Mujtaba Rahman
speaker
34 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 24 Jun
Mujtaba Rahman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
In the immediate aftermath of the referendum result, there was a real collective desire among the member states to
to very quickly figure out a way in which they could ensure continuity on the trade side.
You had very important industrial and export interests all over Europe that were lobbying their respective governments to make sure that no matter what happens, unfettered access to the UK market remains.
And so that was actually the important early political discussions that took place among the member states.
In opposition to that was the European Commission, which actually said, we all need to slow down a bit here.
And before we think about what we're going to do on trade, there's a set of defensive interests.
that we need to organise ourselves around, namely the financial settlement, the rights of European nationals living in the UK and, of course, the Irish border.
And so it wasn't until a little later that the Europeans ultimately aligned around this sequenced approach where, unless those questions were addressed, only at a later stage would they begin to talk about trade.
So it took a bit of time to figure out what the right European approach to Brexit should be, and that only emerged much later in the summer.
So there were very serious costs.
I mean, Brexit removed the EU's second largest economy at the time, one of its strongest militaries, its largest financial centre.
You know, the UK is obviously a major global player, a P5 member state.
And so I think the Europeans absolutely felt as though they're losing an important economic and military and defence power.
And there was a real sense of loss about that fact.
I think in particular in the chancellery, Angela Merkel and the team around her were mortified by the result and were absolutely of the view this will lead to a weaker EU.
I think the calculations in France, notwithstanding that loss, were slightly different because France did gain a lot of strategic influence as a result of the UK's departure.
joint measures related to integration in certain areas, in particular joint borrowing and industrial policy.
Now we see the Europeans making progress on something known as the Industrial Accelerator Act to again counter what they perceive to be unfair Chinese and American competition.
And I think it would have again been very hard to even have this conversation, frankly, within the EU if the UK had been a member state.
Absolutely.
Showing 1–20 of 34 · page 1 of 2
Next →