Transcription
Now, it's time for today's perspective, and from David Cameron to Theresa May to Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak to Keir Starmer, probably now to Andy Burnham, a series of Prime Ministers then in just 10 years since the Brexit vote was held exactly 10 years ago today.
So, here at France 24, we've been taking stock. Our reporter, Clovis Gussalli, is just back from the UK after making one of our revisited programs, talking to some of those who voted for the vote to see if they've changed their minds or not. Clovis is with me in the studio.
>> Good to have you with us, Clovis. Um, I know you went to Boston, didn't you? Where more people voted for Brexit than any other, and you found that even 10 years on, those arguments are still raging.
>> Absolutely, and now polls all show that a majority of people in the UK are thing Brexit was, uh, a mistake. It doesn't mean that they want necessarily to rejoin the EU, but they think it was a mistake, and clearly a lot of people I met, uh, believe it was badly handled by, uh, politicians.
We're now in a divided nation. And what's interesting when you go to the UK is that no one really feels, uh, seems to be happy with the situation.
You've got the people who are anti-Brexit who say we have shot ourselves in the foot. This was a ridiculous decision to leave the EU. We are suffering from the consequences now.
And then you've got the people who are pro-Brexit who say the government betrayed us. We didn't really get, uh, back control. We didn't really get the Brexit, the hard Brexit we wanted. We should have negotiated harder with Brussels. We should have got more to become more independent.
So, no one really seems to be happy with the situation. As you said, for our show, "Revisited: Uh, Brexit, 10 Years of Regret?" that's the name. You can find the report, of course, on our website and on YouTube.
Well, we went to various parts of the country. We went to Brexit, where a record number of voters chose to leave the EU. Three quarters of the voters there, uh, wanted to leave, uh, the EU.
Well, in Bre- in Boston, we met with the former mayor, Anton Dani. He decided to join politics because of Nigel Farage, who personally convinced him to join him in the battle to leave the EU. Anton Dani now is bitterly disappointed with the situation, but he's got friends who still believe in Brexit.
Let's take a look at this report we did with Dupuis. This is a clip of a revisit, "Brexit, 10 years of regret?" Take a look.
>> Anton has distanced himself from his former mentor.
>> I regret trusting Nigel Farage because I used to be a member of UKIP, and I used to campaign for Brexit on like a weekly basis in the market, and I used to talk to people. I was against open borders. I was against having one common law. I was against having one army. I was against a lot of things. But, unfortunately, it has backfired.
>> A recent poll shows 57% of British people believe Brexit was a mistake.
>> Good morning, young man.
>> Ben Nott Kenna, a friend of Anton's, who runs a typical English cafe.
>> With Brexit, we should be more integrated with the EU as well from a trading point of view. If push comes to shove, we've got Cornish brie, and we can and we can also make good quality sparkling wines. So, we could have our champagne if we wanted it. Can you make an all day breakfast, please? White bread.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you all. There you go, Anton.
>> Brexit has dominated conversations for a decade.
>> How was your breakfast? I did say breakfast, not Brexit.
>> My breakfast is NOT GOING WELL.
>> [laughter]
>> OH, BREXIT, BREXIT. DEAR. I, I, it's time we talk about Brexit. You know, it is become sensitive.
>> Ken F wants the government to get on with Brexit and sees Reform UK as the solution.
>> Just look at what the political animals are doing at the moment. They're making a mess of it. They're making absolute mess of it. We need people that have run businesses, that have made deals, that know how to talk to the customer, and they understand what people need and want.
>> Yeah, that's just part of Clovis's program. Clovis, I know you also went to the countryside, didn't you, to see how farmers have been impacted because that's a major issue, isn't it?
>> Yeah, more generally with our deputy, we wanted to look at the impact on the economy because London, the city, resisted, uh, pretty well, uh, standing its ground. We didn't see the collapse, but in several other sectors, it's more complicated.
Here, this is Nick Allpress. He's the boss of Allpress Farms, uh, quite successful farm specialized in leeks. He's in Cambridgeshire, which is now south of Boston, and we found it interesting to go and meet him because there's the question of labor, workforce. What's happened there?
Um, in Boston, we met with, uh, Bulgarian shopkeeper selling us a lot of factories have closed, little work, and also there's the question of, uh, before you had EU citizens who could come and work in the UK visa-free. Now, that's changed.
So, in sectors like, um, farming, well, thanks to special agreements set up recently in recent years by London with non-EU countries like Kenya, well, um, you can bring in seasonal workforce to replace EU workers who used to come before.
So, in this farm in Cambridgeshire, well, you used to have a lot of Polish people, Latvians. Now, it's not the case. They're replaced by a Kenyans for 6 months. Take a look and, uh, take a listen to a Nick Allpress explaining the situation in his farm and what he and others can be calling now the big replacement.
>> The Kenyans are great. They're, they're religious. They're really hard working. They're polite. The English workers don't want to do this. They say they don't want to do this. That, that, that boat's gone. That's sailed. They get paid the minimum wage, the same as an English worker. Um, so,
>> [snorts]
they will earn you 400 pounds a week. At least. We've had workers from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, all the stans on the on the on the Russian and Chinese border. Uh, they're very different workers to these guys. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's a shame when we're not having Europeans like we used to have.
>> Really interesting to hear that, Clovis.
>> Maybe just one point on what Nick, uh, Press was just saying. What's interesting also, these non-EU country workers, they'll come for 6 months. They live in camps. They live kind of outside of society or business. So, they're not going to spend that much money in the UK. They're more here to come, work, earn money, and then go back. So, they're not participating in the economy as much as, say, EU citizens were before Brexit.
>> If it wasn't this up, I rattled off that list of, um, Prime Ministers, probably another one, um, to come on the end soon as well, Clovis. I mean, that political instability, uh, since Brexit that was supposed to be solved by Brexit suddenly hasn't gone away, has it?
>> And it's unprecedented in, uh, modern history for the UK. So, how can you not attribute that to, uh, Brexit? We're going to have a seventh Prime Minister in less than a decade. Well, we've seen, uh, governments struggling to cope with, uh, the, uh, economic the situation, the problems created by Brexit, divisions within their own parties, uh, a divided nation, and that's why, uh, you've had so much instability, uh, political squabbling, and it's very difficult to say it's not come from Brexit.
>> Finally, Clovis, the big elephant in the room, you mentioned it earlier on with Nigel Farage, is, of course, Reform, who, I mean, they've been doing very well in the polls, but they haven't quite made it every time there's an election, has there?
>> Maybe, when you look at the polls, they all show a Reform way ahead. The latest one I was looking at, um, Reform UK 27%, Labour and Conservatives 18%.
In our report, we met with one remainer, one young woman, very frustrated at the fact that she can't go she can't find a job in Europe because no one wants to sponsor her, pay for a visa for her, and instead of hiring someone from Britain like her, they'll prefer to hire a Spanish person, someone from Belgium, someone from Italy, and so on.
And she was telling me she, I, she was saying that she doesn't understand, and her parents voted for Brexit. She doesn't understand why a majority of people in her country wants trust Nigel Farage, a Reform UK, want Reform UK in power, given that they are the people who pushed for Brexit, who put plunged the country into all of this mess. That's what she says.
But clearly, these people we met during a hard right far right march organized by the so-called Tommy Robinson, ex-hooligan, very close to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Well, in this crowd, far right activists, but also a lot of people who are Reform UK supporters. And they were all telling us, we want hard Brexit, and the heart of all this was immigration. We want even less immigration.
They, these people here, feel that the identity of the country, cultural values, are under threat. A lot of the people sat here were telling us, "We're on a crusade to save the country, save it from Islam, save it from politicians who are just basically changing the country, its identity, its culture." It's dangerous. These people want even harder Brexit. Honestly, Stuart, every time I go back to the UK, I find the nation more divided than ever. It's going to be very difficult for the next Prime Minister to try to, uh, decrease tensions, try to unite the nation.
>> We shall see how Andy Burnham, assuming it is Andy Burnham, who knows yet, uh, tries to do that. Clovis, thank you so much, Clovis Gussalli, uh, with us here on France 24. That Revisited program then, as Clovis says, you'll find it online, of course, on France 24's website. Uh, if you want to watch it on the television, it will be on this program as well at 11:40 Paris time tomorrow morning, so you can watch it there as well.