always extremely hesitant speaking to an Irish audience or indeed a non-UK audience or even a non-English audience in some circumstances. I'm currently under attack on Twitter for an interview I did yesterday with Joanna Cherry over her court case where I was suggesting that it was possible she could be wrong, but that doesn't tend to go down. In fact, at the time of the first round of public negotiations over the Irish backstop, I came under a great deal of attack from Irish people on Twitter referring to all sorts of things, 1916, the potato famine and all the rest. And I made a mistake at some point of trying to say, well, actually we're in the here and now, we're talking about this, and I did use the phrase, you Irish need to get over yourselves, which was a mistake. But as ever with the fair-mindedness for which you're all well-known, I was delighted that a columnist in the Irish Times did end up writing a column saying, Adam Bolton is right, we Irish do need to get over ourselves. So thank you for that. What has gone wrong in the United Kingdom? I won't go into, well I will later on, but I won't go into the specifics of why we voted by a narrow majority to leave the European Union, but why three and a half years later we still haven't left the European Union and there's no consensus at all as to how or when we should leave the Union. Well, I think with hindsight, we can see that we failed to think what Brexit meant and I have to say, I think a lot of that blame will go down to our last Prime Minister, Theresa May. I think we were all frustrated to the point of vexation with her phrase about Brexit, means Brexit, but the reality was when Mrs May became Prime Minister, there was a feeling that she was a politician from the centre, one capable of reaching consensus and that she would find a way through that could unite the nation and indeed that was what she promised she would do. Unfortunately, she didn't. She set off pretty rapidly on a course which we had seen with her predecessor David Cameron of trying to preserve her own position as Prime Minister by preserving her own position as she saw it within the Conservative Party. So, her advisers, who now rejoice in being commanders of the British Empire, persuaded her that the best way to be in a solid position was to play to the 52% and to condemn the 48% and she did that within months of becoming Prime Minister as you may remember at her first Conservative Party conference where she talked about citizens of nowhere with a direct link to them being people who had voted in favour of remaining in the European Union. That was fairly rapidly followed by an adoption again to please her Conservative hardliners of red lines which meant that the whole process of Brexit moved from beyond being an extraction of the UK from the political institutions of the European Union which I've always believed would have been perfectly possible. It would have come at a certain cost and it's difficult to see necessarily what the advantages of it would have been although it would have satisfied in my view the perception of what Brexit meant instead of which we embarked on, as you know, withdrawing from the customs union single market and increasingly talking about the breaking of ties with the European Union. Now, that had the impact on public opinion of polarising the argument further. It was a simple approach basically saying fundamentally they're a terrible shower, they're paying for the privilege of mixing with them and it's time for us to get out completely mixed with metaphors in some of the popular press but by no means all relating to our finest star, the Second World War and all the rest of it. It also had the impact on the other side of the argument of making Brexit less acceptable. In other words, the inclination of conservative pro-Europeans let alone the opposition parties to come to the table and agree some kind of acceptable Brexit disappeared as they realised that what was apparently acceptable to the Conservative Party was unacceptable to them or they believed against the national interest. And that really is where we have been for a very long time. As you know, the Mrs May did eventually agree a withdrawal agreement with the European Union at the end of last year which was pretty much respecting of her red lines and pretty much what she wanted, but by that stage her ability to get it through Parliament had diminished and those people who now feel that there's a chance in the remaining days that this might get through Parliament I think do need to remember the reason why it didn't was because the Tory Eurosceptics as represented by the European Reform Group or whatever were not satisfied that they were getting sufficient and effectively were by that stage as they continued to be playing for a clean break just as Nigel Farage calls it. Now, as you know and again I raise this cautiously but I know that the impact of Brexit is very severe or potentially very severe for Ireland as severe as it is going to be for the United Kingdom so in one sense I come here with a sense of shame and apology for what we put you through I think there's a lot of evidence that in spite of the best efforts of John Major and Tony Blair and the whole question of Ireland was completely absent from the mainstream debate during the referendum campaign and when we come I'm not going to go in because I know you know much more about it than I do the minutiae of negotiations over the Irish border and the Irish backstop I'm sure it will come up in questions but to come right up to where we are today there are two basic questions to which I don't know the answer and everyone I have spoken to including people who've been working with Boris Johnson in Downing Street don't know the answer. The first question is what is his intention? Is he actually sincerely attempting to reach some sort of agreement with the European Union and the related question to that is if he does get that can he deliver a parliamentary majority for it which is the minimum for him to leave albeit with none of the T's crossed or the I's dotted to be able to claim A that he is moving towards leaving the European Union or will have taken printouts of the European Union by Halloween and secondly that there will be a transition period in which supposedly Boris Johnson and his customary last minute extemporization will attempt to rule out the bumps the alternative of course which he has told us he doesn't want but which he regards as entirely acceptable is that he would take us out without any agreement without any transition with everything still to be resolved and certainly from the European Union's perspective the very issues which have not been agreed during the course of negotiations to be negotiated as the first term of business for the future relationship between the UK and the European Union Now Amber Rudd who of course resigned from the cabinet said she saw no evidence of proper preparations for a deal I've been speaking to people who were on the inside who basically didn't stay because Dominic Cummings was given the top role they say they saw no evidence of Boris Johnson sincerely seeking to agree a deal and against that we have the proposals which we know he's brought forward relating to agro foods and checks away from the border I think one thing which has made a deal slightly more interesting or possible is the loss of his parliamentary majority which means that he's no longer in favour of he's no longer tied to the Democratic Unionist Party in terms of trying to build a majority or being dependent on them for an automatic majority in parliament which probably gives him a little leeway but second question is can he get it through parliament as I've already said I think that that well is sufficiently tainted that it looks unlikely and I also think that the decision of parliament to come together behind Hillary Ben's bill meaning that they think that they can put off a no-deal Brexit at the end of the month although there's some nervousness about it actually reduces clearly the incentive for them to say well it's we better vote for this deal because the alternative is no deal if they believe that they can put off a satisfactory conclusion and one thing I do want to highlight in all this really does pertain very much to this island and I'm astonished frankly that there hasn't been a wider comment on the drift of conservative party policy towards Ireland which really completely abandons the attitude adopted by successive conservative governments certainly in the latter part of well basically for most of the last 30 years no one has commented that the conservative party and Mrs May and her ministers have effectively withdrawn the commitment first made by conservative Peter Brook in 1991 of having no selfish strategic interest in the maintenance of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and it is absolutely on the record that that's been withdrawn in fact I interviewed Arlene Foster about that a year or so ago in her constituency and I referred to it as the government's stated position to which she replied oh no that's just something that was written on a piece of paper by some civil servants most recently an exchange in July in Paisley Jr said to the Secretary of State then Karen Bradley I welcome the Secretary of State's claim which sets aside what was previously said about no selfish strategic interest and she replied I am a member of the Conservative and Unionist party I have never hidden my respect for the Union and that I think puts everything in a different context because if honouring the Belfast Agreement which effectively was built around the fact that we were both members of the European Union if that is no longer an issue it does put into play all the issues on this island that we know so well from previous centuries and as you know Article 3 of the Belfast Agreement talked about the development of Europe which will of itself require new approaches to some common interests clearly although they don't wish to discuss that at any great length the present Conservative party appears to me to be embarked on abandoning that and that I think is really the point that there are no longer any rules or any undertakings which apply as far as the British government's approach is concerned we know there's a lot of argument about the role of Stormont which of course Boris Johnson has said must have a veto on the back start whether or not that's acceptable to the European Union it's a bit of a problem if you effectively are colluding in not re-establishing the assembly in any way and I don't know how to put this really the moment I felt you know kind of most ashamed to be British in this whole process was when Karen Bradley said that she'd only just discovered that sectarianism played a part in Northern Ireland politics after she had accepted the job of being Northern Ireland secretary you know if we look at our present cabinet we have a home secretary Pretty Patel who was sacked from the cabinet for conducting private negotiations with a foreign par as a junior minister we have an education secretary Gavin, Gavin Williamson who is defence secretary was found guilty of leaking National Security Council secrets and yet we are supposed to treat these people as people of honour and respect that of course brings us to the court cases currently underway which I think are in some ways a sideshow to the Brexit process even if the Supreme Court were to rule that it was wrong to pro-rogue parliament and parliament has to return during the party conference season I can't see in practical terms what difference other than you know further arming the animosities the return of parliament would have given the clear deadlines of negotiations with the European Union and the build up to the council the deadline of the 19th of November in the Ben Act for Parliamentary approval and then of course the 31st of October for Britain to leave so where it would have an impact would be in giving parliament a further opportunity as they see it to humiliate Boris Johnson to ask for further documentation around Operation Yellowham and the consequences of hard Brexit to press him in those areas but the problem to me is that if that takes place I think that would simply increase the atmosphere of confrontation vis-a-vis the European Union and actually add power to the elbow of those people prepared to behave possibly illegally and very rashly in terms of pursuing a no-deal Brexit incidentally and I'm no lawyer I would be astonished that if the courts do rule in favour of the Scottish judges I think there is a genuine constitutional question about how far the court should get involved in political decisions and it's effectively been accepted that it's not the ordering of the prorogation it's the motives for the prorogation which are on trial I'm told by every legal expert I've spoken to ranging from Lord Falconer to Kenneth Clark to Jonathan Sumption Lord Sumption that they don't see much chance of the court upholding either Gina Miller or the Scottish judgement but I've been wrong many times before in this process so we'll have I think to watch this space so in all of this is there a way out well we have to remember that we've got a government which said it wasn't going to prorogue parliament then prorogue parliament a government which said it was against holding a general election and then said they wanted to hold a general election and challenge the opposition parties to do it we have opposition leaderships who are more interested in having a general election once this phase of Brexit has been resolved I mean that is you know that's the function of what Jeremy Corbyn said today about the Labour Party supporting a referendum but offering a choice between a renegotiated deal and remain and it's what lies behind the new leader of the Liberal Democrats saying that the Liberal Democrats would be the party of revoke that's not about what's going on now that's about positioning for when the general election happens it's not helpful if you'd like to sort out the next few weeks however to end for the questions on the note of optimism it seems to me that two things are emerging at the moment the first is I think an extreme reluctance on Boris Johnson's path to actually take Britain out of the European Union without a deal because he I mean we know him as a noam of old but he remains a rational man I think you can see the consequences and movements away from the party leaderships towards some kind of compromise and that compromise was known when it was discussed earlier on and narrowly rejected as Kyle Wilson which would be that Johnson would bring forward some sort of agreement either actively supporting it or remaining neutral possibly a repeat of Mrs May's agreement possibly something after he's got some warm words on the question of the Irish border but that would be amended to have a second referendum I think it's quite clear now that more and more non-frank bench MPs are moving in that position which also would it is assumed in London but I'm sure that people here John Bruce you can tell me otherwise it's assumed in London that if we are firmly committed to some form of further vote before the deadline of the end of October it makes it more likely or easier for the European Union to grant an extension and that could be a way I wouldn't guarantee I certainly wouldn't guarantee the outcome but it could be a way in which this matter would be resolved first of all to the satisfaction of both sides in Parliament and then to the British public I'm not saying it's going to happen but at the moment it seems like the only obvious avenue away from a period of serious political unrest in the UK which could simply result in a series of inconclusive battles for redoubts possibly several more Prime Ministers several more general elections while the rest of Europe and of course Ireland wonders where we're heading so I'll leave it there I think