The Countdown to Brexit, Plus Adam Gopnik’s Turkey Zen

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than two years after British voters approved a measure to withdraw their nation from the European Union—a gigantic undertaking with no roadmap of any sort —Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled a plan: essentially, that the U.K. would remain in the European customs union, participating in trade with the E.U. and remaining subject to its trade policies, but exit the political process of the E.U. The deal was seen by some as the worst of both worlds, and several cabinet ministers resigned; May could well lose a no-confidence vote in the immediate future. David Remnick talks with the London-based staff writers Sam Knight and Rebecca Mead about the ongoing challenges of Brexit. And the staff writer Adam Gopnik, who’s been preparing Thanksgiving dinner for decades, considers the zen of cooking a turkey.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:11.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:16.0	With everything going on in this country over the last two weeks since the midterms. There was also big news from the United Kingdom this week, extremely big news.
0:24.9	On Wednesday night, Theresa May came out of her headquarters at 10 Downing Street in London
0:29.7	and announced what Britain has been waiting for for more than two years, a plan for Brexit.
0:36.1	This is a decisive step which enables us to move on and finalize the deal in the days ahead.
0:43.4	May spoke for two minutes light on detail and through most of it, you can hear a protester
0:47.8	shouting in the background.
0:49.9	I know that there will be difficult days ahead.
0:53.4	This is a decision which will come under intense scrutiny,
0:57.6	and that is entirely as it should be.
1:00.2	Intense scrutiny, it seems, is a British expression that might mean
1:04.3	they're going to come for me and they're going to cut my bleeping head off.
1:08.7	Then Theresa May went back inside Ten Downing Street, closed the door,
1:13.9	and politically speaking, all hell broke loose. Sam Knight has been covering Brexit, and he recently
1:20.3	profiled Theresa May for the magazine. We'll be joined in a minute by Rebecca Mead, a longtime
1:25.1	staff writer based in London as well. Sam, I don't know how to put
1:28.9	this any better, but what just happened? There is, you know, it's hard to sort of exaggerate
1:37.6	the sort of extent of the ferment and the chaos now. The reason this has been so controversial
1:45.4	is that from the get-go,
1:49.2	Britain announced that there would be a way
1:52.6	to not have a border on the island of Ireland
	...

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