 Good afternoon all, and you're very welcome to this meeting with Lord Adonis, who is, can I think, fairly be described as a fervent European. The title is, Why Brexit Can Still Be Stopped. I would suspect that almost everybody in the room is hopeful that it can be stopped, and we'd be very interested to hear you tell us why that might be so. Before I invite you to speak, may I just remind you please to make sure your telephones are turned off, and to say that the event, the whole event is on the record. Not only the initial speech, the initial talk, but the question and answer is afterwards. Lord Adonis, thank you for coming. Can I just say it's absolutely great to be in Dublin and to be with you. Can I let you into a secret, the passion of my life is in fact trains, it's not fighting Brexit or doing any of this international racial stuff, until this Brexit thing got going. I'd never made a speech in Parliament about foreign affairs, I'd just taken it as for granted. I regard it as a very boring subject, we were in Europe, we no longer had any of these imperial pretensions and all that, so foreign policy was largely on autopilot and we had extremely distinguished ambassadors and experts who dealt with it. It's only because of the existential crisis of Britain's relations with the rest of the world actually, but not least with the European Union and first and foremost with the Republic of Ireland, that I've got involved in this at all. My great passion is infrastructure and education, and that's brought me to Dublin and to Ireland several times. And indeed when you've so kindly extended your invitation to me, the decisive factor in deciding to accept it sooner at the earliest possible date was I've been wanting to go on your trams. And I've tweeted out those of you who follow me on Twitter, I've already done several tweets on the trams, on the green line where it goes, the alignment, where you've ordered the trams from and I've done a video going past the general post office and all that. So my mission is finished, I mean I've done what I came here to do. But I'm told that in order to earn my keep, I needed to give you some remarks about Brexit as well. So I just want, shall I speak for 10 or 15 minutes and then we'll get to discussion going. Because I don't want to tell you just things you've read in the paper, because you know what the situation is. We're about to have our third Prime Minister in three years. Theresa May's deal was rejected three times. The European Union is made clear there isn't going to be any substantive renegotiation. There might be a bit of waffle, but there's already a load of waffle which is already there. There's you who follow the detail of it in the letters that were exchanged between Ewan Kotusk and Theresa May about accelerating trade talks and all that. But the backstop will be there, all of the withdrawal agreement will be there. There wasn't a majority for it in the House of Commons before. I don't think there'll be a majority in the House of Commons for it again. I can't see where the votes come from. You know, LBJ famously said that the first rule of politics is the ability to count. Any deal that is based on Theresa May's deal guarantees that the DUP will vote against it and at least half of what's called the ERG, which is the Jacob Rees-Mogg group, which they call the European Reform Research Group, but which I call the Economic Ruined Group. So you can tell where we come from on this issue. So there isn't a majority for that. And by a process of elimination, because member Sherlock Holmes is our great gift to international detection, famously said at the end of a study in Scarlett, Watson, once you have eliminated the impossible, you are just left with the improbable, which must be the truth. So if Theresa May's deal is eliminated, no deal is eliminated, and despite what Boris has said, there was a majority of 200 against no deal, last time Parliament voted on it. Yesterday Parliament voted, the House of Commons voted by a majority of 42 to require Parliament to meet in September and October, so there will be a repeat of that if there's any attempts at no deal in October. So that's not an option. There isn't going to be a further negotiation of any substance, because that's been made clear by the EU. It won't happen. The only negotiation there could be would be a one with a higher level of integration, because the only credible proposal on the table which would work for the partners is something like Norway or Switzerland, that there's no way a Conservative Government could negotiate that. Otherwise, you're left with the withdrawal agreement and then trying to negotiate a free trade agreement at some point thereafter. So once you've eliminated all those options, the impossible ones, you are just left with the improbable, and there are two improbable options, and that's all that's left. Actually, there are three. One is called Boris Johnson himself, which is deeply improbable, but that one has now happened by process of elimination because anyone else who had any potential to lead the Conservative Party and could get the support of their members who are a peculiar lot at the moment, that has resulted in Boris Johnson. But the other two improbable options are a referendum or a general election. My view now for 18 months is that we will end up with a referendum because once you've eliminated the impossible, we're left with the improbable, and that would be a referendum and we'll end up remaining. Everything that's happened in the whole time I've been seriously engaged in this has tended in that direction and nothing as we're now on the third extension. There's no deal that's proved to be possible. There's no viable majority for any alternative arrangement, so all of that remains true. It is possible there could be an election, and the reason there could be elections not because rationally it would make any sense to have an election because both of our major parties are split and the electoral alignment, particularly with Nigel Farage, resurgent on the right with his Brexit Party, which of course is taking massive votes from the Conservatives, but also the Liberal Democrats who are rising from the centre again who will take votes on the centre, which is particularly in provincial England where the Conservatives have a lot of members of parliament. So it wouldn't be rational in terms of being cool and calculating to hold an election, but Boris Johnson is clearly a chance. There's an absolutely brilliant article by Fintan O'Toole in the next edition of the New York Review of Books, which is online at the moment. I mean, Fintan O'Toole is one of your great gifts to journalism and to the study of Britain, actually. Anybody who wants to understand what's really going on in British politics has to buy the Irish Times and read Fintan. His article is, I mean, I was tempted to just read out large parts of it to you. It's so good, this one. But you're all capable of reading, so you can see it online. But an absolutely brilliant analysis of Boris, which I completely agree with because I know Boris quite well, he is a chance, sir. He doesn't believe in anything apart from Boris Johnson. He certainly doesn't believe in Brexit or not Brexit. I mean, he's the Roman emperor for whom policy is bread and circuses. He can do Brexit. He could do against Brexit. When he came out for Brexit and the leading relief campaign, it was after he wrote his famous two articles for the Daily Telegraph, one of which is why we should stay. So he'd be perfectly capable of, despite everything he's said over the last three years, of coming out in favour of Remain at the end of the day. All of this is perfectly tradable. All that he wants to do is to survive as Prime Minister because his whole life has been to be, as he put it, at the age of eight, to become world king. And in our system of government, the closest you can become unless he's going to launch a coup against Her Majesty. The closest he can become to that is Prime Minister. So once he's there, he'll want to remain. And on any core calculation, he therefore wouldn't want an election because that would be deeply perilous. But he is also a chancellor, which Fintan brings out very strongly, and he might just gamble on an election so it's possible. But even if there's an election, in my judgment, an election can only result in a referendum because I cannot conceive how an election could produce a clear majority for a hard Brexit or no deal, which is the only alternative to what's on offer at the moment. There isn't a majority for any version of Theresa May's deal. And there's no way that a Conservative Party, which has fought an election on a hard Brexit or no deal, could then pass some halfway house deal. So I think that the inevitable consequence of an election would be a referendum. So it would just mean that we get the referendum in two stages rather than in one stage. But anyway, that's my view. It hasn't changed. We can discuss it in questions afterwards. And if you want to understand Boris, then Fintan O'Toole is an absolutely brilliant way of doing so. I just want, though, because I'm speaking in Dublin and I feel so passionately about Irish relations and the situation in Northern Ireland, to say a few words about how I see the really significant Irish dimension to Brexit, which, of course, has two aspects to it which overlap, which is the situation in Northern Ireland and relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. It's always been my view, which, again, I've repeated ad nauseam long before the backstop was even negotiated, but it's in many ways vindicated it, that Ireland would be the Achilles' heel of Brexit because it is not possible to leave the European Union and to maintain relations with either the Republic of Ireland or with between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which are as close as they were before. And anything which tends to pull Ireland and Britain apart and involves harder border arrangements in Northern Ireland is going to be deeply destructive, not only of the relations between states, but crucially the relations between peoples. And we know, because the past has never left us and is still very much alive and well in communities in the North, that anything that tends to pull peoples apart is deeply dangerous. And that is the reason why Theresa May, who I think has in many ways handled this whole episode very, very badly, I mean, in her defense she didn't create Brexit, she inherited it, but nonetheless it's been handled very badly. But the one set of decisions she has taken consistently all the way through, and I'd pay tribute to her for it, is that while accepting that Brexit should happen, which I think was a mistaken premise actually, but she decided to do that and as a conservative leader maybe she had no choice. But while doing that, she sought to negotiate an agreement with the European Union and the Republic of Ireland that did not involve new border arrangements, which would be deeply destructive of the Good Friday Agreement and relations with the Republic of Ireland. That's why she agreed to the joint report of December 2017, which introduced what's now called the Backstop, is why it wasn't forced on her, she willingly negotiated it, she did so on the strong advice of the security services, that anything that did involve harder border arrangements between the Republic and Northern Ireland would certainly lead to disruption, would probably lead to mass smuggling and illegality on that border, and if you have disruption and illegality and the division of peoples, then of course you're opening the door to something far, far worse, and I don't need to tell this audience what the far worse could be. Theresa May accepted that, it's why she agreed the Backstop, it's why even when the Backstop then became bitterly controversial with the right wing of the Conservative Party who saw it as basically keeping Northern Ireland within the European Union, which is true, that is basically what it does. That is essentially, I mean, it's always important to politics to simplify to what is the reality of the situation, the reality of the Backstop is that whilst Great Britain would leave the European Union, Northern Ireland would stay in some very peculiar kind of, you know, Switzerland's type arrangement is essentially what would have happened to Northern Ireland. But even as that became controversial, she did not actually ditch the Backstop. What she did was two things. Firstly, she sought to create a UK-wide Backstop. She hoped that by generalizing it, it would become more acceptable, and in fact that didn't make it any more acceptable because that just heralded the possibility of the whole of the United Kingdom staying in the single market and the customs union. Now I of course thought that was wonderful because that is then the obvious thing if you're gonna stay in the customs union in the single market, or that is why I didn't just stay in the whole thing. I mean, you know, as I was busy pointing out in speeches in the House of Lords that a UK-wide Backstop was fantastic because it means that we wouldn't really leave the EU. We could go back in again very rapidly and you can imagine how well that argument went down with the right wing of the Conservative Party. But even then, when she then faced another revolt from the right against that Backstop, what she did crucially was not to disown the Backstop. What she did instead was to seek what she called alternative arrangements. Now this is where it gets positively Orwellian because there aren't any alternative arrangements. The truth is no one in human history has devised a set of relations between states that involve different regulatory systems, customs and tariff regimes, and different immigration rules and don't involve border controls. It's not possible because either all of these elements are non-existent or they have to be policed. So that is the reality of the situation. So there are no alternative arrangements. So what happened was there being no alternative arrangements, despite the fact that there were some which it was thought might conceivably be possible to be devised at some point in the future, but that not being the case, what she then did, this is where it becomes wonderfully Orwellian, is she set up an alternative arrangements working group. And so I remember asking her myself, Prime Minister, what is the work? How are we getting on with the alternative arrangements? She said, we're making very good progress. We have set up an alternative arrangements working group. Well, the alternative arrangements working group spent three months producing no alternative arrangements at all. But this deferred the issue of what the alternative arrangements might be. And as of now, if I can give you an update on the work of the alternative arrangements working group, the alternative arrangements working group itself has been dismantled. It doesn't meet. But people who are trying to make some kind of new Brexit deal, viable, whilst accepting there should be no hard border between the public right and the Northern Ireland have gone off on a kind of freelance operation trying to devise alternative arrangements. And indeed, yes, they published their final report. It's called the alternative arrangements working group report by the, I think it's called the UK Prosperity Commission or something. And those of you who really are interested in all this and study it in fine detail, there's an article by Nicky Morgan, who's a senior Conservative MP who I think very much hopes to be a part of the Boris Johnson government in the evening standard about the alternative arrangements, which is headed, has a wonderful headline. There are alternative arrangements, except what the actual article says if you read it, is that if we have a three or four year period where we look at the possibility of doing stuff in the cloud electronically and all that, we might be able to devise alternative arrangements. But we need some stable basis default procedure between now and then, which she actually says there might mean a temporary backstop. So, of course, the temporary backstop will be until these alternative arrangements are negotiated. So you come round and round in circles. If you accept the premise that there should be as a matter of policy no harder border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, then you have to have something like the backstop. If it's not going to be the backstop, it has to be something that's equivalent. Nobody can work out what's equivalent, so you come back to the backstop and you go round and round in circles. Which is the reason why Ireland has been the Achilles heel of Brexit all the way through. And I don't believe that that will change because of the perfectly simple reason that the only way of not having a border is not to have a border. There is no other way of not having a border. And the only way of not having a border is not to have differences of immigration, regulatory, and customs and tariff rules on each side. And since the whole purpose of Brexit in the conception of those people who are propagating is precisely that there should be different immigration, tariff, and regulatory rules, you therefore have to have a separate regime for Northern Ireland. It is just not possible to square the circle anyway. And my concluding remark is why is it that I believe there is the Achilles heel? It's because the overwhelming majority of parliamentarians in Britain. And I believe actually, when it comes to the crunch, this would include Boris Johnson, are not prepared to take responsibility for turning the clock back either in terms of the situation in Northern Ireland or in terms of the fundamental relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. And even if in their most irresponsible moods, some of the extreme Brexiters like Boris say they are, I do believe when they are face to face with the security advice, with a deteriorating security situation in Northern Ireland and with having to take responsibility for what could be a really serious deterioration in the situation in Ireland, I don't believe that they will actually go there. And so my strong advice to my friends in the Irish government and the Irish diplomatic service, and those of you who hold the destinies of your great nation in your hands is the way to deal with Boris Johnson as follows, to be impeccably polite to him, but to be totally uncompromising. And then we'll get through this crisis together, probably without Brexit. But even if some form of Brexit goes through, it'll then be a very soft Brexit and the alternative arrangements will last forever. Thank you very much. The beginning to wander there for a while where you're going to write another chapter of Yes, Minister. That was fascinating. I invite questions or comments. If you don't mind, say who you are and if you're associated with an organisation. Yes. Brendan Lynch, what's going to happen on the 1st of November? I might hear if you want. The sun is going to rise and everything will be the same as on the 31st of October. I can't conceive of a situation where Brexit will have happened by the 31st of October, so it'll be fine. The default is that Britain leads the European Union on the 31st of October, so how is it not going to be? The default is whatever parliament decides, because we're a parliamentary democracy, and we know the past always being the best guide to the future when faced with the last default, which was the United Kingdom leaving on the 29th of March, where the default was also leaving with no deal, faced with the prospect of that happening, and a government that was still trying to keep it in play until very late in the day, parliament took charge, legislation was passed over the head of parliament, so over the head of the government, requiring the government to negotiate an extension of the negotiating period, and that is precisely what happened, and the majority for that course of action is now larger than it was then, because as of next week, a sizeable group of ministers headed by Philip Hammond, our finance minister, who are basically sensible, moderate people, who are absolutely not prepared to tolerate no deal, will have left the government, which is the reason why the government was defeated by a majority of 42 yesterday on this crucial issue of pro-Oging, which means trying to govern without parliament in September and October, and it looks to me as if that majority of 42, and the people who either voted with the majority or abstained, which included a lot of ministers led by Philip Hammond, who won't be ministers next week, that majority will assert itself in October, so the default, actually, if you're thinking about what is the most, the course of action to which parliament itself will default, the default is a further extension of Article 50, the question is whether this time we can get a further extension of the negotiating period with an actual policy that's viable to resolve the crisis, and that actual policy in my judgment, anyone that really works, is a referendum. I find it, as I've said in an interview with the Irish Times before, because it's very clear this is understood, I find it almost inconceivable, not completely inconceivable, because in life and in politics things can happen by accident, but it's almost inconceivable that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union on the 31st of October without a comprehensive set of relations which amount to something like the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration as an absolute minimum. Thank you, this gentleman here and then at the back. No, but just so to say. Mission Chairman, I'll stay seated because my back is disability. Welcome, Lord Adonis. I don't know if you're watching. Can you tell us who you are? John Connor is my name, I come from this. I don't know, Lord Adonis, if you were watching last night the special panorama program on Brexit, and you rightly commented on the genius of the British Foreign Service for coming up with solutions for compromise and so on. That has been a historical fact. But the interesting thing last night was there were two central figures, Martin Selmyer and of course Michelle Barnier. Both of them commented consistently on the lack of preparation by the British delegation, whether it was led by Davies or whoever, on all occasions. They just didn't have anything prepared even that could fool the Europeans. Can you explain what was going on? Why did the Foreign Service, I know it wasn't directly because it was a special Brexit to power and set up, but why these wonderful civil servants somehow hadn't hatched a plan of some kind? And very often, as you know, I was once a member of the parliament myself, civil servants are more important than ministers. Well, it's not because we don't have very able people. Ollie Robbins, who was the Chief Negotiator for Theresa May is one of the most able officials that I, as a former minister, have ever worked with. But the problem is, if you have a hopeless and impossible policy, then no amount of ability can disguise the fact that the policy is hopeless and impossible. And once Theresa May had made her speech in Lancaster House in January 2017, setting out as her red lines her non-negotiable requirements that Britain should leave the customs union, leave the single market and leave all of the collective institutions which are within the wider ambit of the European Union, including things like URATOM and the European Medicines Agency and things of this kind, then there was no amount of ingenuity that could negotiate around that. So that was the problem. So actually, it's not the case that Ollie Robbins was unprepared in the sense of not having done one huge amount of homework and lots of drafting. They'd done all of the homework and lots of drafting, but you cannot draft your way around the fact that you're leaving the customs union in the single market and you're not going to be part of URATOM. And the problem all the time is because these were basically impossible propositions to wed to a deep-end special partnership and a continuing strong economic relationship, they were between a rock and a hard place. And the only way it's true that some of the ministers were very unprepared, well, in my experience, by the way, ministers were often unprepared. The officials were prepared, but the ministers were unprepared. But part of the reason why the ministers had to be unprepared is the reason why Boris Johnson sounds extremely unprepared at the moment is it's not possible to prepare those positions and for them to be sustainable. Once you declare as your position that you both want to have close trading relations with the European Union and the capacity to negotiate third-party trading agreements with the rest of the world and you want to leave the customs union and the single market and diverging key regulatory and customs arrangements terms from them, you cannot put these propositions together. The only way you can actually get through a meeting and utter them is by not being prepared and simply declaring them because you cannot do in the way of an essay or any form of preparation extend the propositions with any further detail because as soon as you seek to do so, it unravels. So Liam Fox is quite a bright guy, he's a GP and all of that, who was talking about global Britain and how we're going to negotiate the additional trade deals and all of that. He never could get to the position of explaining how he would do it because of course, as soon as you start to explain it, you come up against the facts that the European Union has 53 trade agreements with 73 other nations, which are most of those with which he would then want to start negotiating trade agreements from a cold start, completely exploding his own proposition. So this has been the fundamental difficulty all the way through. It's not that it's a lack of preparation, but if you are proposing to drive yourself off the edge of a cliff, it doesn't really matter whether you have a detailed or a vague map, you still end up over the edge of the cliff. This is the difficulty and this is the situation which they faced and it's the reason why Olly Robbins is not going to continue as the Prime Minister's negotiator. He's an outsider, he's leaving the civil service. Why? It's just impossible for him to continue doing his job given that the red lines are becoming even harder than they were before and he could barely get an agreement on the basis of the last ones. So the preparation will be even less, not because there aren't very bright people involved, but because no amount of intelligence and ingenuity can turn a cliff edge into a golden meadow. Thank you. I have two hands down at the back and I four at the front. I won't take any more for the moment. At the very back there. Yes. Thank you, Michael McLaughlin. I remember the institute as well. There's another scenario doing the rounds, I don't know if you could evaluate it, which is that I suppose Boris Johnson and the modern Tory party, been quite English nationalists, could revert to an ordinary and only backstop and sacrifice the DUP because then if you could secure such a deal through Parliament then, through an alternative majority, you'd go straight for a general election and you wouldn't need a DUP anymore. So it would be the withdrawal agreement with an ordinary and only backstop. It can't be done, is the point, because it certainly can't be done in this Parliament because of course if it reverts to an ordinary and only backstop, the DUP will definitely vote against him. And if the DUP definitely vote against him, then the Conservative party without the DUP is a minority in the House of Commons and in that minority will be 15 to 20 Conservatives led by Dominic Grieve, I think we're speaking here last Friday and so you'll have heard what he said. Dominic Grieve is not voting for any form of the current withdrawal agreement or political declaration unless there's a referendum which endorses it and that is one group of Conservative MPs and there will be a group of ERG MPs. If any of you met Sir William Cash and Mark Francois and these people, let me just tell you, you should invite him to speak and I can assure you that you will hear from him that there is no version of Theresa May's withdrawal agreement whether it's a Northern Ireland backstop, whether it's a backstop that just extends to the town of Colrain. There is none that Bill Cash is voting for. So there simply aren't the votes for that proposition even if, because that one is negotiable obviously because it started off as a Northern Ireland backstop and then it became a UK backstop, there were no votes for it. The only way it could conceivably go through is if there were general election and a big Conservative majority, big enough to outvote the Moderates in the Conservative Party and of course entirely independent of the DUP and I think as you know, pigs flying is a much more likely snarier than that. Roland Tynan, a filmmaker and member of the Institute. Actually, I was based in London during the referendum campaign and I was a very passionate campaigner for Remain and it's really wonderful to hear someone in your position being optimistic about the prospect of one referendum and that referendum voting remain the next time. But one thing I want to put it to you because most people in this room would be quite experienced in handling EU referendum and one of the most significant features about these referendum campaigns in Ireland were very successful generally speaking in securing support for Europe was the active involvement of trade unions and businesses, the key drivers of the economy and one thing that shocked me in Britain was the lack of action, the lack of activity, the lack of involvement by these key players representing workers and blah, blah, blah and it is conceivable that a referendum could be passed but the way business and even trade unions are intimidated off the political field even listening to Len McCluskey who only finally the leader of your night came out when the prospect of an old deal of Brexit is on that and he admitted as well, he said, I listen to my members and in all my various committees no one is voting for Remain so I put it to you, how is it conceivable that Remain could be passed the next time which I passionately hope that it is if the main drivers, the main people who really are responsible in practical terms of the economy remain virtually neutral or unengaged? Thanks, Ron. Well, we definitely need them engaged if there's to be a second referendum and I believe they will be much more engaged than last time is the answer to that because they realize that the stakes are so much higher and the thing to understand about last time is that almost everybody thought that Remain was going to win so they didn't need to exert themselves and that won't be the case next time so far as the trade union movement was concerned there was a further factor last time which is that it was of course a referendum called by David Cameron and George Osborne and these aren't the most trade union-friendly figures who, particularly when you're dealing with people like Len McCluskey, so they sat it out last time and that won't be the case next time but I think, by the way, we have a lot to learn from Ireland in the conduct of referendums a lot in terms of how you mobilize opinion, third-party engagements, grand conversations and convention-type arrangements and I hope we'll make use of all of that in a referendum that's all important but the fundamental reason why I believe we'd win a second referendum and didn't win the first referendum is in a second referendum on this Europe issue the turnout amongst young people is going to go sky high and the young are going to mobilize the young under 30s are energized by Brexit in a way I have never seen them engaged in politics in the past there's a whole set of youth groups including in Northern Ireland a wonderful group called Our Future, Our Choice Northern Ireland has a cross-community group that is really making significant inroads in the debate in Northern Ireland this is going to be a big, big factor in the referendum and the overwhelming majority of young people are going to vote remain in that referendum and I do, I spent the last year doing meetings up and down the country but I do a lot of youth meetings and university meetings and it's the first time I've done in my political career large meetings of young people and as one of the students put it to me the meeting I did recently when I explained exactly what's at stake that they're going to lose the right to live, travel, work, love do all the, you know, cross Europe, cross the 28 nations they've got at the moment one said to me, yeah, I think we now get it he said what you're really saying is that we're going to be shut up on the small island with Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson and that's not a good idea and that is what is going to win the second referendum for us it's going to be the young mobilising the young and, you know, nobody born in this millennium voted in the last referendum which is not lost on the young people of the UK today and that is not going to be the case, of course, in a second referendum Interesting, the young are very important in recent referendums here Donald Donald Denham, thank you, Lord Adonis I share your interest in trains but what you've been describing is, in fact, a train wreck I'm surprised you haven't mentioned what I would consider many would consider the highest probability therefore your highest improbability and that is a general election, a Tory party that is obliterated or badly split and a Labour premiership under Jeremy Corbyn and indeed, why not Jeremy Corbyn? Well, of course, I'm wildly enthusiastic about that option and it's possible, it's possible but I think, actually, the very fact that it is possible is the reason why Boris won't call an election that he's there with Lyndon Crosby who is a past master at winning elections and when you do the numbers the first thing that's going to happen after Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister is a by-election in a place called Breckin and Radner which is a part of rural Wales on the English border which the Lib Dems are almost certain to win by a landslide which is hugely significant because the Lib Dems, when they were in coalition with the Conservatives, were eviscerated in the 2015 election and barely recovered in the 2017 election but they have partly because of Brexit and partly because they are the only viable non-conservative party in most of provincial England they've been surging recently so as soon as you start looking at that plus the fact that the Conservative Party would be wiped out by the SNP in Scotland if there was an early election plus the fact that the Peterborough by-election which is very recently last month in a Labour Conservative marginal which is a mainstream part of Metropolitan England Labour, despite the controversy around Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Labour won that with a big squeeze on the Lib Dem vote because of the tactical position between Labour and the Conservatives for all those reasons I don't think there will be an election but you are right, if there were to be an election all those considerations could easily lead to a Labour government and for the purposes of Brexit if there's a Labour government the first thing that would happen under a Labour government of Brexit is that Brexit would be junked almost certainly through a referendum but through a referendum where the government itself was urging a remain vote and if there was an election which had returned either a majority or a minority Labour government which itself called a referendum on the cause of remain immediately after that election which is what I think would happen I think that absolutely guarantees that Brexit would be finished Just you Thank you very much for your presentation Colin Rafter of Retired Foreign Affairs Two small points Looking at the idea of a referendum if there's a move towards a referendum to reverse Brexit the cry will go up a betrayal and that will be quite strong and the Brexit party will play on that I'd like you to address that if you could Secondly, just taking up the point about the British Labour Party it's a kind of chaos and we don't really understand what's happening at the side of the channel the whole question of anti-Semitism and all the rest of it Does it have a coherent position on Brexit? Will it have a coherent position on Brexit? Thank you I was rather hoping you could explain to me what's going on in the Labour Party But on Brexit, I mean there are a lot of other issues inside the Labour Party at the moment and some of which are truly extraordinary anti-Semitism and all that But so far as Brexit is concerned the situation is very simple in the Labour Party the overwhelming majority of Labour members of Parliament are Remain and for a second referendum the overwhelming majority of Labour Party members are for Remain and a second referendum the majority of Labour voters it's crucial to understand this because somehow it's painted as if somehow the north of England is a massive working-class revolt against Europe and pressure on the Labour Party the majority of the Labour vote everywhere across the UK was in favour of Remain including in the north of England the reason why our position has been nuanced if I can put it that way is because Jeremy Corbyn himself is historically a Brexiter it's very important to understand this it's not a secret issue he was an anti-common market in the 70s against all the European treaties right up to and including the Lisbon Treaty and he's been on a journey and he has reluctantly come to a position where partly because of the objective situation of Brexit and the Brexit deal that's clearly the thatcherism by other means but also because of the need to lead a party which is united he's come painfully to a Remain position but he has come to that position his statement of policy last week is that Labour would both call a referendum in any scenario whether there's a Conservative or a Labour Government and we would campaign for Remain in any scenario except one where Labour had itself negotiated a great Brexit deal that ain't happening as everybody besides probably two members of his staff that's not happening so Labour's position is actually that Brexit issue is clear it's been a painful process but it's been a painful process for the same reason why Jeremy Corbyn's whole leadership of the Labour Party has been painful because there are very big differences between somebody who holds Jeremy's views and mainstream social Democrats and the question of betrayal how do you deal with that? Well there clearly will be a quite betrayal and Nigel Farage who is the extremely extremely capable populist will get it going in a big way but it's very important to distinguish between the cries of betrayal from the populist right which is where Nigel Farage and part of the Conservative Party come from and the actual sentiment on the ground it is not the case as you might think from reading the newspapers or some of the media reports that England is a seething cauldron of internecine strife on the issue of Europe where people Europe is way way down their list of priorities and indeed the only seriously organised popular movement in respect of Europe as opposed to wider populism in respect of Europe has been on the remain side the only big demonstrations there have been in England throughout this whole Brexit experience have been the big remain demonstrations in London which there have been three now of over a million there have never been any on the leave side which are large the reason of course why we had the 52% leave in the referendum is because the people were required to vote on the referendum which they never showed any sign of wanting it was an internal Conservative Party fix by David Cameron which called the referendum so my judgement and I can only offer you my judgement is that in the event of a second referendum voting to remain in the EU whether it's by large majorities I would expect or even by a small majority is that that would resolve the issue it's not that it isn't going to have a long a vocal minority that will argue against it that will probably continue to be the case because there is a vocal minority that will argue against British membership of the EU but that is not a passionately held view by a sizable part of the electorate and they will in a second referendum as in a first referendum vote because they're required to do so but the issues that really mobilise public sentiment at large in the areas that voted leave are not to do with Europe they're to do with austerity they're to do with the state of the public services they're to do with job opportunities and educational opportunities for young people they're to do with housing they're to do with a whole lot of bread and butter issues and the only overlap between those bread and butter issues and Brexit which is a genuine policy issue is immigration which was definitely a factor three years ago but the immigration issue has gone far down the list of priorities in the last three years as immigration from the EU has significantly reduced net migration from Britain to the EU at the moment and the composition of the immigration coming into Britain is now heavily in favour of immigrants coming from outside the EU and not inside the EU so the immigration issue which was definitely a big issue because of our decision to admit immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe 2004 without the transitional controls which the rest of the EU put in place but that issue has now been diminishing in importance and therefore as a popular cause Brexit has been diminishing rapidly Member of the Institute considering that there is need for unanimity to extend article 50 required of the Council of Ministers out of the European Council in October can you be sure that all the Member States would agree to extend article 50 a further period? Of course I can't be sure but again in March what happened was that your t-shirt and Chancellor Merkel were leading the calls for and Donald Tusk the President of the European Council were leading the cause of a long extension and the opposite cause was led by President Macron but he was not calling for no extension he was calling for a short one in order to concentrate minds and that looks to me to be probably a good opening description of what would happen next time too but it's very clear if you look at the positions taken by Chancellor Merkel the Presidency of the European Council and your t-shirt that none of them want to take responsibility for Brexit and as soon as they decline to agree an extension they're taking responsibility for Brexit it radically changes the situation because at that point the reason why Brexit happens is because of the EU it's not because of Britain and what Donald Tusk has been a very wise President of the Council and Chancellor Merkel has been an absolutely brilliant Chancellor of Germany worked out long ago is that if Britain leaves the European Union which will be a colossal mistake and deeply damaging both for Britain and for the EU it will be Britain that takes responsibility for it and not a stab in the back argument that will develop about how they were forced out by the EU and Merkel realised a long time ago because she exhibits massive patience it's of course easier to be patient if you've been Chancellor of your head of your government for 15 years so you've seen all these things in the in the longer process she understood a long time ago that the way to deal with Brexit and the EU is concerned is patience and not attempting to force the pace and it looks to me pretty clear that that's the strategy that she'll adopt in October so far as your government's concerned of course for Ireland if anything Ireland has even less interest in a hard or disorganised Brexit than the United Kingdom because you not only get all the trade problems and the economic dislocation issues but of course you get the full brunt of on the border and therefore as I've been patiently explaining to Jonathan in London who don't sufficiently understand this it's not the case that you have a United Kingdom position where we want an extension and this angry and fed up EU that's not prepared to grant it actually so far as the key players in the EU are concerned they worked out a long time ago that they have just as little interest in a hard orderly or no deal Brexit as we have and in the case of Ireland they have an even greater interest in it not happening and all they have to do to avoid it is to extend they don't have to do anything else and so I'm fairly confident that that would happen in October it would be helpful if we if if there was actually a policy for what was going to happen in the extension but even if there isn't a policy which happened in the extension it's still self evidently in the interest of the EU itself to extend that I would be very surprised if that doesn't result thanks and welcome back to double notice I'm John McGrann from the British Irish Chamber of Commerce just sticking with that point for a moment so you've painted a picture that ultimately I think leads towards a second referendum the first thing that would happen to Boris about seven minutes after he's elected before the break of by-election is quite all officials will lock him in a room and say this is the truth nothing will work and so he's faced with the stark reality of having got power but being expected to exert it appropriately if you map that forward and bearing in mind that we're still almost three months away or actually three months away from the denouement of this no matter how late it runs so there's time what will be the step by which he as PM knowing that harsh reality is the owner of ultimately a policy shift towards a second referendum because that seems completely at odds with what we're hearing right now a long holiday is my answer to your question the first thing that happens when Boris becomes Prime Minister next Thursday everyone goes on holiday and he can't negotiate with the EU because there's no one to negotiate with I can assure you, Monsieur Barnier is not proposing to spend his summer in Brussels doing a negotiation so the first thing that happens is everyone goes on holiday there may be some courtesy calls maybe the teacher can Boris Johnson will meet maybe Chancellor Merkel will meet but these will be essentially at the courtesy level they're not going to be serious negotiations nothing seriously in terms of negotiations would start until September the great beauty of diplomats even when they have impossible positions to negotiate is that you can at least keep it going for some period of time and so I would and it's particularly important for Boris that negotiations are some kind even if they're not leading anywhere at all continue during and beyond the Conservative Party conference because he has a slight problem he has to deliver his rabble rousing speech about how he's about to triumph over everyone at the end of September so what happens I think is everyone goes on holiday for five or six weeks negotiations start in September he turns up at the Conservative Party conference at the meeting of parliament in September and says I can't say anything at all I've got to be unaccustomedly quiet I've zipped my mouth up which something Boris almost never does because we are having these really important and detailed negotiations and they're going extremely well and then that takes us to October and then we get pitched into the crisis then and by then he hopes well of course by then that is two months since he started essentially and since he's perfectly capable of eating his words at two minutes notice he doesn't need two months by then he will be perfectly able to take a different position but even if he doesn't as I say everything I described earlier about what will happen in parliament will then start in October anyway I think Thank you you're going from the Irish Independent you said earlier that your advice for the Irish Government in terms of dealing with Boris Johnson is to be impeccably polite and uncompromising take the scenario where the Irish Government is uncompromising what's stopping Boris Johnson then following through on the promises he's made during the leadership campaign just to leave on October 31st no deal why wouldn't he do that Parliament there's a fundamental obstacle to him doing so Parliament won't agree it's fundamental Parliament voted by the House of Commons voted by 430 votes to 203 for memory against no deal last time it came up the only mechanism by which he could overcome that is by banning Parliament from meeting which is this thing called prorogation which is something which hasn't been attempted since the English Civil War for a protracted period of political controversy but Parliament yesterday voted the House of Commons voted by a majority of 42 essentially to require Parliament to meet in September and October it did it with huge ingenuity because people are being extremely ingenious at using the four resources of the British Constitution at the moment it did it ironically on the back of a bill to extend the powers for the Government to continue quasi-direct rule in Northern Ireland because there isn't an Assembly in the Executive and the Speaker of the House of Commons who is part of this great ingenuity to be moved to that bill which have fundamentally amend the British Constitution we have nothing ever to do with the operation of the Executive and the Assembly of Northern Ireland and it's that that requires and it does it it's wonderfully ingenious these officials when they get going including Parliamentary officials and Dominic Grieve who's great at this and me and others we do very well so the way it's being done you'll find hilarious in order to use this piece of Northern Ireland legislation to stop prorogations September and October amendments have been moved which have now been agreed by the majority of 42 yesterday that require the Government to publish a report every week during the autumn on the progress towards establishing the Executive and the Assembly in Northern Ireland and for those reports to be debated by Parliament which requires Parliament therefore to meet so there are going to be one long succession of debates on the Assembly Executive in Northern Ireland in the autumn which is as it should be because it is an extraordinary situation that we are now two and a half years since there was an Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland I mean that alone would justify this meeting and what on earth is going on in the Government of Northern Ireland at the moment which is a terrible, terrible situation but of course when all those reports come and Parliament is meeting that will give ample opportunity for the next set of proposals to come forward which will rule out no deal require the Government to negotiate an extended negotiating period and I think probably by the time we get to October if not an actual referendum a process that would lead to a referendum so it is not within Boris Johnson's gift whatever he says to actually deliver no deal unless he can command a Parliamentary majority and he is not within sight of a Parliamentary majority for no deal Thank you, my name is Museswe and I am the member of the Institution of the Institute on the issue of Boris Johnson you said he is a Chancellor he doesn't believe in anything apart from Boris wouldn't you say the same about the British that they are Chancellor's Okay, I didn't mean it to be a joke but the point is that they are Chancellor's in a sense that they overestimated their value for example Britain as we all know they went all around the world and in my opinion they never learned anything apart from being British and now this is a big problem because they still think they are very important people of course you are very important people to a certain degree and now what is bothering me is that you hear conversations of saying there is a wide big great world waiting for us but no one is reminding new guys that how about all these offences we have caused are they going to be waiting for us with open arms because as I said you never learned anything apart from being British so how are you going and no one is addressing that issue and that is the problem where everyone seems to be polishing egos instead of let's speak honestly and truthfully because this is where at least you will get to look inside yourselves instead of continuous this big Britishness you are still important by the way but not that important wow that was a great question all I can answer is that there isn't one Britain my father came to Britain in 60 years ago from Cyprus and the reason he came to Britain was that he was part of a movement which was fighting a war of independence against Cyprus which was very bloody, extremely bloody villages were interned, people were executed including many of his friends it was a terrible situation but when they were seeking to get out of the country which was disintegrating at the time where did they come because they had British passports they came to London one of the largest communities in Britain is the Irish community most of them are only too well aware of the excesses of Britain internationally within these isles they come with no illusions too but they are equal members of Britain too and the truth is there is more than one Britain there is a Britain which is well well aware of the excesses which have been committed by the imperialist generations and those of imperialist mindset there are those that appear to be intent on repeating the mistakes this is a big struggle for the soul of particularly a struggle for the soul of England at the moment that is taking place because of course the Scots, the Welsh have themselves had huge experience over the centuries of difficult relations with a very dominant England and this Brexit issue is the playing out in part of that big debate in England and people like me are absolutely determined that we should learn the lessons of the past including crucially the lessons of the past in terms of Britain's relations with Ireland because there is no greater horror and disaster story than relations within these islands between the country which is roughly called England today and the nation which is roughly called Ireland it's been a terrible situation and that is a significant part of this debate so I'm not in any way excusing the imperialist mindset which animates part of the English elite today or the mistakes and crimes that is committed in the past I don't in any way excuse those all I would say is that that doesn't isn't the whole of England I don't even believe it's the settled will of the majority in England and this Brexit issue that we're playing out is the latest manifestation of that I'm extremely depressed and down heartened I've tried to exude optimism in my remarks and I am about the ultimate outcome of this but I'm very depressed at how strongly entrenched some of those old attitudes are still within the elite in England and it's been a very salutary experience but the lesson I draw from it is that those of us who hold contrary opinions need to fight even harder for them and shouldn't take for granted that progress means being more open-minded more liberal and less imperialist and the dimension the reason I'm here today is the dimension of this that worries me more than anything else is what could happen in terms of relations between Britain and Ireland and within Ireland itself the best thing that's happened in the United Kingdom in terms of policy in the last 30 years was the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland which also means peace within these Isles too when I was 10 I was in Regent's Park when a bomb went off on the bandstand and on a Sunday afternoon and 10 Royal Green Jackets were killed and 30 or 40 remained and when I was growing up in London my parents wouldn't allow me to go into the West End because of our IRA bombs there's a generation of us who know we failed to bring about and sustain peace in Northern Ireland we're determined that this shouldn't happen again and that is a large part of what's at stake in this big Brexit debate Thank you I'm going to go over time a little bit because frankly I think people are very interested and I'll take two more questions there's one there and there's a material question Thank you, William Scott remember the Institute I'd just like to probe somewhat the whole issue of referendum questions and by what parliamentary, governmental or commission process the referendum question or questions would be established because you can take it right if you want to remain you just revoke Article 50 or a main vote is equivalent of revoking Article 50 which European law will tolerate then you have a next stand deal that's there and then you have a what people call an old age scenario which still means there have to be discussions about arrangement and so on so you have a number of different options in a referendum context and now I presume that it wouldn't be practical or wise to have multiple questions if you had say three options and you got 34, 33, 33 where were you and I know that this might depend on the context for example you could say it might be reasonable to have remained or revoke versus a deal but then presumably in the state of current British opinion that the people who are so-called no-dealers would really feel totally excluded so it's just if we could explore a little bit the nature of that issue well it's clearly a very tricky issue the mechanism by which we decide there's very clear parliament would decide what the question is so the issue is what would parliament be likely to put as options on the ballot paper well one thing we're certain it would put as an option is remain referendum unless there was a majority that wanted the electorate to have an option to remain so the question is precisely the one that you mentioned which is what are the non-remain option or options and there are only two credible spaces where there could be options one is something around the Theresa May deal being agreed with the European Union with whatever changes might be agreed in the next two months if there are to be any changes to the political declaration so that's one and the other is something around what is euphemistically described as no deal but the problem with no deal is that no deal itself doesn't actually exist because there isn't literally no deal with planes not flying the transport systems not working six weeks of medical supplies and all that even the people who say they're in favour of no deal actually say they want a deal that deals with all those things so the issue is whether there are two or three options if there are three, how you describe the third option being the one that is got the shorthand no deal and then what the voting system is and I think the truth of them the reality of the situation is that if we get to a referendum basically the Conservative Party will decide whether it wants one or two options as well as remain they'll have to decide that amongst themselves and they'll also have to decide how to describe it people like me will complain bitterly about something called no deal that isn't fully described because I will argue because it will be true that this is substantially a unicorn because no deal or WTO Brexit or whatever it's described as is a unicorn it doesn't exist it can't in its own terms be done it would require a substantial negotiation which would mean anything but no deal it would just mean a different sort of very complex deal but probably argument because Boris probably will want some hard stroke no deal Brexit on the ballot I would have thought it's almost certain if there are three options that you'd have preferential voting almost certain because if you had first passed the post with three then obviously this would be loaded in the remain side immediately now this again isn't unprecedented the Swiss often have three option referendums where they have preferential voting what do I think would happen in that situation I think remain would win by a comfortable majority because what would happen is the people who vote for the halfway house which is going to be a minority of those who want to leave because you'll have forage and most conservatives will be arguing for the harder option they will transfer would have thought at least half in favour of remain as their second option so we end up with remain but how you actually describe those two options as I say is would be basically a matter for the conservative MPs to decide collectively and it's not straightforward by any means thank you Andrew I very much Bill Emmett sorry I'm a proud Brexile and former journalist like Lord at earnest but not in politics my question I agree entirely with your analysis and your optimism but let me ask a slightly pessimistic question about a potential for a soft Brexit from a Boris Johnson government which is to ask you to do the impossible perhaps which is to look into the minds of Jacob Reese Mogg Mark Francois and the DUP and Bill Cash and measure their intransigence because it would seem to me that a soft Brexit Boris Johnson option is essentially to march them to the brink of a second referendum and say if you don't agree to get us over this line we're going to have either a general election which were wiped out or a second referendum at which you lose your life's hope vote for this and then we can argue about the details later which was always the logical hard Brexit position but they've never accepted it perhaps because Theresa May was in charge but now they've got supposedly believer in charge what do you think that that can work and how intransigent are they well I think there are enough of them who are so intransigent that it won't happen when the Theresa May deal came to the third vote when the majority against came down to 60 which is still huge you know when Gladstone's proposals for Home Rule in Ireland were rejected by Parliament which was probably the single biggest defeat of a government proposition before Brexit they were rejected in the House of Commons by a majority of 33 in 1886 33 and that put the kibosh on on the whole of the plan well the third iteration of her deal was rejected in the House of Commons of the majority I think it was a 58 the composition of the votes against her there were two groups that I don't think are going to be reconciled the DUP will never vote for Brexit with a backstop in because it's existential for them it will result in a much worse situation for them in Northern Ireland which could get much much worse quite quickly I mean you could have a border poll and all kinds of things happening which would be existential for the DUP so they're definitely not voting for it this ERG group a substantial part of them did vote for Theresa May's deal last time including Jacob Rees-Mogg himself and Boris Johnson a group of them but they're an incansigent group and it's important to understand the motivation for the Bill Caches, the Mark Francois and all that what matters to them actually isn't getting some kind of Brexit over the deal what matters then much much more is purity as Brexiters is their place in history Bill Cache does not see his place in history as getting some form of halfway house Brexit over the line on the contrary he has spent 30-40 years now making a whole political niche and an increasingly large one around being completely intransigent on the issue of membership of the opinion and any close engagement with it he is not going to change his mind Mark Francois was telling some of the colleagues over lunch before Mark Francois when I was doing a debate with him I've had the misfortune to have to debate with most of these people so I get to know their way of thinking and their argument quite well Mark Francois said to me that if Juncker as he describes the president of the European Commission if Juncker offered to give him £39 billion he still wouldn't vote for the deal and I said to him Mark can I let you into a secret if Juncker proposes to give me £39 billion I'm thinking about it extremely seriously well he doesn't like none of these people by the way do humor so he didn't like that so he said I tell you and if he put a loaded revolver in my mouth I'm still not voting for it I said Mark if Juncker puts a loaded revolver in my mouth and says you've got to vote for the deal I am voting for it immediately without a second thought but he's not and there's a whole group of them who definitely aren't and Farage is definitely not either because his whole positioning depends upon the stab in the back not having had anything to do with it because his whole viability as a populist politician afterwards depends upon not having taken any responsibility for this so my judgement is that Boris could in that scenario get the majority down a bit because he might peel off some of the ERG people he has an intransigent 10, 15, 20 of the ERG plus the DUP who will simply not vote for it and the only way he could overcome that is by an election where he has a majority independent of them and as we were saying in discussions of election possibilities that is a fantasy so what we're left with again is the very, very wise Sherlock Holmes once you've eliminated the impossible you are just left with the improbable which must be the truth Thank you very much indeed I think you have left us with a little optimism I hope so, that's why I came Here's to the referendum Thank you