Robert Paston

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.

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.