Robert Paston

But this was an occasion where spectacularly very large numbers of people, particularly poorer people, people on lower incomes in depressed areas, where they did vote to make themselves poorer, which was shocking.

Although, to be honest on that, I do think actually the sort of geopolitics

has shifted.

It is so obviously in the interests of the whole of Europe for our military forces, our defense to be aligned.

And the UK still has one of the more credible military capabilities in Europe.

And that ought to be the idea of essentially convergence between our defense and Germany and France and the rest of Europe ought to be enough

in my view, for a rational EU to say there's a deal to be done commercially as well here.

And that in general, just bringing the UK closer to the centre, I think is in the European Union's interest.

So I'm hoping that the punishment beating instinct has now dissipated in favour of Putin is the real enemy and we've all got to

We've all got to stick together.

I mean, the other point which I thought was just interesting in all of this, of course, the cancer, the reason why you would argue, well, the reason I wrote a book about this called WTF, the reason so many people voted against their economic self-interest was cancer.

Because of the collapse of trust in those who run this place.

I mean, you know, you see a similar phenomenon with the rise of Trump.

The problem was people in low income areas felt that over many years they'd been let down by the likes of Blair and Cameron and Osborne.

And so when they heard Cameron and Osborne and Blair saying it's in your economic interest to stay in the EU, they did.

I'm afraid they did what Michael Gove was urging them to do.

They basically didn't trust them and they didn't trust the experts like you who were saying, actually, these guys are right.

And somehow we've got to rebuild trust again.

you know, in politicians and indeed in experts.

So we've had an absolutely fascinating conversation.