Brexit's back – and so is Truss
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There has been a flurry of UK-European activity across Britain this week, with the German state visit in London, the Norwegian Prime Minister signing a defence agreement in Scotland and the British-Irish council meeting in Wales today. Perhaps then it's inevitable that speculation over closer ties between the UK and the EU has re-emerged. Could Labour seek to rejoin the Customs Union? Would this help or hinder Reform? And would the EU even stomach it? Plus – Liz Truss launches a new show today. Will she say anything new?
James Heale and Charles Grant from the Centre for European Reform join Patrick Gibbons to discuss.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:28.1 | Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Patrick |
| 0:32.4 | Gibbons and today I'm joined by James Hill and Charles Grant from the Centre for European |
| 0:36.2 | Reform. Now James, it's probably inevitable in a week where we've had a German state visit. |
| 0:41.0 | We've had a defence agreement between Norway and the UK and the British and Irish Council are meeting today. |
| 0:47.2 | I should caveat before we get comments that I'm not aware that Norway is not part of the EU. |
| 0:52.5 | I am. |
| 0:53.3 | But it's probably inevitable that |
| 0:55.6 | some speculation has been bubbling under the surface this week that the UK may seek |
| 1:00.3 | closer ties with the European Union, or at least there's pressure from behind the scenes that |
| 1:04.6 | we should do that. What's been going on? |
| 1:06.9 | So there's been a number of comments this week by cabinet ministers which hold the door open |
| 1:12.2 | potentially to closer European realignment. And the question is, of course, is would that |
| 1:16.2 | mean Britain rejoining the customs union or even, as some commentators might suggest, sort of part |
| 1:21.4 | of a full-on EU rejoining movement? Now, I think the thing that's driving this is twofold, |
| 1:25.6 | one of which is the, I think, willingness of the cabinet ministers to increasingly talk about what they perceive as the damage done by Brexit economically. And I think also it comes with the Labour government is reconsidering its wide strategy. Obviously, last year, it won a handsome election victory being to the so-called hero voters in leave seats. There were a lot of Labour politicians |
| 1:45.5 | who were pretty scarred by those Brexit years and definitely did not want to, don't mention the war, |
| 1:49.4 | don't really investigate these disputes, etc. As time goes on, and we see the rise of reform UK, |
... |
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