 Felly, wrth gwrs, wrth gwrs, mae'n gweithio'r ffordd. Mae'n gweithio'r ffordd yma ar Ysgrifennu Gwylwyr, ac yn Brexit, ac yn ymgyrch, ac yn ymgyrch, yn ymgyrch y Pryddiad Bryddiad. Mae'r Ffordd yn yr Arrygym yn Bryddon, yn yr 18ol, ac mae'n gweithio'r ffordd yn ymgyrch. Mae'n gweithio'r ffordd. a rydych i'n wneud. Gwysbeth eich Llwyddoedd Arferionol i hugelyni, ar yw Lloeddon Llywodraeth, yn 97 gynhyrch yn cymrydyn, yn leisio ar y Llwyddoedd ar feodol ar y Llywodraeth a'r Llywodraeth yn 2017. Efallai'r cyfrifiad yn ei gynhyrch mewn gwirionedd i'r merthyn yn Llwyddoedd Arferionol ac mae'r byd felly y parlymenau yn y Llywodraeth Felly er mwyn ar y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth. Wyd yn eitw'r Llywodraeth yn enwedig. Rydyn ni'n meddwl ein bod gennym gael y Llywodraethogi'r Llywodraeth, nad yw rhan gorau i yn eich Llywodraeth, ac mae angen i weld ei dangos dudiau. Ar gyfer ychydig yn llwydd ymlaen nhw au! Llywodraeth! Wel sy'n otwch at gael, ac rwy'n edrych. er�owach am y lleolwyr i'r Llywodraeth arnyn nhw, ond mae'n ganddawod ar gyfer y Gwsgledig Lleihwyr yma ar wedi gwrth gynnig i ni i gyd. Rwyfwn i chi'n dod oes fyddio. Rwyfwn i chi'n gweinio bod offonwyd ymdylch chi wedi rhywbeth freith ag yr aeithion sydd nid. Fe ydych chi'n meddwl angen i chi. First of all, I'm not just Nigel Farage in a skirt, the UKIP sleeper in the Labour Party is this rabid lever. I'm also not someone who fears the word federal. I grew up in a federal republic, it's not an F word. So I arrived at my conclusions as to why I ended up a lever for reasons which I'm happy to go into. The other thing is, I'm unlikely to shed any light on what I think the settlement for the Northern Irish border is, and there are several reasons for my caution. First of all, let's be blunt, I have neither any negotiating authority nor am I part of the government, nor since stepping down in 2017 do I have a vote. And I can see some of the difficulties and I'm making some of observations of things which have surprised me and which may lead us to a solution. But the solution I think will be found in a setting which is outside the public megaphone, it will be found if there is political will. And there will be found if people want to find them. I was exceptionally surprised by the tone Michel Barnier took given that he was part of the team which actually negotiated an accession of Ireland to the then common market. He was part of the Good Friday Agreement and some of the sequence of the negotiations which he insisted on did surprise me. I also was kind of surprised by people's approach to history and this is the only time in my political life where the fact that I am German by birth actually does cause me trouble because I know there are some things I don't understand, instinctively understand. Whereas I do instinctively understand them about Eastern Europe. But I just want to remind you that in 2017 at the general election you had a whole generation of first time voters in Northern Ireland for whom the troubles was a historical term. They were born since the Good Friday Agreement. I was very surprised that key people of the Good Friday Agreement on the one hand tremble on the other one to Blair in the context of Brexit came up with very different opinions as to whether this was or was not a threat to the peace process. So my real word is get off the megaphone diplomacy. Open brackets, I find it interesting that when it comes to Ireland the negotiations with Brussels have to go via Brussels to Dublin when it comes to Gibraltar the negotiations a lot of them go on between Madrid and London. But just park that thought. And I do hope that the common endeavor to find a solution will allow us to find one. Shankar Singham from the Institute of Economic Affairs makes the very important point and I come back to that in a sense is that when we talk about technicalities on the border maybe we should focus on some of the problems we have in international trade systems now globally and that the European Union drawing up its barriers is as much a problem to finding a solution. However it takes me to why given that I have no authority I'm not negotiating my own earth should you be listening to me. Well you should be listening to me that on the one hand I was a Labour MP in Birmingham for 20 years in a highly marginal constituency and I've learned something which I think politicians have sort of forgotten for a bit and that is listening to voters rather than telling them what they think is quite a good strategy. Someone did some research about five years ago on behalf of the Labour Party went out with Labour canvases in Labour heartlands and they said on average it took 25 seconds into a conversation when someone on the doorstep complained about immigration that the Labour canvasser would say you're just racist. Not giving people their voices is a problem. The second thing is I used to teach EU law and then for two years I was at the council of ministers as a health minister I would do the EU stuff and then I spent 15 months negotiating the European constitution and I think it kind of taught me a bit on how things work in practice. And one of the things which I learned or which I thought valued is that in institutions you need checks and balances and that was my original reservations about the Lisbon Treaty. I didn't think they provided much and it was one of the reasons why in the end having been asked by David Cameron to have an opinion I decided to leave. If he had not called the referendum people like me wouldn't have gone out and joined UKIP. But I thought the EU needs to change dramatically and if the United Kingdom voted to remain the willingness to change at all would have gone even further down the drain but anyway we can discuss that. So the referendum happens, I go out with a red bus arguing as to whether we spend 350 million and whether that's a gross figure or a net figure. Actually what people in the Labour Party hated most about me doing this wasn't so much a different opinion that was fine but it seemed that I was having fun with Boris and he was enjoying ourselves which was the thing which was so unforgivable. The only thing I would tell you is spending time with Boris is that if you look at the pictures at the beginning of the referendum campaign there was still some colour maher. By the end of the referendum campaign I had gone completely grey which should give some indication of how easy that is. But the mistake I made after the referendum is that David Cameron said this is a once in a generation decision and whatever you decide I will implement. So I assumed that the government would take responsibility for the outcome. So we then have within less than 24 hours the Prime Minister who said I will do whatever he asked me to resign. And there clearly wasn't the government taking any responsibility, they were just trying to make the best of what they thought was a bad job. Politicians picking a fight with electorate, that's not a good strategy and that's why we ended up setting change Britain. Which has the purpose of trying to find common ground between leavers and the remainers and we've done a lot of polling and a lot of attitude stuff and if you've got any questions do come back. The only thing which would tell you is the two years worth of polling, there may have been a bit of journing but opinions haven't changed. We actually reckon there is something like between 10 and 12% of what are reluctant remainers. So they voted remain but with reluctance and then once we had the leave vote they were going to say yeah get on with it. You have now I think about 30% of the population that still wakes up in the morning weeping. You've got about 30% who go and say just out, out, just out, I'm carrying on. And you've got 40% in the middle who just say could someone please stop talking about it. If I hear that word Brexit just once more I will just scream. And so there hasn't been a change but what is still there. Can you not, last week I had a student who helped with his dissertation. As he left the office he turned out to me and he said I voted leave. I still haven't been there to tell my mum and dad, all my friends. So the kind of the leave vote is still seen one as the one you don't own up to. That's why I think be very, very careful with opinion polls. Now, try and explain because I think the whole reason why I'm here is because I think you need to understand what happened in the UK with that vote. And the best analogy is a little anecdote. 15 years ago I was in Brussels and John Bruton, Loisey Pettily and I, we were the representatives for national parliaments on the presidium. And the national parliamentarians really loath cheese gardens that they're kind of so we would have the presidium meetings in the morning. The national parliamentarians were sort of just paying for the three of us having to come back up to these meetings and they thought we were being ignored and it just got. So we had one of these sort of real key meetings and the three of us we'd absolutely promised. We would see them at 12 o'clock, we'd have a two hour session and we'd go through things. And rather than walking from the presidium building to the European parliament, we thought it'd be quicker. We took a car. I think it may be a car from the Irish Embassy but we took a car. And then something quite extraordinary happens. That drive, I mean any of you having taken taxes in Brussels, they don't know the roads, they go all over the place. Unless you know where you're going, quite often you can get lost. But this guy just suddenly took us into places of Brussels which none of us recognized anymore. And we tried to talk to him and between us we worked out that we had seven languages but he clearly refused to understand any of them. And he'd occasionally, but he kept saying into regular intervals, they're on the right. So we finally decided, we would wait till there was a red traffic light and we would just leg it. We would just get out of the car, which we did and we got another car and we finally went back to the European parliament. They were furious because they thought we had snubbed them. We had promised faithfully turn up on time. And I remember saying to John, I said, we can come up with a story but we just got to tell the truth here. We just got to tell them what really happened because it is so crazy nobody would believe, would think we would dare to make this up. And I think that's what kind of happened with the British public. They're kind of, once Cameron called the referendum, for them that was the kind of the red traffic lights of something that never really come to terms with. They always kept pretending it was a bad trade and it was about nothing else. And that was one part of the reason to vote leave. But the other one was, and for those of you who take interest in the developments of the British Labour Party, there are some new young people coming through and one of them is MP for Wigan, Lisa Nandi. And she recently gave a speech, a conference, and she said, the EU referendum should have made us alive to the reality that many people have lost control and agency over their lives. Later on she quotes John Adams and says, the nation which will not adopt an equilibrium of power must adopt a despotism. There's no alternative. And that is what people thought, that they were being given choices. And when we said, who should have the final say over their laws, their borders and their taxes. They actually wanted that to be in the hands of people who can remove it. Who they can remove, which they felt in the EU context they never had. Which then, the second one you have to understand is what's been going on with referendums. I mean, I was struck in, I asked the taxi driver here because I thought, I hadn't read much about the sort of subsequent feeling about the abortion referendum here and the acceptance. And he was saying, no, but people accepted it. You know, have you said an accept? And I've my experience is that you have a poll and the result of a poll is accepted. That did not happen this time. Now, I think the European Union or other member states unless they have to have referendums have been much more cautious about their use. And I went back to the Lisbon Treaty, which is by the way the one referendum I wanted. I wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the UK because it would have given you very clear choices. And all three political parties in 2005 promised one and then all three found reasons for not having one, which I thought was bad. But there were 10 countries who planned on if you go back. Spain said yes. France said no by 54.7%. And the Netherlands, just to remind yourself, the Netherlands rejected the Lisbon Treaty by 60, the constitution by 61.5%. And after that, the other countries didn't hold a referendum. Ireland was asked to change its mind having been given reassurances about the commission in 2008. And I think that is a difficulty asking people twice about the same question because he didn't like the first answer. But I'll come back to that. I think what happened in the UK, Osborne and Cameron have always been obsessed with their predecessors. So if you went into the offices you would see Blair's book The Journey in the Offices. Blair was the master, he knew how to do these things. And I think Cameron got his copy of Harold Wilson off the shelf when he thought, I promised a referendum to the Tory party. How do I get through a divisive referendum where my own party is split and emerge a successful in the other end? He learned the first lesson which says you pretend you've renegotiated. So he went off, gave his speech, asked for nothing, got nothing. But offices are something, but then didn't learn the second lesson which is Harold Wilson's leaflets to the households in 75. One made the case for, one made the case against. Wilson stood back. To this day people aren't sure how Wilson voted whereas he kind of took it so for granted that he would win. That not only did Whitehall not make any preparations. I mean even for the Scottish referendum we made preparations what would happen if there was a independence vote. I mean it wasn't done in that way but for example I was in the Defence Committee and the Defence Select Committee. We did a paper called the Defence of the Realm and it looked at such things of where, what would you do with your nuclear subs if you couldn't use your fast lane? But he prohibited any preparations to be made for that. So that is a real difficulty and the reason why this is important is if you want to read an exceptionally good book. It's a book by Mervyn King called Alchemy. And get yourself the paperback edition because that is written since the referendum because up to the referendum Mervyn was very careful. He thought he owed it to the office of the former governor of the Bank of England and he makes the key point in there. What Alchemy refers to is the ability to create money. Modern trade requires what is the source of trust for money and for that you require sovereign. In the book he makes the case that there is a continuous fight between the demands of democracy, the demands of international trade and the existence of a sovereign. And that is one of the challenges for the European Union by the way or for the Euro countries. The question of who is the sovereign for the single currency is unresolved and will have to be resolved. So that's one of things. A bunch of a few more of the unresolved issues. In the United Kingdom the unresolved issue is actually its own constitutional settlement. We've had in the last seven years or so a number of constitutional referendums. I prefer the word referenda because it sounds nicer but those who know grammar tell me it's their referendums. So we had one on Scottish independence and the decision was that Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom. Open bracket difficulty for the SNP out of 1.6 million people who voted for Scottish independence 400,000 voted to leave the European Union. So this notion which you see out there is if the SNP is this greatly united one block that's pro European maybe when not at home but at home and currently real tension there. We voted on further devolution for Wales so Cardiff was given greater powers. A referendum which I may add where the turnout was barely over 50% and the winning margin was not 0.7% and nobody questioned the validity of the outcome. We had a referendum on changing the voting system, the AV referendum under the coalition that was defeated and it was accepted and then we had the EU referendum. By the way when I went up to Manchester because we decided that I would officially receive the result on behalf of the official organisation Vote Leave who by the way had nothing to do with Nigel Farage we can come back to that. When I went up there my working assumption was that if the turnout was below 60% Leave had won, if the turnout was between 60% and 68% Remain had won and if the turnout was over 68% Leave had won again. So we had a turnout of 72% exceptionally high and the winning margin was 3.8%. There's something like 40 MPs in the House of Commons who have got more droids less than that and nobody says you're not legitimately acted. In terms of how the UK people wish to govern themselves, they've made a sequence of very rational decisions. It's only the last one which has been treated as if it was irrational and you have a government but for the first time in my living memory elites are refusing or give all the best impression to refuse the outcome of a franchise. Second real real big problem which I think had a great role in the rise of UKIP is devolution in England outside London is utterly unfinished business. In 1997 we set up a Scottish Parliament, we give the powers to Northern Ireland, we give big powers to London the way it governs itself and then not only do they not further devolve to the regions of England they even abolish the regional development agencies had ad hoc city deals and England felt it had no voice. There's some very interesting work going on by former Labour MP John Denham who was a Cabinet Minister and he is now at the University of Winchester and he looks at Englishness and English identity and makes for the first time from the left an argument for an English Parliament and what that would be. I think that's a real constitutional structural problem which the United Kingdom has to address and then of course I think the last person who both truly understood the constitutional structure but also the role the United Kingdom could play within the European Union structure was Tony Blair. When history books are written the decision to go to war in Iraq will be seen as one of the greatest tragedies in terms of the consequences it had of the Labour government not focusing on what was important and just tell you an anecdote it was a Christmas before the invasion and Blair wanted a council minister. He thought they needed a president of the council because he thought the institutional architecture of the European Union just was skewed and I went to see him and he said to me that is the most important decision which we have to make and I sort of jokingly said he said oh you mean more important than invading Iraq and he said oh yeah Iraq's not going to happen whatever we do but we can shape Europe and he was the only British Prime Minister who did so his European involvement not for sentimental reasons it was his perception of a strategic interest. Now whether he's right or whether he's now right read Ian Kershaw held a skelter where he says we've underestimated the role of the nation state and I'm kind of with him on that one but you need to understand what's going on so this is the unresolved things in the mighty kingdom. Then you've got unresolved in the Eurozone which I said it's I think the who's the sovereign for the currency is a real problem. It comes back to your democratic accountability. If you want a federal structure that's fine but then you need pan European political parties this notion that just because you call somebody a spitson candidate because you had a few good dinners and then sort of one emerges from one of your big parties you know sorry folks it just doesn't wash and you really have to go much further than that. The 2018 European elections are going to be fascinating and this is one of the reasons why I've got great hope that we will arrange arrive at a deal because if you think the European Parliament will be the same after that who do you think Sweden's going to return its MEPs, Hungary's going to return its MEPs, Italy's going to return its MEPs. In Germany in Germany the AFD is the official opposition so and and the politicians are still not listening. You know they say that there was this fascinating article which said Sweden shows us the prosperity does not protect us from you know populism and I thought what protect you from populism is politicians realising that the purpose of political parties is to gather together people who broadly believe the same as you do gather these opinions together then you mediate the different conflicts what you don't do is pretend it's not happening that will then give rise to extremist parties one of the good things by the way of the referendum in 90 Kingdom is the debate on immigration in Britain is going to be owned by the front bench. It will be the front bench of Labour and the Tory party which will design the new immigration bill it will not be some extremist parties who as a bloc will hold the government ransom. So I think the European elections similarly the EU will have to get to the stage where they develop a proper neighbourhood policy which is not just offering membership of the European Union. That is the one big thing they have never managed to do so when Spain for example joined in 1986 they knew there was a problem with North Africa in terms of helping North Africa with immigration. So the only way they could get money to Morocco was Morocco actually applied to become a member of the European Union in 1986. So they have to get to a point where you don't just think that life is only about application of membership. So bring this to an end because this is about why the referendum must be honoured, it's a very strong vote to manic must be honoured, will be honoured I shall say. Mervyn King, coming back to him today programme a few weeks ago said, you must ask yourself how did the world's sixth largest economy with a tradition of political stability and a reputation for administrative capacity has got itself into such a mess? Because you know I just as when I go into another country I never dare to suggest to tell their governments what they should do. I nevertheless always say good things about my own government whoever is there but it is undeniable that it doesn't just look very confusing from the outside I can tell you it's pretty confusing from the inside too. And part of that is I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I do not believe in the deep state but I think it's the first time over the last few months that I've seen the deep state in operation. And there are a group of people who genuinely you know I'm really not questioning their motives I really do think they feel it is the right thing but they think it is their job to stop this country from the folly of a vote. And therefore don't allow it to happen. You have that combined with a foolish foolish general election 2017 which deprived the prime minister of a majority and not least because the lecture don't like being called to vote for political convenience. And you have a House of Commons that for the first time ever actually talks about a second referendum on the basis that we can't find a solution. So to which I say actually none of us politicians that will right exist we serve a purpose. So we can either go down the Belt and Brecht route which after the Hungarian rising said what was this thing which said should not the government dismiss the people and elect another one. Or the House of Commons does what they're currently doing in Stormont and say as we haven't been doing any work we take a 40% salary cut or they sort of say we call a general election but none of us will ask for re-election because we've just said the job you give us which find these solutions. So that's why I think you've got a real democratic tension here. The political parties with the exception of the Green Party because they've only got one MP and Clyde Cymru are deeply divided. The fault lines are on different lines but there's deep, deep divisions. There's a redefinition of what parties stand for going on and that done with the fact that we are leaving the European Union. I think we will leave on March 29th. What I've seen over the years is that there's nothing quite as wonderful as a deadline. I remember the deadline on some Turkish negotiations on the British presidency where they said 12 o'clock midnight all bets are off and they were going on and on and on. And Jack Straw came up with his ingenious idea at about 5 to 12 saying in London it's still 11 o'clock. So we arrived at the deal midnight London time. It is in Michelle Barnier's interest to arrive at the deal. The European Union's institutions arrived at the deal because I think the dynamics of the new commission and the European Parliament is going to be quite different. But the key thing, absolutely, and oh yes, and follow the money. I think the money also will play a significant role. 39 billion is a lot of money and just remind yourself. I occasionally forget when I'm quoting figures whether it's million or billion. But remember a million seconds is 11 and a half days. A billion seconds is 31 years. So there's a massive difference and 39 billion is a big bunch of money, which if the European Union has a problem with that would mean there are certain things they couldn't do. But the key for me as a British politician, the key answer as to why the referendum result must be honoured is that all the tensions, all the conflicts, all the things which have led to the vote to leave would neither be resolved nor altered by another referendum. What they would do is irrespective of where the outcome of that referendum would be. It would deepen the divisions. It would paralyse decision making for even longer and actually make any problems we have just worse. And then that cheerful note. I'll sit down.