Rory Stewart

They're very sort of European.

So it turned out that what stopped us doing this wasn't being in the European Union.

It was us.

Another paradox.

I absolutely resonated with one of their points, right?

Totally want to grant one of the Brexiteers' points, which is that as an MP, I observed that we were blaming Europe all the time.

And there was a problem, I don't know, with sovereignty or accountability.

But again and again, if the public complained about something to the local council or their MP, they were told we couldn't do it because Europe wouldn't allow us to do it.

And civil servants would frequently say, you can't do that because European laws won't allow you to do it.

And I felt that was bad for our democracy, right?

I'm standing up as a member of parliament.

You've elected me.

I'm going to be a dynamic government.

I'm going to get things done.

What real issues were there where that applied?

Well, it turns out, and this is the problem, that firstly, that many of those regulations we wanted to keep anyway.

And partly it's dishonesty, right?

So instead of saying...

The reason why you can't do whatever you want to do on water quality is because of a European Union regulation on clean water.

Which has driven up the quality of our water.