Chris Grey

I mean, I want to be a little bit wary because of the fact that it happens to be something I've spent a lot of time and a lot of my life to thinking about and writing about.

And I suppose there's always a danger that one becomes too sort of monomaniacal about it.

But I think it's true that somehow...

even things which are not ostensibly to do with Brexit have become filtered through that lens and as well as through the kind of direct concrete effects.

So in particular, for example, it's still the case that a lot of political identities are bound up with Brexit.

And that shows no signs of going away.

Yeah.

And I mean, a lot of the people who show up on opinion polls who are saying they voted leave but see Brexit as having failed, that primarily they will say, well, that's because of the fact that it wasn't done properly.

And then if you probe that, it's typically about saying, well, it was all subverted by the elite, by the establishment, and so on and so forth.

And so in an awful way, it then reinforces the political mentality that led to the Brexit vote, you know, that this only goes to show that it was right to do.

As for the figures for rejoining and so on, I mean, I think they need to be treated with a lot of caution.

And in particular, if you go back to the years before the referendum, support for being in the European Union fluctuated quite a lot.

But you could find as much support in some opinion polls before the referendum for staying in as there is now for rejoining.

And I think that so there is still at the very least, you know, a sizable minority continue to be committed to it.

And that is also extremely important if we're talking about future relations with the EU, and also the general political instability in this country, because it's very unclear how any substantive agreements could be entered into by the EU if it is not really quite abundantly clear that these would be durable on the part of the UK.

And that's why, for example, in terms of any agreements that are done by the government within the reset parameters, I mean, it is being said, we don't know because these agreements have not publicly been reached, but it is said that they will contain so-called Farage clauses.

In other words, mechanisms for address if it were to turn out that the UK were to renege on those agreements under a future, for example, Farage government.

But that's one thing that can be done in relation to the relatively limited agreements envisaged by the reset.

But if you were to talk about the idea of the UK joining the EU, I think that would, I cannot see how that would be quite reasonably possible.

not acceptable, certainly to some member states within the EU, for as long as, you know, what I call Brexitism, or we can call Farageism, or populism, or whatever you want to call it, for as long as that remains a live political force within the United Kingdom, that places real limits on what can be achieved.