Lord Heseltine says it will be ’20 years’ before rejoining EU can be raised again Pro-Remain peer says the fight to stay in Europe is ‘lost’

The issue of the UK rejoining the European Union has been put to bed for 20 years following the Conservatives’ emphatic victory, the anti-Brexit former Tory deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has said.

The pro-Remain peer, who lost the Tory whip this year after he publicly endorsed the Liberal Democrats, said Boris Johnson’s stunning performance in the election meant the European question was unlikely to be raised for a generation.

He added the result would be “devastating” for the future of the United Kingdom, as it raises the spectre of independence votes in both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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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.”

‘We’ve lost’

In the weeks before the general election, senior Liberal Democrats privately spoke of campaigning to rejoin the EU should Brexit happen.

But the party is now facing yet another process of rebuilding having lost nine MPs and its leader Jo Swinson after she was voted out of her East Dunbartonshire seat, losing it to the SNP.

Having secured a sizeable majority, it is now inevitable that Mr Johnson will deliver on his core promise to take the UK out of the EU by the end of January.

Asked whether the Remain fight is over on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lord Heseltine said: “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.”

Pressed on if he regrets endorsing the Liberal Democrats, Lord Heseltine added: “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.”