The former PM tells Bloomberg:
“Today, instead of launching an argument about rejoining, which I think would be a very long and painful argument, and who knows where it would end up, instead of that, focus on how do we be the best friend, best neighbour, best partner…
If you start endlessly producing this idea that we’re actually on a path to rejoining, I think you’re in danger of getting a less good partnership deal because of course the EU countries will just think: well, these guys are gonna rejoin anyway, so what’s the point in giving them a good partnership deal…
If you’re not going to, you know, commit to trying to make the partnership stronger because you’re flirting with rejoining, I think there’s some dangers there…
I don’t think actually necessarily joining a customs union is the right answer. If you look at the economic problems we have today, I don’t really think they’ve got anything to do with Brexit at all. I mean, our economic problems are we are overspending, over-borrowing, over-taxing, over-regulated, and far too much being spent on working age welfare. Those are a set of problems that have nothing to do with Brexit.
We need a government that actually gets spending under control, gets taxes down, helps entrepreneurs, deals with our borrowing problem, reforms the welfare, and massively deregulates so we can build houses, build infrastructure. None of those have got anything to do with Europe. So that’s sort of, in a way, that’s my point. Do we really want to go into another decade-long debate about whether we should be in or out, when actually we should deal with our own problems while making the partnership model work?…
I fought the campaign to stay in on an amended basis, and I obviously wanted to win that campaign. I was desperately disappointed that we lost that campaign. But I’m a democrat, a believer in democracy. We voted to leave, and I think the right thing now is to try and become, you know, not just neighbours, partners, and friends of the EU, but the best friends, the best neighbours, the best partners. And I think we can make that work.”
Rejoin making fewer friends…
Lucy Powell told Sky News that the Ed Miliband-Russell Brand interview happened in part because the ‘social media age’ had not begun by 2015:
“Look, I mean, he approached the Labour Party, he approached the campaign team, and we’re in very different times now. We weren’t in the social media age at the time – where you could maybe search things up and see allegations about somebody at the time. and as I say, if there was any suggestion at all, we were dealing with someone who was a known sexual predator at the time, then, of course, you know, no one would have done that. But as I say, he was a well known public figure. Lots of people from Hollywood to the BBC to many others gave this person a very, very powerful platform. And we didn’t know at the time, unfortunately. It was a different era.”