Of course these people have to be here
this is a big story.
I don't think anyone's going to find any of the answers.
It's fun to see how it's done like, behind the scenes for once, you know?
That's how journalism works.
I know but stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
We're not even in the middle yet.
You don't know?
No.
Maybe it's more like a horseshoe.
Wow.
It looks like a circle but it has a beginning and it has an end.
But you feel like it's the same place.
That's deep, man.
I'm glad I met you.
It's always like jumping in a very cold swimming pool.
You just don't want to do it.
Excuse me, what do you think of Brexit at the minute?
I knew he was going to say it, I knew he was going to say it.
Why else would we be here?
I'm absolutely sick of it!
Are you?
I'm sick to the teeth of it.
We're in the pool now.
I just wonder what you think about Brexit at the minute.
I don't know, I am not sure.
What do you think about it?
What do I think?
Yeah.
I'm pretty worried.
You're worried about it … yeah.
It's very confusing now.
Nobody seems to know what's going on
and just every channel we turn on, on telly, that's all they talk about.
Just fed up with talking about it.
I feel sorry for Theresa May
but I don't think she's quite got it.
She was chucked into it, into a job.
Yeah, because David Cameron messed up
but I wouldn't want Boris Johnson either.
He's another twat, isn't he?
The way they keep holding on and on about it,
I think you'd be better just staying as you are, staying in.
Really?
Blimey!
What, is that to say you changed your mind?
Well …
It's the most obvious thing in the world to say that the country is divided.
We know that, that was what the referendum result was all about
but it's divided in another way now,
it's divided between people like me who are obsessed with Brexit
and a hell of a lot of other people who really think this was
something that happened two years ago.
And they, for very understandable reasons,
they can't quite fathom why it's dragging on.
People here may be bored,
but as with so many places, Brexit may have real consequences for Cowley.
That's what comes out of that factory: the great British icon the Mini.
Now made by a German company, BMW.
In a break from the usual production cycle,
BMW have said they'll shut the factory for a month on Brexit day
to allow them to prepare for a possible no-deal scenario.
We need to get in here.
BMW won't let us into the factory, so we hang around outside
in search of local wisdom.
Are you making a travel log of Cowley?
We're trying.
I think the fundamental problem with Brexit is …
there are too many set positions.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it is not insoluble, the only insoluble thing at the moment
is her absurd adamantine resistance to what all normal people do
which is have flexibility of thoughts.
I've never had a high-end conversation
involving the adjective 'adamantine' in an industrial estate.
This is a first.
What do you do for a living?
I teach, Shakespeare and things like that.
Theresa May did geography at Oxford.
And Cameron PPE at Brasenose
Boris Johnson went to Oxford, Jacob Rees-Mogg went to Oxford.
He was there when I was.
Maybe it's all Oxford's fault, all this.
I know, at Cambridge they spy, and at Oxford they just mess everything up.
Some big sort of food logistics hub.
This is the alfresco area.
We can help you.
This is your depot?
And how do you feel about Brexit?
There's already a big problem here,
about the, you know, the people working here.
How short are you?
Oh, I tell you … we place an order for around 30 people and we get hardly 15 or 20.
No business can afford like this.
Do you worry about it?
A lot.
What, like, you lose sleep?
Of course.
Thank you so much, sir, anyway.
If someone wants to deliver a 40ft container somewhere,
it was, before Brexit, £400, for example,
now it has gone to literally double due to the scarcity of drivers.
Did you vote in the referendum yourself?
Yes.
How did you vote?
It's a very personal question, yes, I did vote for Brexit.
You voted for Brexit?
But I changed my mind.
I bet you have.
We have been said we will gain 350m and so much of jobs and we can
take back our control.
Well, they were telling you lies.
They were telling but we believed it.
It's all Farage food isn't it.
Where's the point, right?
Mr Farage, if you want your Colman's mustard
and your Marmite,
and your tartare sauce.
It's immigrants who move it around.
And if they say, 'Well, British people can do the jobs.'
We should do the jobs.
I started as a trolley man myself when I came in this country.
In the cash-and-carry and I managed that branch after seven years.
Where did you come from?
India.
If the people work hard, not come here for the benefit, then it's good.
Where are you going today?
Down the Dover docks to drop this off
onward transport …
Where did you wake up this morning?
I parked near Guildford last night.
What about where Brexit sits in your head at the minute?
Chaos.
We don't know what's around the corner.
If customs, say, just come in on 29 March at 11pm …
We can't do it and tread water, let alone make a profit.
We have hitched a lift with this guy here.
I'm just hoping he sort of remembers and stops and lets one of us in the cab with him.
Right, see you in Dover.
We normally try and follow a meaningful narrative,
some kind of story.
But the politics of Brexit are chaotic and fragmented
because the country's in that state and that's reflected in our journey.
I don't think people fully understand
how intertwined economies have become …
You just look around the motorway now and see how many are on foreign plates.
Great Britain's self-sufficient …
we're not that these days.
If you look at the refrigerated trucks going out of Dover,
I would say probably eight out of 10 of them are going out empty
and they all come back in loaded.
Long-term it might be OK.
This might sound a bit strange but it almost protects us from our own government,
at times, workers' rights and things.
But everything seems to be moving more to the right across the world
You know, people talk about Winston Churchill and the bulldog spirit,
well, didn't he go all out to unite Europe?
And how do you feel about the prospect of spending long stints on traffic jams and stuff?
To be honest, I've got to a point now … I carry my food,
there's a microwave fitted to the truck, I've got a fridge …
I don't get stressed out about these things any more, I recline the seat and go to sleep.
You sort of want to understand many of the reasons why Brexit happened.
England hits you with it as soon as you get here.
We're making a film about …
well, we're just, it's a long story but we've ended up in Dover.
I've been homeless for a long time.
And I can't get help from the council.
How long have you been homeless for?
Four years.
We came here because of Brexit, you see.
What is Brexit?
You know about Brexit?
No.
Really?
No, I don't actually.
Well, it's the very complicated business of Britain leaving the European Union
which is meaning that all politicians think about or can think about
is Brexit and so perhaps the predicament of people like yourself
has been forgotten.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, so basically, they don't give a shit.
That's one translation of it.
No, that's fair dos, that is absolutely fair comment.
Have you got any money to eat and stuff like that?
Nope. They stopped my benefit because I missed an appointment,
because I ended up in hospital.
And because I didn't get no paperwork, they stopped my benefit.
When did that happen?
A week ago.
I've got three months to go, before I get any money.
You've got people sleeping down the seafront, on the beach, in huts.
It's disgusting.
I sort of hesitate to say this but there's an awful symbol of Britain in 2019,
the last thing on the land before you get to the English Channel,
is a tent where a homeless person's living.
I don't know, I suppose I feel so anxious about the future of the country at the minute,
I sort of find symbolism everywhere. I think everybody does …
Like, 'Oh, there's a sign of where Britain is going,' or whatever.
As divided as Britain probably is, there are still spaces where people of all shapes, sizes,
backgrounds gather to talk.
And this is probably the most visible, Wetherspoon's.
No one speaks to each other in here, no one ever speaks to each other in Wetherspoon's.
Really?
No, we all come in for the cheap beer.
I take it back.
We sit alone, we sit down and we don't try to create any untoward feelings between each other,
because it's a social space.
We don't talk about Brexit in here, we don't talk politics, we don't even talk to each other.
That's about to change.
In a way.
Excellent to see you, my friend.
Hello, hello. Can you hear me OK?
We leave on the 29th of March without a deal, we'll be much better off, in my opinion,
by saving the 39bn. Thirty-nine billion better off on day one.
Wetherspoon's founder and chairman, Tim Martin, is touring his own pubs,
making the case for no deal.
If you say you must have a deal,
at all costs, you take away your bargaining power.
Stop trying to con the public, Tim.
Stop trying to con the public.
For God's sake, let the man speak.
Stop pushing me around.
Well, shut up then.
Then, stop pushing him around.
Do you want to listen? Do you want to listen?
Well, please let's listen and shut the fuck up.
Take your hands off me.
… the fish, they can sell it to the EU
or to other people who will buy, they'll certainly be short of fish.
Just to remind ourselves what's going on here.
It's not 11 o'clock yet, I'm in a pub and people are having
a fierce confrontational argument about international trade tariffs.
We are not here to listen to you, we are listening to him.
So shut up!
Oh, for God's sake.
This is remain corner.
It's a remain country.
But this is also a remain corner.
My children lived abroad for nine years, OK?
Six years in Belgium, three years in Spain, they're multilingual.
Why should we have our freedom of movement taken away?
It's nice to be in an upmarket surrounding, it doesn't happen very often.
Hey, nice to meet you.
Do you want to have a look around in the office?
Yeah.
What do you do?
So we are a mobile app for language learning.
Making the world smaller and more connected.
More connected, absolutely, we allow people to understand other cultures much better.
In difficult times.
In London, do you feel you're kind of part of a community of maybe European tech people?
Yeah, yeah, yeah there is a strong community here where you feel like you
interact with everyone, you feel really, really welcomed, everyone is really open.
There is kind of no barrier between everyone.
Why did you come to London?
Because we thought London is the best place in Europe to have a fast-growing startup.
How do you feel now?
Slightly different. We, you know, need to hire loads of people and
it's very hard to get access to talent already in the UK so in the past,
we hired a lot of people from Europe.
If you're a 25-year-old mobile developer in Madrid,
why would you come here?
I mean the pound has gone down by 20% since Brexit.
You know, when this whole Brexit thing started,
I felt like an immigrant for the first time in my life.
There's one story I had on the street where I was talking in German on the phone
and an old lady, very well dressed, came up to me and told me:
'Speak in fucking English!'
I was like, what?
You know, I was a bit shocked to be honest.
I wonder you see whether some of the explanation for Brexit lies in the fact
that in large swathes of the country, there aren't businesses like yours.
Yeah, absolutely.
This needs to be spread around and it's not.
Well, I mean, honestly I think technology is currently spreading across the UK
and that's why also this country needs to move on from Brexit
because there's so many other important topics that this country
has to solve, I mean AI machine learning …
So here we go.
No one can hear you.
And you can have some privacy.
That's a metaphor for Brexit.
An instant feeling of entrapment and confusion.
I felt it in there.
We'll go back out into the world.
We just visited the future.
Not somewhere we go very often.