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Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Heseltine has said the campaign to remain in the EU has lost and it will be 20 years before the issue of rejoining the bloc is raised.
His comments come after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s landslide win in the general election and victory speech promise to deliver on his pledge to “get Brexit done” by January 31.
Lord Heseltine, a Remainer who endorsed the Liberal Democrats in the election campaign told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “we have to live with Brexit.”
Asked whether the Remain fight is over he responded: “Well we’ve lost, let’s not muck about with the language. We’ve lost, Brexit is going to happen and we have to live with it.
“I’ve made my views pretty clear and there will now be a long period of uncertainty, but we can’t escape from that, so we must do the best we can.”
Asked whether he would campaign to rejoin the EU if that battle has gone, he said: “Well no I don’t think it has gone, but it won’t be my generation, it’ll be 20 years or something before the issue is once again raised as an issue.
“And of course, you know, you can’t escape the devastating result for Northern Ireland and Scotland, so the agenda is not going away.”
Lord Heseltine was also pressed on whether he regrets endorsing the Liberal Democrats, to which he replied: “Well you have to weigh up loyalties, didn’t you, and it was agonising of course, but where is my loyalty? To what?
Is it to my party or to my country or to my own integrity or to all those Conservative prime ministers I followed since Winston Churchill? I joined the Tory party in 1951.”
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