Robert Paston

And yet, when you talk to ministers, they say, oh, it's all very dangerous if we join the EU because we wouldn't have the scope to negotiate these trade deals with countries like India.

I mean, the problem is, however much we might love a trade deal with India, it just can't have, it can't make up for the loss of our trade with a continent, well, you know,

A continent we're on.

It's very close to us.

And an enormous, seamless market.

I think you worked at the Treasury briefly, didn't you?

Were you surprised by how sort of, in a sense, innumerate so many bloody politicians are?

Well, I mean, I have to say, to play my own

Trump, I did literally during the referendum say every single night on ITV, every night on ITV, I did say, if we leave the EU, we are going to be a lot poorer.

You may want to leave the EU for other reasons, precisely the reasons you're talking about, you know, allegedly control immigration.

Of course, immigration actually rose after we left the EU.

But, you know, in theory, we were supposed to be able to control immigration.

And then secondly, you know, you might think somehow, you

Parliament will have more powers.

Then the big question about whether Parliament subsequently used those powers particularly well.

But anyway, I did, I mean, but the thing that, you know, I did, you know, in a sense find shocking is I assumed that British, because it was, you know, it was frankly pretty basic economics that leaving the EU was going to make us poorer, which is why I said it every single night on the television.

I slightly assumed that the British people were,

In the end, this is something I learned from my dad, who was an economist.

He took the view people would never vote against or vote for what would make them poorer.

And I have always essentially done my job on the basis people won't vote for what makes them poorer.