Chris Johns

Oh, give me a break, Jim.

How many times has he said that?

And yet he then instantly refers back to his red lines of never rejoining the customs union, never rejoining the single market.

And yes, they could do some interesting deals in particular on agriculture.

And the European Union actually, for once, seems reasonably willing to cut Britain some slack on the very strict agricultural rules.

I recently went through...

As you know, I was in France, so I was crossing over and the infrastructure that is being built in Folkestone for people like me who take their car on the train to go underneath the English Channel, it's a great, great achievement that you can get to France in minutes.

Well, I did it in under 30 minutes, actually.

It's brilliant.

It's a great experience.

But you can see all this stuff that is still being built for people to be fingerprinted and eye scanned and DNA tested and blood taken and all the other things that people are going to have to do just to get to France.

It's so depressing.

So they're not getting... Starmer says things like, I'm going to get closer to Europe, but then...

almost in the same breath, says, I'm going to do absolutely nothing to achieve that aim, to achieve that goal.

Because, well, I don't know why not.

I mean, it's bloody obvious that they should get closer to Europe.

But it's also the case that no matter how much I hate Brexit – and I choose that word very, very carefully –

If they rejoin the European Union, it would help.

Of course it would help.

But we've got 10 years of damage done now, and it isn't the panacea.