"A no-deal Brexit, I think, is highly unlikely, just because it would be such a crazy thing
to do.
Now, politics today is pretty crazy, everywhere.
So you can't-- what you could have, for a certainty, ruled out a few years ago you can't
rule out today.
But I think it's highly unlikely.
I think if it looked like we were tumbling towards a no-deal Brexit, there are different
levels of you know short-term fix that you could have that would avoid that.
I mean, Europe will want to avoid it, too.
And, in any event, I don't think Parliament would permit it.
I think what is the real question is whether the government tries to kind of fudge what
the future Brexit deal is in order to get us to the other side of March 2019.
"The thing about imposing tariffs, and then you will have retaliatory tariffs, and so
on, is, if it stops reasonably soon, because the system's had the shock that the people
imposing the tariffs wanted to give it-- so, for example, in relation to China, you know,
China then modifies its behavior or deals with the balance-of-payments question that
America is raising-- you know, you can get through that reasonably benignly.
And my hope is that that's what happens.
The only trouble is, when you start to trigger this and you get the retaliation, then you
step up with further tariffs and then there's further retaliation, the risk is that it then
does trigger a trade war.
So I kind of feel, myself, that there will be a sensible-enough calibration.
But, you know, the risks are clear.
Africa's on the move.
The middle class is going to double.
It's going to become a much, much more vibrant place to invest.
And we've got to take account of this.
And in time to come, it's going to be a huge market, with enormous potential, and governance
is the key.
It's not really aid that's the key, today, it is the quality of governance.
But that quality's improving all the time.
And it just has a completely different feel from a few years back.
The thing that I wish I'd known most is that there is so much that you don't know that
you don't know.
OK?
So what happens in politics is that you start at your most popular and least capable, and
you end at your least popular and most capable.
And what really happens, in the journey of politics, is that you realize in government
how different it is from opposition, what a completely different skill set it is.
If I knew then what I know now, it definitely would be better, but [] it doesn't work like
that."
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