00:00The government has stated it wants to work more closely with Europe again,
00:04pitching it as a practical reset rather than reversing Brexit.
00:09Critics call that a betrayal of what people voted for,
00:13while supporters argue it's simply responding to the economic and security reality the country now faces.
00:21The key question is whether closer ties means sensible cooperation
00:25or a gradual move back towards the European Union.
00:30We're in the year 2026, 10 years on from the referendum of 2016,
00:35obviously, where by a fairly narrow majority, 52 to 48, we voted to leave.
00:42And that's really important.
00:44We voted to leave the EU, but what arrangement were we going to have subsequently?
00:49As we've discovered, leaving an organisation is quite complex.
00:54I don't think people sort of fully understood that,
00:56although the argument always is people knew exactly what voting to leave meant.
01:01And we've got into a lot of sort of particular issues, both socially, culturally, and most particularly economic,
01:07which have caused the economy to sort of to flatline in a way which, of course, is harmful to us all.
01:12So you look at the sort of issues, if it's better to be in the club, then perhaps under some other arrangement.
01:19I don't think we're going to rejoin the EU.
01:21And indeed, it's whether it's the customs union or the single market,
01:24but some way, if you like, which actually resonates back to sort of when we joined the European economic community
01:29back in the early 1970s, whereby it makes it much easier for people to trade their goods
01:35and to move them around without the sort of the impediments.
01:38And let's face it, the way that sort of Brexit has been sort of summarised,
01:42you know, we impose sanctions on ourselves.
01:44So anything which takes away those sanctions and makes it easier to sell our produce
01:49into sort of what's still the largest market in the world,
01:53and people sort of say, well, it's declining.
01:55But nonetheless, anything that makes it life easier for our sort of exporters,
01:59and indeed for us to import things from the EU in here, which of course is to our benefit,
02:04is bound to sort of to have a sort of a really sort of positive impact upon us as individuals,
02:09which has got to be good.
02:10But hey, the politics of this are sort of really difficult,
02:13and anything that Starmer does is going to be sort of pounced upon by the sort of the Brexiteers
02:18who still exist, particularly in sort of reformed UK.
02:21Now, polling suggests attitudes have shifted since the referendum.
02:26A more in common poll for the Sunday Times reported that if the Brexit vote were held now,
02:3152% would choose to remain and 29% would choose to leave, with the rest unsure.
02:38The same polling reported 49% support a new referendum and rejoining the EU within five years,
02:45showing that there is appetite for change, but not necessarily agreement on how fast or how far.
02:53Wow. Well, I mean, the difficulty is, of course, it's still, you know, relatively early days,
02:58because of course, even though the sort of the vote was taken or took place back in June 2016,
03:03it took many years to actually sort of get it through.
03:05And it wasn't until sort of Johnson's get Brexit done election that, you know, that was possible.
03:11And even then, Johnson, he agreed to sort of the worst possible terms.
03:16You know, this idea that sort of the Europe needs us more than we need them.
03:19It wasn't true.
03:20So in terms of damage, it's worth probably sort of, you know, three, four, five percent of the sort of GDP.
03:26We're talking many tens of billions of pounds, which, of course, you know, we don't notice instantly
03:31because, of course, this is collectively, but we become a sort of much more or much less significant sort of place.
03:38And collectively, we also become poorer.
03:40So, you know, the fact that sort of wages are flatlined, there's a whole set of sort of interrelated consequences,
03:45which means, of course, we're no longer the sort of great nation that we might want to be,
03:49despite what people sort of said about sort of leaving the EU.
03:52This is an argument on two fronts.
03:54One side says the mandate was to take back control and keep distance from Brussels.
03:58The other says closer cooperation can be done on Britain's terms and helps jobs, trade and day-to-day stability.
04:06For now, ministers insist they are not reopening Brexit,
04:09but the public mood and the politics around Europe are still clearly evolving.
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