Some colleagues have already said that it must be our duty now to try to knit our nation together, to put the heat and fury of the referendum campaign behind us and to see how together we can build a prosperous and successful future for the United Kingdom as the country leaves the European Union. I think that that will be easier than the tone of this debate so far would give people to believe, because I have great confidence in the British people. I have spent a lot of time talking to remain voters, both before and after the referendum, as well as obviously encouraging the leave voters, whose cause I helped to champion.
The good news is that the remain voters are not, on the whole, passionate advocates of the European ideal and the European project, and that is why we will be able to put this together. According to polling, around 10% of all voters in Britain really believe in the whole European project—a perfectly noble vision of integration, political union, monetary union, a borderless society and so forth—but they are a very small minority in our country. I am afraid that we cannot easily build a bridge to those who want to be part of a united Europe, because it was clearly the view of both sides in the referendum that Britain did not want to be part of the single currency, the political union, a borderless Europe and so forth.
However, this does mean that an awful lot of the remain voters—the overwhelming majority, in fact—voted remain not to join the full project but because they had genuine fears that when we came out of the union, we would leave the single market. They felt that that could be damaging to trade, investment and business prospects. It is on that narrow point that the House of Commons has to concentrate its activities over the next few months, because it is on that central issue that our discussions with our European partners need to concentrate.
I am conscious that the business community has one aim above all others, which is to reduce or eliminate uncertainty. Having been in business myself, I know that business is about managing uncertainties all the time, but it is of course good if we can get the politicians to make their contribution to lowering uncertainty rather than increasing it. It is important that we all work together to try to reduce the uncertainty and shorten the time in which that uncertainty exists.
I am also conscious that we can lower uncertainty in two ways. As we approach the negotiations, we must first show that we are going to go at a lively pace, because the longer they drag on, the more uncertainty will develop, the more obstacles and confusions will
arise, and the longer will be the delays that can hurt. So we need pace. The second thing we can do to reduce the uncertainty is to say that we need only to discuss a limited number of things. We can narrow the framework of the negotiation. There are many consultants and advisers out there saying, “We must scope and chart every aspect of all our relationships with other European countries, be they technically single market or EU or wider. We must put them all on the table, then throw them up in the air and discuss which ones should change and how stable they are going to be.” That would be a disastrous way to proceed. It would take too long, and it would offer too many hostages to fortune.
The Government are right to say that in order to have a successful negotiation that lowers the scope for danger and downside, we need to take those discussions at a pace and ensure that we do not say too much in advance about any possible weaknesses in our negotiating position. We should not open up issues for negotiation that do not need to be negotiated, and we should take on board only those issues that are a genuine worry to those on the other negotiating side and that need to be taken seriously because they have some powers over them.
The United Kingdom has voted to take back control. That was what Vote Leave was all about. That was the slogan throughout the campaign, and when asked to define it more, the leave side said that we were voting to take back control of laws, money and borders. So we know what cannot be negotiated away. We also know that the main area of uncertainty is how we are going to trade with the single market when we cannot technically be part of it because it includes freedom of movement and wide-ranging law codes over things that go well beyond the conduct of trade and commerce. It is not a segregated, integrated whole within the European Union; it is a central part of it and part of a very big consolidated treaty.