Carwyn Jones - May 1999 – May 2021 December 2009 – December 2018

And there were different views in the UK party as well, from some who would have loved to have had a second referendum and to overturn the result, to others who saw it as an opportunity to provide support for British industry in a way that wasn’t possible under the customs union, and under the structures the EU had in place. [...] For the Scottish Government, the solution to the issue of Brexit was to leave the UK and to re-join the EU. [...] I think that the Civil Service in Whitehall, and much of the Government, was caught by surprise by the referendum result, so that there were no plans in place in the event of a Leave vote. [...] So, it was always going to be the case that the EU would have the upper hand, because they had the people and the experience, and they were the bigger market. [...] UKICE: Looking back, do you think that even before the referendum, UK devolved relations were in quite a bad state, and that we hadn’t been paying enough attention to managing those relations, which caused a whole bunch of problems, such as the issues tackled in the Dunlop Review? CJ: I think the problem lies in the fact that the JMC was set up by a Labour government at a time when there was a Lab.