Zanny Minton-Beddoes

Olemme. Olen tullut Suomesta, johon olen kasvanut. Ehkä hieman hieman vähemmän kuin Cardiffissa. Olet kuitenkin päällä. Oli vain yksi tunti, ja se oli kaunis. Jumala! Koneet Kravina-Armen kautta tänä päivänä olivat todella kauniit. Olemme olleet kauniit koneet jo aiemmin. Olette olleet täällä kaunis osa maailmaa. Felicity, henkilöiden, jotka eivät ole koskaan käyneet Hei-festivuilta, käsittele meidät. Mitä se on?

I was struck first of all by the fact that immediately the report said the European Union said no. And I thought, oh my god, here we go. We are going to have so many more reports like this, because the next few years will be convulsed with conversations about what is our relationship with the EU going to be like. And just to sort of level set a bit, and I know we've all still got PTSD from the previous ten years of this, but...

Se on nyt ollut 10 vuotta, ja kuten olette nähneet vastaukset, suurin osa ihmisistä huolehtii, että se päätöksentekijä valitsisi uudestaan. Ja se, mitä hallitus on sopimassa niin kauan, on melko pieni yksiköiden asia, kuten fytoturvallisuus ja niin edelleen. Planta ja eläin. Planta ja eläin.

That's what they're talking to the EU about right now. And as I understand it, there's a kind of range of more ambitious options that they are thinking about. One of them is this single market for goods, and we'll come to that. But in classic European style, the Europeans said, no, no, we can only talk about what is on the agenda for right now, and we're rejecting everything else. And we're going to have more and more of that. But for me, the big picture is...

The world is completely different now than it was 10 years ago. This country is in a completely different place. I think, and this is not a particularly... I thought it was a very bad idea. We at The Economist thought Brexit was a very bad idea. I still think it was a bad idea, but we're now 10 years on. And our economy has suffered. You can debate about how much, and there's lots of studies, but there's no doubt that on net it did economic damage. It also wasn't the catastrophe that some people said. So the city of London is actually still the world's second biggest financial center. It's doing pretty well.

Despite Brexit. And in fact the city was saying to Rachel Reeves, actually don't go too far on your reset because we're quite enjoying our independence from Europe. Exactly. But I think having done Brexit, we then could have gone in lots of directions, right? There was people who wanted us to become Singapore on Thames, a kind of deregulatory haven. We didn't do that. We chose actually to not do very much and if anything to become more regulated. So now we're kind of poorer.

We have a worse fiscal position and the US has changed fundamentally. We used to be in this brilliant position that we had a special relationship with the United States and we were part of the European Union. Now we're not part of the European Union and the US has gone off on some protectionist tangent.

And I don't think in Europe we can rely on the US for defense any longer. So you look at Europe as a whole, including the UK, and you think, what's the biggest issues? Actually, what is European defense going to be about? And that's not a narrowly EU thing, but it's an important thing for the future of Europe. The second is what happens with Ukraine. By far the biggest geopolitical thing that's happened in the last 10 years in Europe was Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine...

on track to become at some point a member of the European Union. That will fundamentally change Europe too. And then thirdly, the backlash against migration across Europe and indeed here too. And that's the sort of terrain we're on. So in that it seems to me very sensible that the UK has a closer relationship with the European Union. It seems bonkers to have red lines set ten years ago, kind of defining where this country goes forever.

Red Lines, which were in the Labour manifesto. Which were in the Labour manifesto again, and Labour politicians are all saying, no, no, we can't revisit them. But I don't think this conversation is going to be over in the next year. There's going to be a lot of negotiating, and frankly it's going to require much more imagination from the Europeans as well, because they are very, very rigid when they approach these negotiations. You know this better than I do, having covered it.

En ole varma, että molemmilla puolilla meillä on poliitikkoja, joilla on tarpeeksi ajatuksia miettiä, mikä on tunnettavaa taloudellista liikennettä Yhdysvalloissa, kuten Ukrainaa tai Yhdysvalloilla, jotka tekevät asiaa käsittelemällä ja taloudellisilla tarkoituksilla.

I'm sure it exists. Whether it's this single market in goods actually may not be a bad idea. Or whether it's something more complicated. But this isn't the kind of not even the end of the beginning. This is the beginning of a long conversation that will go on, I suspect, for the better part of the next 10 years about what is our relationship with the EU. The beginning of the beginning of the beginning.

I'm wondering which of those it is. I'm sure you're right that it's one of them. I just can't face the idea of having Brexit-style conversations for the next 10 years. I do think that... I just wish on both sides of the channel we could have a grown-up conversation about what makes sense for us as Europeans. And we really are Europeans, channel or no channel, in this much more dangerous, much worse world than we were in 10 years ago. In so many ways. We've got

The challenge of our defense, which is serious. We have, we can get on to this if you like, but the UK, we have nothing but admiration for our armed forces, but we have twice as many horses as we have tanks in the British Army. We have cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. We have a government, notwithstanding the Prime Minister's promise last week, hasn't published the defense investment plan. We've got to do something on defense. So has the rest of Europe. It is crackers that the countries think about this separately. We should be thinking about it together.

Similarly, how do we cope with Chinese competition? Huge issue for Europe as a whole. Similarly, how do we cope with AI? All of the AI innovation is happening in the United States, or a large part of it. What is Europe going to do? And we would be so much better at having those conversations if the UK, which has huge advantages, not just in finance, but also in tech, relative to the rest of Europe, was having those conversations with the Europeans. But instead, we're like, who's briefing whom on some tiny proposal? Just...

It just kind of drives me crackers, because that is what's happening, and you're absolutely right in characterizing it, but I wish we could stand back and say, what is the right relationship that makes sense for us all right now? And there is one, and it's not exactly what we've got right now. I'm laughing, because the idea that I'm the most cynical person on an episode of Newscast is...

Olen ollut rauhassa suomalaisesta. Yksi positiivinen asia on se, että eurooppalaiset ovat todella pohtineet Ukrainasta. Tämä on jotain, jota ei ollut tarpeeksi paljon ihmisiä keskustelemaan. Bidenin hallituksessa Yhdysvallat antoivat suuri osa taloutta Ukrainasta. Trumpin jälkeen se on pysähtynyt täysin. Euroopan puolustajat kestävät Euroopan sivuilta. Eurooppa kestää koko Ukrainan mahdollisuuden vahvistaa itsensä.

Eurooppa voi mennä eteenpäin, kun se tarvitsee ja kun se haluaa. En ole täysin Eurooppaa, vaan jos meillä on vuosia ja vuosia heikkoja keskusteluja, joissa on paljon isompia asioita, joita meidän pitäisi yhteistyössä tehdä.

I'd love to ask you whether you think it was largely a sort of expression of frustration about Labour. And frankly, I'm generally of the view that change is generally good, and the Labour Party has dominated Welsh politics forever. It's the most dominant party pretty much. We couldn't find anywhere. I think that some shaking up is no bad thing. But was the election really about frustration with Labour? Sorry, I'm not taking the job here, but a second question. Does The Economist have a podcast as well?

My second question is about what the priorities are and should be, because I was struck. I think Wales has huge strengths, apart from just being beautiful, but it is quite poor. And if you look at, despite spending quite a lot more on health than in England, health outcomes and waiting lists are 40% higher, I think, on average. I mean, it hasn't been that successful yet.