The Disaster Britain Still Can't Escape and Trump’s Iran ‘Deal’

**Alastair Campbell** (0:01)
Happy anniversary, 10 years since we voted to lead the European Union, how has Brexit been for you? Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage may be a lot wealthier than they were, but they are the exception. A decade has been long enough to establish Britain is poorer and weaker, and Brexit is one of the reasons. An economy, six to eight percent smaller than it would have been, investment lower, productivity lower, and businesses who were promised an end to red tape drowning in the stuff. And yet, the divisive populist politics that helped fuel it is far from dead. We've seen the worst of it on the streets of Belfast last week. A horrible stabbing by an asylum seeker whipped up into riots and a house to house hunt for immigrants. We've seen its exploitation by Russia in the evidence that arson attacks on Keir Starmer's home and car were organised by Moscow, then backed by the far right here. And even in quiet, wealthy Switzerland, their weekend referendum on whether to have a population cap was the brainchild of their right-wing populist party. And in Germany, I'm hearing of fresh legal moves to establish that their far-right party, the AFD, is in breach of the country's constitution because of its commitment to what they proudly call remigration. So a decade on from the toxicity of the referendum campaign, how worried should we all be about the far-right's continuing influence on our lives and what hope is there of liberal democracy fighting back? All this and more to come in today's episode.

**Rory Stewart** (1:32)
Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:34)
And me, Alastair Campbell.

**Rory Stewart** (1:35)
Today, we are at the 10th anniversary of Brexit, and we're really going to get into how did that go. And in the second half, extraordinary news, which is that it seems as though finally, despite all our skepticism, we're on the cusp of a proper deal in Iran.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:51)
I'm still skeptical.

**Rory Stewart** (1:52)
And you're still skeptical. Let me start you though with Brexit. So 10 years on, bit of post-traumatic stress.
I was a member then of David Cameron's government, an environment minister campaigning for remain. So I was...

**Alastair Campbell** (2:06)
Not hard enough.

**Rory Stewart** (2:07)
Not hard enough. And I was at the great royal show in Edinburgh, the agricultural show, 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. And 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 dependents 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, with AI, we need to be much closer to the people right on our borders, which is the European Union. In other words, a whole security argument has emerged that has wrecked global Britain. On the other side, we had Remain, and Remain had its fair share of pretty extreme apocalyptic predictions, some of which didn't come true. Total collapse of the city of London, World War III, total inability for Britain to survive. Actually, the reality, and this is what I want to provoke you with, is damaging, underwhelming, slow decline.