I'm here at the FT Weekend
Oxford Literary Festival
with Lord Heseltine, former
deputy prime minister
and longtime pro-European
and cabinet minister.
Lord Heseltine,
we don't know what
is going to happen
regarding Brexit.
Can you see a path forward,
particularly with the notion
of these talks between the
Conservatives and Labour?
Well, my instinct
and long experience
tells me oppositions never
bail out governments.
And so, when I heard
about these talks,
I was a sceptic from the start.
I thought they'd
string them along.
Everyone would play for the
audience, not to be blamed.
But actually there'd be
no agreement in the end.
And as of tonight,
that's where we are.
But there is this
extraordinary subplot,
where you have the chancellor
of the exchequer denying
the existence of red lines,
whilst the Labour people say
the red lines are
set in concrete.
So what is the chancellor
of the exchequer
doing in becoming
a public voice,
asking for changes
in government policy?
April the 12th is, though,
the notional deadline
for an agreement by
the UK for agreement
to this withdrawal
accord with the EU.
Otherwise, we crash out,
Yes, well there is that date.
But already, the prime minister
has asked to change the date.
And at the present forecast,
you cannot see how she can have
a deal by April the 12th,
and therefore she has to ask
for a change or to crash out.
But the crash out
isn't an option,
because the House of Commons is
not going to let that happen.
Do you see indicative votes with
MPs looking at various options?
Well, that must
be a possibility.
But we've already
done that once.
Although they got very,
very close to an option,
they didn't get a
majority for anything.
Now, maybe that if we have
another go on Wednesday
they will get to something.
With preferential options?
Well, with preferential choices.
But for me, the one that
is a very important, again,
possibility now, is that they
have a second referendum.
They put it back to the people.
And I think that...
I mean, just...
You are a supporter of that,
and you have been for some time.
I have been from...
I wrote an article
in the Mail on Sunday
immediately after
the referendum.
Said that the fight
back starts here
and we have to work for
a second referendum.
And I still believe that.
But, I think that, of course
I am in favour of British
influence in Europe.
So let me not muck about
with that argument.
But to me, if you look at
the divisions in the Commons,
which very interestingly,
democratically reflect exactly
the position in the country -
by family, by region, by age,
whatever, that are these
wide-ranging debates,
which end up with no agreement.
And so the idea that a
referendum, narrowly won
three years ago, should be set
in concrete without the people
having a chance to look at
the reality of the deal,
not the lies that were told,
the reality of the deal,
and either say yes or no,
I find that extraordinary.
Do you honestly believe that a
Remain campaign could actually
pull it off in a second vote?
The victory, by a narrow margin
in 2016, was much influenced,
in my view, by the thought
that there were easy pickings,
like £350m a week for
the health service.
It's actually turned out
to be a bill of £39bn,
every penny of which is going to
be borrowed by this generation
to be paid back by a
subsequent generation.
No one told them that.
We were going to have a
lot of easy trade deals.
We've hardly got
any trade deals.
So, there was a deception.
And the deception was,
I think, important
because I believed it was run on
the basis of the crash of 2008,
which was a mega-economic
crisis for the world economy.
We lived in a sort of fool's
paradise, which crashed.
We've had our living
standards frozen for 10 years.
And if you do that,
regardless of Brexit,
if you freeze people's living
standards, they want change.
Can the Remain campaign
win it a second time round?
Well, there's no
easy answer, but we
have to be given the chance.
And I think we have one very
important thing on our side,
and it's worth 800 votes every
year in every constituency.
And it's called the age profile.
The elderly are 70/30 in favour
of leaving Europe in 2016.
The young, exactly the opposite:
30/70 in favour of being
in the European Union.
And of course, there
is a natural erosion.
Now, that's worth 800 votes in
every constituency every year.
In other words, 2,400
votes in every constituency
since the referendum.
That is the joker in the pack.
