Rory Stewart

Royal Highland show, up all night in my hotel room, watching the results, David Dimbleby coming on.

And then of course, as somebody who then went to Theresa May's government, I was right in the heart of this fight where you and your friend Tony Blair were very much saying, this is ridiculous, we need a second referendum.

And I was trying to say, let's make the best of it and try to get a customs union or a single market compromise out of this.

Let me though, just take us back to

where I think the fundamental arguments were and how weird that moment was.

Fundamentally, you had the Brexiteers saying two things.

One of them was Singapore on Thames, which is, if we leave the European Union, we can deregulate, cut taxes, become more pro-business, more pro-innovation, and

Britain will boom like Singapore or Dubai.

And the second argument was the global Britain argument.

Europe's slow and sclerotic.

All the growth in the world is US, China, India, and we need to lean into those places with new trade deals, new relationships, and throw off the shackles of this

old place.

The problem with it is twofold.

Number one, Britain didn't want to be Singapore on Thames.

Turns out, actually, if you look at the last 10 years, we haven't deregulated.

We haven't dropped tax.

In fact, corporation tax has gone up.

Why?

Because actually, we're much more social democratic and European than anyone wants to acknowledge, but it's the global Britain thing which has been the biggest disaster.

Because of course, that story, we can rely on the US, we can do wonderful integrated trade deals with China, looks much bleaker 10 years later, because we've understood how vulnerable we are to being exploited by our dependence on the US, how vulnerable we are to Chinese supply chains, how vulnerable we are to Russia and gas, and how actually in Ukraine, in energy crises, in the economy,