I'm here at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival
with Lord Heseltine, former deputy prime minister
and longtime pro-European and cabinet minister.
Lord Heseltine, we don't know what
is going to happen regarding Brexit.
Can you see a path forward, particularly with the notion
of these talks between the Conservatives and Labour?
Well, my instinct and long experience
tells me oppositions never bail out governments.
And so, when I heard about these talks,
I was a sceptic from the start.
I thought they'd string them along.
Everyone would play for the audience, not to be blamed.
But actually there'd be no agreement in the end.
And as of tonight, that's where we are.
But there is this extraordinary subplot,
where you have the chancellor of the exchequer denying
the existence of red lines, whilst the Labour people say
the red lines are set in concrete.
So what is the chancellor of the exchequer
doing in becoming a public voice,
asking for changes in government policy?
April the 12th is, though, the notional deadline
for an agreement by the UK for agreement
to this withdrawal accord with the EU.
Otherwise, we crash out,
Yes, well there is that date.
But already, the prime minister has asked to change the date.
And at the present forecast, you cannot see how she can have
a deal by April the 12th, and therefore she has to ask
for a change or to crash out.
But the crash out isn't an option,
because the House of Commons is not going to let that happen.
Do you see indicative votes with MPs looking at various options?
Well, that must be a possibility.
But we've already done that once.
Although they got very, very close to an option,
they didn't get a majority for anything.
Now, maybe that if we have another go on Wednesday
they will get to something.
With preferential options?
Well, with preferential choices.
But for me, the one that is a very important, again,
possibility now, is that they have a second referendum.
They put it back to the people.
And I think that...
I mean, just...
You are a supporter of that, and you have been for some time.
I have been from...
I wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday
immediately after the referendum.
Said that the fight back starts here
and we have to work for a second referendum.
And I still believe that.
But, I think that, of course I am in favour of British
influence in Europe.
So let me not muck about with that argument.
But to me, if you look at the divisions in the Commons,
which very interestingly, democratically reflect exactly
the position in the country - by family, by region, by age,
whatever, that are these wide-ranging debates,
which end up with no agreement.
And so the idea that a referendum, narrowly won
three years ago, should be set in concrete without the people
having a chance to look at the reality of the deal,
not the lies that were told, the reality of the deal,
and either say yes or no, I find that extraordinary.
Do you honestly believe that a Remain campaign could actually
pull it off in a second vote?
The victory, by a narrow margin in 2016, was much influenced,
in my view, by the thought that there were easy pickings,
like £350m a week for the health service.
It's actually turned out to be a bill of £39bn,
every penny of which is going to be borrowed by this generation
to be paid back by a subsequent generation.
No one told them that.
We were going to have a lot of easy trade deals.
We've hardly got any trade deals.
So, there was a deception.
And the deception was, I think, important
because I believed it was run on the basis of the crash of 2008,
which was a mega-economic crisis for the world economy.
We lived in a sort of fool's paradise, which crashed.
We've had our living standards frozen for 10 years.
And if you do that, regardless of Brexit,
if you freeze people's living standards, they want change.
Can the Remain campaign win it a second time round?
Well, there's no easy answer, but we
have to be given the chance.
And I think we have one very important thing on our side,
and it's worth 800 votes every year in every constituency.
And it's called the age profile.
The elderly are 70/30 in favour of leaving Europe in 2016.
The young, exactly the opposite: 30/70 in favour of being
in the European Union.
And of course, there is a natural erosion.
Now, that's worth 800 votes in every constituency every year.
In other words, 2,400 votes in every constituency
since the referendum.
That is the joker in the pack.