Robert Paston

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.

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.