Robert Paston

I think interest rates would fall.

You know, money might well flow into private investment as well.

People would have to believe it was sustainable.

And the reason it might be sustainable is because right now, Labour's share of the vote is utterly fragmenting.

You know, the Greens are getting a chunk of

You know, obviously, Lib Dems, actually, the Lib Dem share rose before the last election.

It hasn't rose massively since then.

But the left, the centre-left vote has massively fragmented, which is one of the reasons why you talk about the potential for reform to win the next election.

When I talk to those at the top of the Labour Party, they can think of no other way to reunite the left than to make the next election effectively the equivalent of a referendum to go back in.

I mean, the argument would be we don't have to have another referendum, but Labour would run on the promise that if the British people voted...

to rejoin, that is what they would then negotiate.

And they are about the only circumstances that many people can think of, which would persuade people who are currently thinking of voting Green to vote Labour again.

So you can sort of see the political logic of why Labour might end up in that position, which is one of the reasons I asked you whether or not actually economically it would be a good thing.

Because actually, I think where I sit right now, I think it is pretty likely.

Given that Labour doesn't have a credible growth plan and doesn't have a plan to get the left back together, as it were, focused on essentially votes for Labour, it doesn't have a way of marginalising the Greens and the Lib Dems and even the SNP in Scotland or Applied Cymru in Wales.

This would be a way, potentially.

of rebuilding their popularity.

I suppose there's another issue which I'm always, I don't know what we do about this, but one of the things that's always slightly shocked me is how politicians do not understand big numbers in the sense or rather relative numbers.

So, you know, the excitement with which politicians will announce, for example, a trade deal with India that I think on the government's own figures in 10 years time, I think it's likely to increase GDP by 0.1 of a percentage point compared to the 8% we've lost recently.

from Brexit.