BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.

At the end of the month, it will have been exactly four years since the UK exited the EU

and Boris Johnson celebrated Independence Day.

But polls taken over the last few months have suggested a disillusion

with the 2016 decision, with an average of polls showing 56% of Britons currently in favour

of rejoining. Perhaps because of this, not long before Christmas, the President of the European

Commission, Ursula von der Leyen,

when asked whether Britain could ever rejoin the EU, said she thought that the direction of

travel towards rejoining was clear. But even if the polls are right, and von der Leyen is right,

and we wanted to do it, is it feasible or realistic to think of the UK going back into the EU?

Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out.

First, what's changed in our relationship with the EU since we formally left?

Peter Foster is public policy editor at the Financial Times.

Peter Foster, how have things changed in our relations with the EU practically and rhetorically

since Boris Johnson left Downing Street? I think the biggest change is that diplomatic relations

between London, Brussels, have been normalised. And the biggest reason for that

was the deal that Rishi Sunak did back in February, 2023, on the post-Brexit trading arrangements

for Northern Ireland. You'll remember that that was a big bone of contention between the Johnson

government and Brussels, and indeed the short-lived trust government and Brussels, with the UK

on two occasions threatening to rip up the deal, threatening to breach its international law

commitments and the treaty, and that had the effect of putting UK-EU relations into the diplomatic

deep freeze. And so Rishi Sunak doing that deal essentially has thawed relations.

...