‘Insanity!’: Rachel Reeves’ reckless EU gamble
The Daily T
The Telegraph
4.1 • 705 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
Rachel Reeves has used her ‘Mais Lecture’ speech at Bayes Business School to announce a ‘deeper relationship’ with the European Union, criticising Brexit for the damage it has done to the UK economy.
Camilla, Tim and Allister Heath question why the Government is choosing to pursue closer relations with a bloc whose growth is a fraction of the United States’, and ask whether it’s more of an idealogical choice than a pragmatic one.
Elsewhere, Camilla and Tim attend Reform’s latest press conference, which saw Nigel Farage launch a competition promising to pay the energy bills of the winner and their entire street for a year. Speaking to The Daily T, Farage also had his say on his party’s poll lead after YouGov were forced into changing how they show results following complaints from Reform.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Telegraph |
| 0:07.0 | In a desperate bid for growth, Rachel Reeves wants to align Britain closer to the EU. |
| 0:15.0 | But is this about real world economics or ideology? |
| 0:18.0 | We've been speaking to Nigel Farage, who says the Chancellor is hopelessly out of date, |
| 0:23.1 | and the Sunday Telegraph editor Alistair Heath, who says the Chancellor's policies are bordering on insanity. |
| 0:30.2 | Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. |
| 0:32.6 | And me, Camilla Tobini. |
| 0:44.0 | Thank you. Tom. Tim, there's a big lecture going on in the world of economic wonkery. |
| 0:48.3 | It's the Mays lecture at Bayes Business School. |
| 0:51.5 | Could just call it the Bayes lecture, but it's the Mays at Bayes. It's named after the former Lord Mayor of London I looked up earlier. Right. I did a little bit of research on it. Alistair Heath, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and columnist extraordinaire, joins us because you once occupied this world of wonkery. Alistair, is that fair? Yes, it's very fair. I've sort of moved away from |
| 1:12.2 | me somewhat in recent years. I know you have. But putting yourself back in that world of |
| 1:16.0 | wonkery, the Mays lecture, is it an important thing for a Chancellor to deliver? I think it's |
| 1:21.7 | important in a sort of weird, symbolic, technocratic sense, but utterly meaningless in practice. |
| 1:27.2 | The Chancellor has laid out three priorities. |
| 1:29.8 | One is growth in all parts of the country. |
| 1:32.4 | Well, it's a chicken in every pot. |
| 1:33.5 | What does that mean? |
| 1:34.6 | Two, going to double down on AI. |
| 1:37.4 | Okay. |
| 1:38.1 | And three, closer alignment to the EU. |
| 1:41.5 | What do you make of this strategy overall? |
| 1:44.0 | I can't detect a strategy. |
... |
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