Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 5 July 2016.
I can absolutely assure the Member I had nothing to do with Concorde—its maiden flight occurred when I was two, so I can say that. [Laughter.] But, bear in mind, of course, that Concorde was an example of UK and French co-operation that was a failure, actually. As a project, it didn’t work—it never worked on a commercial basis. He has to bear in mind that the UK was desperate to join the common market in 1973—desperate to join—because the UK economy was in a weak state. This idea that, somehow, the UK was forced against its will to join is just simply wrong—it was desperate to join for many, many years. Of course there’ll be co-operation; we understand that. All of a sudden, the drawbridge isn’t going to be pulled up, but we have to understand that we are part, at the moment, of a market of 500 million people. If we have to pay a price to enter that market, then our manufacturers will pay a price to enter the market and, ultimately, there’ll be a price in terms of jobs. That’s the last thing, surely, that anybody wants to see.