Now on Bbc News, newscast. Newsy Chat And Analysis from adam fleming, laura kuenssberg, Chris Mason and guests. What the cast of friends can do, we can do more cheaply and more chaotically with our predecessor podcast, brexitcast, get back together for a Reunion Episode we have only left it five years have you watched it yet, chris . No laura is here, chris is here and, back by popular demand, and i really mean it, doctor Katya Adler in brussels hello, katya. How are you . Hello. It is very lovely to be with you all again. I welcome to brexitcast. Brexitcast. Brexitcast from the bbc. Noones got a bleep clue what brexit is. I brexit is. I hadnt quite understood the full extent of this. We are particularly reliant on the dover calais crossing. This election blew away. The argument for a second referendum. I urge everyone to find closure. Let the healing begin. I am sorry. We will miss you. A process which i can only| describe as a dogs brexit. Hello, it is adam in the studio. And laura in the same studio, still two metres apart. And chris, back in his socially distanced lair of news just down the corridor. And quite a lot further down. That corridor and many more, it is katya in brussels. And may be a bit further away after tonight because belgium has just tightened up their Travel Restrictions for british people, so we wont be visiting for a while. Sorry, but at least we are having this virtual visit. Yes. I was a bit worried that we might not have enough to say about brexit so i invited in some soon to be friends of the podcast. Lets see how this goes by The End. We have david gauke, former Justice Secretary in the Theresa May government and a big figure in the exit saga. The brexit saga. Hello, david. Hi, how are you . Very well, thank you, very pleased that you could join us. And we also have paul stephenson, former Government Adviser who was also one of the top bods in the vote Leave Campaign. Hello, paul. Hiya. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming on. I thought we could start in a reflective mood. Does everyone have just one kind of key moment from the last five years that you just think, that is the moment i will tell when i go on this is your life in 27 or 30 years time . Laura . Do they still make this is your life . Maybe it will come back. I love that ok, so mine was. Actually, walking down youll know what is the name on the Right And Youve got the big. Rue de la loi. Walking up Rue De La Loi and actually my phone pinged and it had all seemed really terrible, we were at some summit and it seemed like it was going to be a disaster, borisjohnson was already in charge. My phone pinged and it said deal done. And that for me was. And it was weird because i was on my own and. That was the Withdrawal Agreement . Yes. Katya, what was your Standout Moment . There are too many. Because you know, Myl Catchphrase used to be, just one more thing i think in the last five years, there are so many things. For me, a lot of it is has been unexpected in the last five. Years and again, it is so many things. But from an eu perspective, and as an eu watcher, i think it has been interesting to see the eu keep its unity. Vis a vis the United Kingdom. That is quite unexpected and as we are speaking right now, on thursday evening, i the Eu Leaders are squabbling away over all sorts of subjects i at a summitjust down the road from where i am. And that is their normal state of play. So i think that was quite interesting, how well. They stuck together. And the fact that, yes, laura, j the fact that we did get a deal and a broader deal thanj the narrow one we were told to expect. And unfortunately, the problems over the northern Ireland Protocol I Cant say were unexpected. I david, you have a moment that will be the front page of your autobiography . Im not sure there will be an autobiography and im not sure itll be on the front page but i tell you one moment i particularly recall which was i had just got out of prison thats a great Opening Line to be clear, i was the Justice Secretary at the time, and i had visited Brixton Prison and i was back in the ministerial car, driving back to the office. And it was the monday after chequers and turned on the Radio And Boris johnson had resigned. And that was a moment i think when, with David Davis having already resigned where you just realised how difficult it was going to be to find a deal that most of the Conservative Party was going to be satisfied with. That was, in my view, sort of sensible and responsible and left us with a good relationship with the eu. And the kind of collapse of chequers on that day i think the big, important moment and although she was able to stagger on for some time yet, you know, i think at that point, Theresa Mays Project was probably doomed. Chris, what about you . I remember at that point you and me were together outside the then foreign secretarys residence. You were on the telly and i was on the phone or doing something. I was on holiday, obviously i remember running around, hes gone, hes gone actually, we knew it was going to happen but in the moment, obviously we all started running around like headless chickens. What would be your moment . I remember that moment that david reflects on and i remember interrupting you, laura, because i think you were in the middle of recording a documentary. I was, yeah. I was on the Bbc News channel, it was a couple of weeks in the middle of summer, those rare weeks when, l as a bloke, a political correspondent, you can report without Yourjacket On Ijust Rememberthat and i remembercharging across in one of those slightly ludicrous, in fact completely. Ludicrous moments ofjust. Interrupting you as you were recording a reflective thought i for a documentary that would go out several months down the track. Saying, its happened its happened waving my phone around. You said, right, im going. On the telly and you swapped cameras and dived on. But the moment i recall, i at the moment that it really sticks in my memory. From the last five years was the day of the result of the referendum, the morning after, because i was sentj to borisjohnsons house. And there was a huge Media Scrum outside the house waiting for him to leave the House L in islington in north london, sort of remain central. And ijust remember this Moment L of this bloke very well dressed L Bloke in his 50s, ive no. Idea who he was or where he was going, but he lookedl like he might be pedalling off to a quite seniorjob In The City or something. And he shouted out, i mean. The most colourful four Letter Word in the English Language you can possibly imagine, i in the direction of one of his fellow islingtonians at the time, mrjohnson. Granted, it was remain. Central but you did think, yeah, this is going to be a sparky few years after this. Now, paul, iam going to be quite mean to you, because i would imagine your Standout Moments, was winning the referendum which change the entire course of british history, but that Press Conference on the day after the referendum, where Borisjohnson And Michael gove were at Vote Leave hq, they both looked very somber and some people even said, 0h, they looked like they didnt even want to win or didnt expect to win and they have now inherited this massive problem. At that point, did you have a plan for what Vote Leave was going to do after that and contribute to the process and did that plan end up happening or did you end up having to do something different as a kind of organisation and as a group of people . So, Vote Leave had a plan for brexit and a plan for how they would approach the negotiations, but Dom Cummings had been very, very keen that people were not thinking about anything apart from winning, so he just always said, you know, we focus on getting as many votes as possible before 10pm on the 23rd ofjune. So, actually, we didnt have a plan for the Press Conference the next day, or not a well developed one, which we started to scrabble around and get ready for the next morning and i think, actually, in many ways, not everyone would agree with me on the Leave Campaign, but i think in many ways that was a big mistake and almost was the beginning of the next chapter. If the Leave Campaign had in many ways over performed in the referendum and won against expectations, we were then on account of losing streak, where brexit, there were attempts to dilute it or may overturn brexit and i think maybe that was the beginning of an opening for a sorry chapter for the leave side. So you won the War And Set about losing lots of battles. Yeah, quite right. Theresa may came into Downing Street and, you know, all my team who had just worked their guts out on the referendum and won the stunning victory, suddenly we were all sat at home, unemployed and a little bit depressed. It was a very bittersweet moment. Because that was the weird thing about the whole process, because we had all that drama and then you have the drama of the tory leadership contest, but brexit as a thing didnt really become an issue, i think maybe, david, until the tory Party Conference in october 2019, where on the sunday, in a very rare Sunday Speech from a conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May said. Leaving the single market, leaving the customs union, No Ecj and from talking to lots of your former colleagues and reading what they said, for them, that is the bit where it was like, oh, wow this is what brexit is going to be like now. Yeah, in 2016, that is right. Sorry, i said 2019. Sorry, what year are we in . 2016, 2016. We have got quite scrambled in the last five years. I am sure there was some brexit going on between 2016 and 2019. Now, yeah, you are right. I mean, as a cabinet we had had one conversation i think a proper conversation about brexit in the whole of that period. One . Yeah. We had a meeting, of the full cabinet, we had a meeting and remember, she became Prime Minister pretty late before the summer recess. Then we all disappeared in august and at The End of august we had a Cabinet Meeting in chequers, not the chequers Cabinet Meeting, but we had a Cabinet Meeting in chequers, where we talked about brexit and it was very high level and then the next thing, we had the Party Conference speech, so the Cabinet Hadnt really engaged very much on this at that point. Curiously, for this period, i was in the cabinet but not with the brexit role. I think what came as a shock for the eu was not only the result of the referendum, but many of the Eu Leaders, but also they assumed that there was then a clear Brexit Plan and they were really quite thrown that it seemed that parliament, overand overagain, and members of the government, knew what they did not want, but it did not seem clear at all what they did want, which brings me to one of the things that sticks out in my mind, which was a terrible rendition of tell me what you want, what you really, really want, by a commissioner, which was quite distressing. But obviously it was serious, what kind of brexit is there going to be negotiated between the two sides and i think that made those negotiations really fraught and the rancour around some of those negotiations, the Northern Ireland issue, actually during negotiations, both sides worked so hard together to try and get that right, but it does not take much, as we see now, when you are actually trying to implement the northern Ireland Protocol, for that sort of bitterness, resentment, Rancour And Mistrust to surface again. I have just been having a look at the new Statesman Magazine this weekend, which, like so many, like us, reflecting on five years on and in fact, there is a contribution from david in there which we might come to later, but matthew elliott, one of your colleagues from Vote Leave, he talks about brexiteers were fortunate that labour and other remaining supporters did not back what he describes as brexit in name only, otherwise, he said, you could have had a split Conservative Party, Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister and his argument is that Keir Starmer has made his own luck in terms of where he is now as a former shadow brexit secretary. How worried where you at those moments that this thing that you had campaigned for so passionately could just slip away entirely . Very worried. And there was this huge pressure in parliament. For all tory mps to back. Meaningful votes to three and actually the spartans,. As they call themselves held out. People were worried about the tory party falling apart, worried about the government losing to labour and all that stuff. Actually, that resistance, which then led to her resigning and the leadership campaign, that was the pivotal momentl because you could see a path through and it was very clear| if there was going to be a leadership campaign, | that the harder euroscepticl delegates were going to win with the party, that i was absolutely clear. But it was a very unnerving time for the whole country| | because we seemed directionlessj in many ways because parliament could not agree. And actually, that then went right through to the Electionj Campaign and that was the most powerful message for the tories, letsjust end this madness and get it done and that is really where the country was. And then we had the Withdrawal Agreement signed, we had what Michel Barnier calls the political brexit where we went into the transition period, which then got extended and extended, and then we then had what barnier calls the economic Brexit Injanuary 2020, im now a second guessing every year that i say on this programme but that is maybe how the country feels so maybe thats ok and of course you had the big projection on Downing Street and the countdown to 11pm because of course it was midnight brussels time. My main memory of that night was i had a fever and a persistent cough and i was feeling quite tired from a virus that didnt have a name at that point but we will move on from that it is weird that those two things are now completely connected in my mind. And then, david, we had to start living with the consequences of brexit. Have you identified any kind of genuine consequences that you predicted might happen and have happened . What are they and what has the effect been . I think to a large extent, disentangling what is a covid effect and what is a Brexit Effect is quite hard. I am a giant Metaphor Love it its very helpful, adam i think what brexit has done is probably accelerated what may have happened anyway. But i think it has fundamentally shifted our politics, i think there is a political realignment that has gone on that the Conservative Party has been able to appeal to, if you like, Working Class voters to a much greater extent. We have seen the fall of the Red Wall and our divide in politics, similar to what has happened in other places like the us, is less on economic grounds. It is perhaps more on education, if you like, it is on cultural values. And as a consequence, the conservatives have made advances in some areas but i suspect, and this will play out over a longer period of time, i suspect maybe it retreats in other areas and i think there are a group of people, and i am one of them, that essentially is still economically and fiscally on the Centre Or Centre right but really doesnt like where the Conservative Party has gone on some of these, On Brexit and perhaps another wider cultural issues. And i think there is a group of people that are now politically politically homeless, they dont think the other party is particularly effective in picking up those in that category. But i think there is a more fundamental shift in our british politics than what is going on and i think brexit has probably more accelerated it rather than created it. One of the things that is quite interesting is obviously, and i think there is a group of people that are now politically politically homeless, they dont think the other party is particularly effective in picking up those in that category. But i think there is a more fundamental shift in our british politics than what is going on and i think brexit has probably more accelerated it rather than created it. One of the things that is quite interesting is obviously, and i remember speaking to laura about this during the campaign we were saying is the tory party ever going to be able to get back together again when you had senior members of the party attacking each other day in, day out over europe and it confirmed what everyone, long held view in westminster that the tory party was split top to bottom on the issue of europe. Actually that now isnt true and it is the Labour Party that has the real problem with europe and it is arguably holding back starmer now because of his position before, as matthew argued in that article, but i think it will hurt them at the next election because, if you look at the way the treaty was designed, there are big moments that come just after the next election, with this five Year Review Clause and so on. I dont know this but i would guess that the Prime Minister will want to go into the next election and say, can starmer in these big negotiations with europe . When we think about our future relationship . I think, and they have a difficult Balancing Act with different parts of the electoral. Heard it here first, heard it here first you said the tory Party Wasnt split any more youve just had david and others saying it doesnt really feel like their party any more. Because they chucked them out not because of some amazing uniting Genius Superpower its because they chucked out their opponents i think if you look at generally the parliamentary party now, there isnt a big divide on europe any more. I have a question for all of you learned Friends L which is, we have spokenl about the unity of the tory party in the wake of brexit. What about the unity. Of the United Kingdom . Would you have expectedl the strains that there have been on Northern Ireland and scotland following brexit . I think Northern Ireland and scotland were two big parts of the campaign. That was discussed a lot during the campaign. I think clearly Northern Ireland and the rules and regulations that need to be put in place around the free movement of goods and so on was going to be a complicated issue that needed to be worked through in the negotiations. I do think it was also used quite badly by the eu in parts of the negotiations and i think the backstop was a way to get the uk into a position that i think would have been really quite damaging for the uk. You know, the future of green policy, subsidy, regimes and all this kind of stuff and Northern Ireland will continue to be an area where there will need to be a lot of careful work in order to get it to the right place. But my sense is that there will be a way through found on issues around sausages and so on. But it might need the eu to back down a little bit on some of its approach. 0n sausages, you will like to know that the german phrase for the fact that there is a new extension which is wurstelstillstand, which is a german play on Words Humour Sausage stand still well, waffenstillstand is a ceasefire in a wari so wurstelstillstand is a ceasefire over sausages but my question. Was more about. They have avoided the wurst about intra uk strains. You know, the potential of another referendum i in scotland, the snp sounding very confident. These are strains within the I United Kingdom after brexit. Yeah, david, does the uks departure from the Eu Lead to scotland and northern Irelands Departure in the uk . And give us a considered answer, not a scary Remoaner Answer of course i will give you a considered answer of course i thought for a second you were going to say of course ill give you a scary one but that would be very weird of me to say that the answer is, it puts it under strain. I dont think anything is inevitable, i very much hope we dont see the Break Up of the uk but of course it puts it under strain and it was always going to put it under strain. And scotland did vote a different way from the uk as a whole and its not surprising that the snp have sought to take advantage from that and it was entirely predictable. And coming back to Northern Ireland, and actually, this is the wider point, perhaps responding to some of the Things Paul was saying earlier, a lot of the problems that we had after the Referendum Result in implementing brexit was a lot of pretty incompatible things have been promised. In Northern Ireland, no border between gb and ni, no border between n and the Republic And Divergence from the uk and the eu. How do you solve that problem . So some of the Trade Offs that necessarily have to be addressed when you try to implement Brexit Made Things terribly difficult. And with Northern Ireland, it has made things difficult and it has meant that we have got, despite what the Prime Minister repeatedly said, we signed up to checks on trade. Going from great britain to Northern Ireland. Katya, i was at the G7 Summit in cornwall. Well, kind of next to the G7 Summit if im honest. Laura was actually at it but Ursula Von Der Leyen was there, Charles Michel was there, borisjohnson had bilats, to use that terrible dramatic phrase. And trilats, which is even worse its like something you do in a gym sounds exhausting i certainly dont do that he had bilats with macron, merkel and the Prime Minister of italy and guess what . All the reporting we did about those bilats wasnt about climate change or china, it was about Northern Ireland and sausages. Are you surprised that we and you, katya, are still having to talk about all this stuff still . Because i am a bit surprised that the Uk Eu Relationship is still all about these old things and not about new things. I think you have to look at it| with different spectacles on. If we look at this with uk spectacles, we are still. Talking about it because brexit was a huge thing happening i with our country, it is still politically a divisive issue| in the United Kingdom and from the eu perspective, certainly they feel that the government is out to prove that we were right and the eu is still being difficult and brexit is going to be a great success and there are all of these. Opportunities, here you go. 0n the Eu Side of things, if you look at the European Union media, media across, they dont mentiOn Brexit. Theyre not talking about sausages in german newspapers on their front pages. We started off talking about momentous, meaningful moments, sort of des 0connor moments on this is your life. What are the absurd moments . Has anyone got a real classic Moment Ofjust like Brexit Farce that they would like to think about . There were plenty of them. There was Theresa May going off to a summit and then a Phone Call from Arlene Foster happening in the middle of the summit and she had to go home and then she got on a plane the next morning at ham or something. Theresa may getting locked in her car when she went to see merkel. Yeah, us using that on the news and apparently at number 10 was very unhappy about that. It did happen. A surreal moment for me, a very late Night Drink with someone involved in the process and they said, look, this is basically what is going to happen, they got out a Grey Napkin in a restaurant and wrote down what they thought was going to happen. Ive still got it in my Office Drawer and and its exactly what did happen in the next few months. Which strategic genius was that . Dont reveal your sources as if i ever would. A little wine had been taken but they got it completely right. Paul, a ridiculous moment for you . So many, so many i remember getting a Phone Call from Bbc Newsnight when we had this weird moment when the labour Leave Campaign might have left Vote Leave and might have joined leave. Eu but they denied it to me but then a Press Release went out from someone else saying that they had done and i had newsnight on the phone saying, you know, are Labour Leave in Vote Leave or leave. Eu and im just holding my head, what is going on . are Labour Leave leaving Vote Leave to go to leave. Eu one of my crazy moments, i got off the tube and had about four missed calls from you and i called you straight back and you said, michaels going to run what . it was borisjohnsons Leadership Election and, you know that was a history making Phone Call i couldnt get hold of you but i got hold of another one of your colleagues and they said, im in an important conference this morning, I Cant really talk, i said i think you do. I was in the back of a taxi doing some Menial Chore i think. David, a bizarre moment . Did you get locked in a loo with Michael Gove or stuck in a lift with borisjohnson . Not that im going to report there is a story about an occasion where, after some of us had abstained in a parliamentary vote and i had attempted to resign and hadnt been able to do so, it was all very slightly complicated reasons, the Chief Whip said, i think you probably should resign, i said i think i should probably resign but if i do, i think others will do the same. And there was a meeting of various ministers who had abstained on this vote for reasons i wont go into. And they all said if you resign, i will resign. And it was quite a sort of spartacus moment. I was saying, look, i think they just want a sort of limited explosion, they dont want 16 of us resigning. If ijust resign, you all stay on, and everyone was insisting that they too would resign and i was trying to persuade them not to. It ended up with none of us resigning. Doesnt that sum up the difference between between the Brexiteer Side of the argument and the remain side of the argument in the tory party . Or the softer brexit by that point . Actually, you guys were all going, you resign, not that im going to report there is a story about an occasion where, after some and they all said if you resign, i will resign. And it was quite a sort of spartacus moment. I was saying, look, i think they just want a sort of limited explosion, they dont want 16 of us resigning. If ijust resign, you all stay on, and everyone was insisting that they too would resign and i was trying to persuade them not to. It ended up with none of us resigning. Doesnt that sum up the difference between between the Brexiteer Side of the argument and the remain side of the argument in the tory party . Or the softer brexit by that point . Actually, you guys were all going, you resign, lets not resign from the other side are like, who can resign quickly enough because they will look like the best candidate in the Leadership Election it wasnt about putting pressure on theresa. You and Amber Rudd and Greg Clarke put an article in the Mail On Sunday saying you couldnt support her proposals, that wasnt putting pressure on . That was another occasion this was the point, to be honest, laura, where some of us on the other side of the argument tried to be a bit more muscular. You hadnt done enough trilats in the Gym David and paul, thank you very much for that High Speed amble hello there. Northeast englands had the highest temperatures on thursday. One or two spots going closer to 26 degrees with some good spells of sunshine. But i dont think friday will offer a Repeat Performance because the weather has been changing. Weve seen Rain Pushing in from the North West in association with a band of cloud that you can see here on our earlier saellite image. This is a frontal system and as that drops its way southeastwards through friday, behind it, we pick up a northerly wind, quite a brisk northerly wind in places and that will be feeding Cooler Air down across most parts of the uk. So, a Cooler Day on friday, quite a messy Weather Day really, but across england and wales, many spots will start off cloudy with outbreaks of rain. Further south, it should dry up and brighten up with some sunshine and just the odd hefty shower into the afternoon. But for Northern England in north wales, it is likely to stay grey and wet all day long. For Northern Ireland in Western Scotland should see a bit of sunshine. Eastern scotland plagued by cloud and patchy rain. A brisk wind here keeping temperatures down to just 12 degrees in aberdeen, similar temperature there in newcastle, may be 20 down towards the south where we could see the Odd Thunderstorm Breaking out through friday evening. And then into the early hours of Saturday Cloud left behind. Some splashes of rain here and there minimum temperatures between 7 and 13 degrees. Now, as into the weekend, it is a story of split fortunes. High pressure trying to build in towards the North And West of the uk. Low Pressure Spinnng Close to the south, the detail will change between now and then but closest to that area of low pressure in the south, theres the chance of the Odd Shower to break out on saturday across southern england, parts of wales. Further north, although well have quite a lot of cloud, it will be increasingly drying out through the day. Temperatures between 1a and 20 degrees. And as we get into sunday, this area of low pressure will become slow moving across the continent and is likely to throw bands of Rain Up in our direction from time to time. Southern parts of england, wales may be the newtons can see some rain at times on sunday, but further north will see more in the way of dry weather and some spells of sunshine and temperatures bouncing back, 21 degrees in glasgow, a similar value there in london. Welcome to Bbc News. Im ben boulos. Our top stories 99 people are unaccounted for and one is confirmed dead after the partial collapse of a 12 Storey Apartment Building in miami. President biden announces a 1. 2 trillion Infrastructure Package that has the support of democrats and republicans. We had a really good meeting and in answer to your direct question, we have a deal. Another horrific discovery in canada more than 750 unmarked graves have been found near a former Boarding School for indigenous children. And the deadly cost of opioids, we hearfrom the and the deadly cost of opioids, we hear from the families who say the pandemic has made things worse