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Thank you, so about two years ago today, after I'd first moved out to the US,
I went up to Tahoe with a group of GSB classmates.
And the GSB really started our immense carry-on with the holiday.
But when we were up there, I remember walking through the beautiful mountain
air overlooking the lake, when suddenly the silence and the bird song were
shattered by someone shouting, you are such an asshole, you can say that here!
I was a little bit shocked.
Someone was shouting at me, why?
Because I had just said that I voted for Brexit.
Now I have to say I felt pretty taken aback by someone that I'd really
only just met, who was from Boston and had really zero affiliation with
the UK at all getting angry at me for how I voted in the Brexit referendum.
That it made me realize that Brexit is a controversial topic and
engenders a lot of negative stereotypes and negative emotions.
And this guy had made an assumption about me that really was totally incorrect and
misconstrued why I voted for Brexit.
And so I want to use this opportunity today to tell you about why I did vote
for Brexit.
I voted for Brexit because I want Britain to be more open, more global.
I've not voted for Brexit because I want Britain to close in on itself.
And I'm worried that all the bright, intelligent people here at Stanford and
across the rest of the world will be scared about going, and living, and
working, and
investing in the UK because of those negative stereotypes about Brexit.
I look forward to a post-Brexit Britain that's more open, more global,
and more inclusive, than it was before.
And I want you guys all to be excited about that, as well.
So let me start off by putting the EU in an American context.
In my mind, the European Union can be split into two parts,
a political union and an economic union.
So if we apply this to the Americas,
if we apply an economic union, imagine a federation of all 23 countries in
the whole of the Americas from Canada all the way through to Argentina.
Trade would be free and tariff-free.
Argentinian steaks could be enjoyed in Anchorage in the same way
that the Alaskan oil and gas could be traded in Buenos Aires.
People would also be able to move freely, traveling wherever they liked to live,
to work, to study without discrimination.
How many of you in this room, and I want to see some hands,
how many of you in this room would vote for such a system in the Americas?
So a few of you, now think about the political union.
Under the political union, we take a new parliament and paste it, say, in Peru.
And this would supersede the US House and
Senate and would start to make the majority of the rules that govern the US.
Now for the Americans of you in the room, I'm sure you all love and
you all respect the Supreme Court, but we're going to replace that, as well.
We're going to put a new court, say, in Belize.
And this court is going to be staffed with judges from across the Americas and will
make the majority of the legal decisions that mattered to the United States.
Now how many of you would vote for that system?
So I don't see any hands.
And that, for me, is what the European Union is about.
Now people in this room, I'm sure you like Mexicans, you like the Canadians,
especially if they look like Justin Trudeau or Rachel McAdams.
>> [LAUGH] >> But
you do not want the good people of Ottawa to be telling you what to do.
You don't want the good people of Ottawa to be telling you how many hours you
should be allowed to work in a given day,
whether your prisoners should be allowed to vote or not, and,
most bizarrely of all, the size and shape that your bananas should be.
Now those are all things that the EU does.
And so for me,
Britain leaving the European union is about leaving that political union.
Taking back those decisions to the UK is not about leaving the economic union.
I think leaving the economic union of the European Union would be bad for
both Britain and for the rest of the world.
It's going to make people poorer if Germans can't sell their cars into
the UK and we can't sell our scotch whiskey into the rest of Europe.
But by leaving the political union, I hope that we can expand our trade
beyond just the European boundaries and embrace more global trade.
At the moment, global trade deals have to be negotiated at a European level.
Britain is not free to go negotiate trade deals on its own.
And that results in complications.
Within Europe, there's lots of different countries with lots of different economies
and different motives and interests.
And those trade deals, as a consequence, take a long time to negotiate.
The most recent one was with Canada.
And that took seven years for the European Union to negotiate that deal.
My hope is that Britain can embrace the trading networks that we historically had.
Britain has a great commonwealth and, for a long time, traded around the world.
In the 1960s and
70s, when Britain first applied to join the European Economic Community,
which is the precursor of the EU, it was actually vetoed.
Us joining was vetoed by the French.
And the French reason was precisely because they believed that Britain's
trading networks were to too far-flung, distant, and diverse lands.
So I believe that by leaving the European Union, Britain can re-embrace and
reestablish those historical trading networks, embracing the world,
not closing in on itself.
Now embracing the world does not just mean economically.
It also means embracing the world's people.
When I moved to the US two years ago,
it was the first experience I'd ever had of being an immigrant to another country.
And I realized quickly how difficult and how many difficult decisions you end up
being forced to make when you move to somewhere else.
The hardest one for me involved my girlfriend at the time, called Sophie.
Now Sophie and I had gone out for two and a half years.
And I loved her very much.
But when I got the phone call from Derrick saying that I got into Stanford,
the six months following that, the elation of getting into Stanford, and coming and
living in California, and meeting all you amazing people, that elation slowly turned
to despair as we realized that the US visa rules meant it'd be almost impossible for
Sophie to move out with me.
Now I ended up, obviously, coming, and Sophie stayed behind.
And unfortunately, the 12-hour flight and
the 8-hour time difference was too much for our relationship to bear.
That struck me as being incredibly unfair that bright, young,
ambitious people could not come and work in the US and
could not come and contribute to the economy here.
But unfortunately, the same is true of the UK and for
Americans wanting to go and work and live in the UK.
You would find it extremely difficult when Britain is part of your,
to go and move and work there.
And the reason is is that you would be behind the queue of people from Poland,
from France, from Italy that are all entitled to come, and work, and
live in the UK.
By having open borders to the whole of Europe, you build walls for
the rest of the world.
And I want those walls to come down.
Britain should be open to accepting the Ben's and Sophie's of China, of USA,
of India, of Africa and accepting as many bright and brilliant people as we can.
We should not just be restricted to the Benjamin's, Bonjaman's,
and Benzino's of Europe.
So for me, opening up to the world is really what Brexit is about.
It's not about closing in.
And if I go back to that time in Tahoe, I wish I hadn't been so taken aback.
There are fundamental misconceptions and stereotypes
that are applied to people that voted for Brexit, but Brexit is going to happen.
And it's time that people that voted for Brexit to stop feeling demonized for
the way they voted and start coming out and presenting a positive image for
Brexit and for post-Brexit Britain.
For my part, Brexit for
me was about opening Britain up to the world, not closing us in.
I'm excited about the future of post-Brexit Britain
as a hub of globalization, accepting brilliant people from around the world.
And I hope some of you will come join us, thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
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