The Frontline Club played host to a heated and at times fractious debate on Brexit and the future of Europe on Thursday 24 March 2016.

The discussion, hosted by BBC Chief Correspondent Gavin Hewitt, considered Brexit – and more generally the European project – in the context of the terrorists attacks that struck Brussels on Tuesday 22 March.

“Europe has had to face up to some of its illusions,” Hewitt said. “With the Eurozone crisis, it has had to face up to the fact that the system it built could not sustain the financial crisis. And with the financial crisis, it had to focus on whether Schengen works.”

Dutch journalist and writer Joris Luyendijk branded Brussels the “tipping point” that will seal the demise of the European project. He argued forcefully for the UK’s exit from Europe, insisting: “the heart of the English was never in it anyway.”

Premium #Brexitainment at the @frontlineclub tonight.
Powerful opening by @JLbankingblog. pic.twitter.com/0BY4JODCug

— Wolfgang Blau (@wblau) March 24, 2016

Luyendijk, who authored Swimming with Sharks: My Journey Into the World of the Bankers, added: “Europe is suffering from chronic problems which together form a crisis. The EU either needs to fall apart or something new should be built.”

Annalisa Piras, journalist, director and producer of The Great European Disaster Movie, is a fierce advocate of the European Union, describing its existence as a historic necessity.” The Italian filmmaker said that the crises Europe is confronting require more cooperation.

“Even if the UK leaves the EU, the threat will grow. ISIS are proving they are growing more and more ambitious and lethal by the day. The only way to respond to that threat is with more cooperation,” she said.

Toby Young rubbished Piras’ assertion: “Closer cooperation is always the answer of federalists.” The associate editor of the Spectator said: “There is a crisis of faith and that is why Europe is dying. European intellectuals have far too much faith in the EU and far too little in nationalism. They exaggerate the role the EU has played in peace, when it is more down to NATO, and don’t recognise that the rise of Islamism is because of a decline in nationalism.”

Natalie Nougayrède suggested that the EU’s failure to tackle the twin refugee and terrorism crises has boosted the far right movement across Europe. “Brussels will bring more energy to those who say each and every nation in Europe needs to bring up the drawbridge,” the Guardian leader writer and former Le Monde managing editor said.

“That is an illusion. European leaders need to send an urgent signal to voters that they are taking steps to finding at least part of the solution.” Nougayrède hailed Angela Merkel’s deal with Turkey which, despite criticism of it as a bilateral deal that undermined unity, was a sign that Europe “was trying to stem the flow of migrants.”

Young, on the other hand, said Merkel had made a series of blunders, the most serious of which was to “lay out the welcome mat for refugees without consultation with European neighbours… in order to expiate German war guilt.”

Young said that Britain’s exit from the EU would hopefully propel the institution towards reform or preferably allow it to “deflate in a peaceable way rather than erupt in violence.”

Piras struck back that “before throwing our toys out the pram”, we should ask how we can fix the European Union. Nougayrède agreed, insisting that the EU may prove to be an “easy punching ball”, but it is not true that the institution cannot reform.

Luyendijk offered a European perspective on Brexit, telling the audience that there is little interest in the UK among European leaders. “The refugee crisis is a big issue, not you,” he said.

Full house @frontlineclub @BBCGavinHewitt @nnougayrede @toadmeister @jorisluyendijk to discuss #brexit seen from EU pic.twitter.com/CLp5bDQPFv

— @annalisap (@Annalisap) March 24, 2016

Asked to give their predictions for how Europe would look in 10 years’ time, Luyendijk said: “We will look back and wonder why we wasted so much time on things like Brexit while other bigger issues were left untouched.”

Piras hoped to “live in a Europe that is better than the one we founded.” She said: “Europe has given us great things and tomorrow we can become better and stronger.”

Gavin Hewitt underlined the strong commitment from European leaders to the project. “Despite successive crises, the establishment won’t row back on the project. Never underestimate their commitment to make the European Union project work.”

Young said that the Leave campaign will “probably win” the European referendum. “I hope it will stimulate other independence movements in other countries which are vital for genuine reform.”

Nougayrède suggested that the EU will pull through despite the challenges it faces. “Enough people are aware that we live in a globalised world. We must act as a collective club, not individual nations. We need to think collectively to shape realities that affect us, not just be submitted to them.”

There was great interest in the screening of the film Secret City and the Q&A with Michael Chanan – professor of film and video at the University of Roehampton and The New Statesman’s first video blogger – which followed on Monday 14th January at the Frontline Club.

Chanan’s film, along with fellow filmmaker and senior lecturer in journalism at the University of West England Lee Salter, delves into the history and power that is hidden behind the traditions and ceremony of the Lord Mayor and the City of London Corporation, the organisation which governs the City of London; predating the UK parliament and allowing businesses to vote in local elections.

The evening’s chair, Joris Luyendijk, writer for the Guardian’s Banking Blog, started the off the discussion after the film:

I think I had a bit of a Jimmy Saville moment, when you see something quite shocking and you realise it’s been hiding in plain sight for all this time.

To which Chanan replied:

You Google for images . . . of the floor of the London Stock exchange and I couldn’t find any. There are any number of the floor of New York, the floor of Hong Kong and none of London’s. Why not? Eventually working backwards I found this stuff [archive footage from 1939 and 1951] it’s not on Google, you have to go to a real old fashioned archive. And then looking at it I thought “Wait a minute, in 1951 they’re not yet quite so ashamed of making these claims, about the City being a state within a state, about the . . . Lord Mayor being monarch of everything he sees except his own monarch. . . . Those kinds of phrases.” So since then they’ve become a lot more careful about their public image.

Chanan was very clear that he wanted the film to be as independent and freely distributed as possible and on being asked about whether he had sought help from the BBC he said:

We did think of trying to get them to commission the film but gave up very quickly. We went through the arguments with our producer . . . maybe they would do it if you could bring some revelations. The whole problem with big revelations is that you can’t find that; you can’t get that; they’re completely closed. So we gave up that idea.

Rev. William Taylor, a City of London Councillor for nearly seven years and who featured in the film, was called upon in the audience to give his point of view:

What you have in the City Corporation is that it holds together a consensus that we have found it very hard to think about in this county about the importance of the financial services to our economy. We think . . . that the financial services is the goose that’s laying the golden egg . . . they’re so important to us. And we’re just realising that in fact the goose is fouling its nest and the eggs that it’s laying are toxic and they’re not doing us any good and we need to put it out of it’s misery. . . . What we need is a way of opening that up to clinical judgment and I think the film has really done that.

The discussion then turned to the Corporation’s role with respect to European law to which Chanan said:

The explanations to why we’re not in the Euro . . . are that these things are not a matter of British government policy because British government policy in areas like that, whichever party is in power, are effectively determined by the City. And the City did not want to be in the Euro. There are a couple of reasons for that at least. One is . . . that would open the City to the potential of European directives but the other is that it refuses to accept any other European financial centre as its competitor as it would have to.

One of the final statements came from an audience member who works in the City:

Most people in the City are not corrupt but there are incentives within the system which cause all the problems that we have. . . . When you’re in the City you understand the parameters within which you’re working and you never question that and therefore it’s only when you step outside and actually look . . . that you begin to question the whole rationale. And it’s only when you question the whole rationale that you seen this is not about bad people or corruption it’s about a system which is clearly not fit for what we need, it dwarfs everything else. . . . It is a system that is designed in such a way that it has certain effects and that’s what we need to attack. It’s not the people, it’s the systemic flaws.

Secret City is being screened all over the UK within the next few months, find out where on secretcity-thefilm.com

Watch the trailer for Secret City below