Neale Richmond

So relations are in a very good place.

I have hopes, real hopes, that they can be as good, if not better, under Andy Burnham.

A couple of areas in relation to legacy that need to be resolved.

Hilary Benn has been really good on that, but more progress.

But certainly the days of Ireland being public enemy number one, when Leo Vagcar, Simon Coveney were regularly...

Every day they were attacked in the right wing British media.

That has certainly subsided.

And that's the way it always should have been.

And I think that's where a lot of people underestimated what European solidarity and what the EU actually is about.

It is about being one block.

If Ireland tried to negotiate trade deals with Canada individually, we'd get terrible terms.

But we do it as a block of the world's largest economic market.

David Davis, longtime Eurosceptic, appointed Brexit Minister, said on the night, this will be done in six months.

I'm going to go straight to Berlin and get it negotiated.

Every time I went on British media, but the German car manufacturers are going to throw Ireland under the bus.

It's too important.

And you go, no, European solidarity is so much more important than the economic interests of a bilateral relationship, even if that bilateral relationship is huge.

When I was with European colleagues, absolutely not.

Genuinely.

And I sat with Michelle Barnier, who was the key negotiator, multiple times.