Why Is Brexit So Hard?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2018
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. More than two years on, it’s still not clear how that will happen, or what will come after.
Consensus within Westminster seems impossible, and if the deal currently on offer from Brussels is voted down on December 11, the UK could crash out of the EU with no deal at all. What makes it so hard to come up with a solution?
The BBC has followed all of the twists and turns of the Brexit negotiations in minute detail. In this special programme, four correspondents from across the organisation give their take on what makes Brexit such a fraught process.
Katya Adler, Europe Editor Chris Morris, Reality Check Correspondent Alex Forsyth, Political Correspondent John Campbell, Northern Ireland Business and Economics Correspondent
Presenter: Edward Stourton Producer: Lucy Proctor
(Brexit Map - Getty Creative)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me Edward Sturtin. |
| 0:07.0 | Each week one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:13.0 | Imagine the scene, Brussels December 2017. |
| 0:17.0 | The British Prime Minister Theresa May faces the European Union's grandees. |
| 0:21.0 | They smile for the cameras, and get down to business. Everything seems |
| 0:25.9 | set for a deal on Britain leaving the EU. And then there's a phone call for Mrs |
| 0:30.9 | May. She has to get up, walk out and fly home, leaving her |
| 0:34.7 | counterparts in astonishment. All because a small British party didn't like the |
| 0:39.1 | sound of what she was signing up to. So instead of declaring a diplomatic triumph, she had to negotiate not with |
| 0:47.0 | the EU, but with politicians who were supposed to be on her own side. It was humbling, a dramatic illustration of the way Brexit, Britain's departure from the European |
| 0:56.6 | Union, has turned British politics upside down. |
| 1:01.8 | A full year later, Mrs May finally has a deal which she needs the British Parliament to approve, |
| 1:07.0 | but there's a strong possibility it will say no, so why is Brexit so hard? |
| 1:13.2 | All the expert witnesses will help us to answer that question are the BBC's own |
| 1:17.6 | correspondence. Part 1, breaking up. |
| 1:27.0 | Breaking Up. |
| 1:30.0 | The party is fundamentally divided from its very core to its very highest levels |
| 1:37.7 | between people that do not believe in membership of the EU and people that do. |
| 1:41.6 | Alex Forsyth is a BBC political correspondent. |
| 1:45.0 | To understand why Brexit is so hard, |
| 1:48.0 | you need to follow the political story that begins with Britain's 2015 general election. The then Prime Minister David Cameron |
| 1:55.2 | decided to include a commitment to a referendum on Britain's EU membership in his |
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