 Well, without further ado, I'm handing over to Professor Bogdano for a most interesting talk. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And this is the book you mentioned. I don't know whether people can see it. It's published by the Yale University Press, and I don't really want to go over the same themes in the book, but perhaps to carry my thinking a little further. It's based on lectures given two years ago, so I hope I've had some more thoughts since then. But the central theme of the book is that Brexit was neither an aberration for Britain as a whole, nor for the European Union and I really wanted to conflict on the second part of that. But at the end, perhaps with this particular audience, I might make one or two comments about Scotland and the European Union, because as I understand it, the Scottish National Party would like to see an independent Scotland back in the European Union. But one preliminary point I would like to make, which may surprise some people in the audience, is that Brexit has not led to the inward-looking nationalistic Britain, which many feared, particularly, hasn't led to an insular, nativist Britain. And one remarkable and perhaps unexpected consequence of Brexit is that it has liberated Britain's liberal political culture. Let me give some examples of what I mean. As you know, during the referendum in 2016, the issue of immigration played a very large part. Indeed, it's probably true to say that was the main policy issue that the Brexiteers concentrated upon. And so the EU principle of free movement was something they objected to, but since Brexit, so far from there having been an anti-immigrant backlash, attitudes towards immigrants have softened. The immigration has lost its high salience and is now a much more positive attitude towards it. It appears the British public are not against immigration per se, but against uncontrolled immigration. The immigration has not yet been managed, but not ended. Let me give an example. In 2019, an Ipsos mori poll across 27 countries asked whether immigration has generally had a positive impact. And 48% in Britain said it had, which is more than the other 26. The migration observatory at Oxford, my old university in 2020 made this statement. Few or no immigrants of a different race should be allowed to enter the country. The response in Britain was 26%, the lowest in the European Union, apart from Sweden and a little lower than, for example, Germany. And migrants in Britain are much less likely to be unemployed than in Germany, Austria, Netherlands or Sweden. Now, when we left the European Parliament, the European Parliament lost a third of its non-white members. We had more non-white members than any other country, 19 out of the 28 had none at all. The next proportionately in Europe, in terms of the amount of foreign aid we give, we give more proportionally and in absolute terms than Germany. And I think above all we have no racist party represented in Parliament, like the AFD in Germany, which is the official opposition from National in France. It's worth saying that in the last presidential election, nearly half of 18 to 24 year olds voted for Marine Le Pen in the second ballot of the elections. And more young voters in fact supported her than voters in any other age group. Italy has Salvini, and in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats deny the government a majority, let alone Orban of Hungary and Kaczynski of Poland. It's worth asking whether Brexit, let me say I didn't vote for it, I voted to remain, but Brexit might have proved a means by which Britain has avoided populism. And one of the issues I want to discuss is whether there are trends in the European Union, excuse me, that are in fact leading to populism. Now, what breaks it an aberration in the European Union. It wasn't an aberration in this, in this sense, that it's unlikely to be followed by the exit of any other member state. One obvious candidate for exit perhaps is Greece, but I don't think she will leave for two reasons. The first is that for her as for many other countries in the European Union, the EU symbolizes an emergence from dictatorship, and the acceptance of Greece as a European democracy. The second is, there's not really any alternative for a small country. Now, Britain believed, perhaps mistakenly, that she did have an alternative option. Now, you may say that it's not precisely clear what that option is, but still many believed it was there. It may be Sweden, Denmark think they have an alternative option, the Euro skepticism fairly strong where but I think it's unlikely. But I do think, nevertheless, that Brexit is a real pointer to weakness in the structure of the European Union. And this is something I first wrote about many years ago. I wrote about it in a book entitled Elitism, Populism and European Politics, edited by Jack Hayward who was a professor at Oxford where I was for many years. And in this was written at about the time of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, more than 30 years ago. And I contrasted the large majorities for the Maastricht Treaty in the member states, and the results of various surveys of voter opinion, with the actual outcomes when voters were asked to pronounce on Europe. Now Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty, which wasn't surprise perhaps and Denmark voted for it in a second referendum, after some minor amendments were made to the treaty. But the referendum in France was more of a surprise, it was positive, but only by 51 to 49%. And that was a surprise because France was thought to be a country at the very heart of the European Union. And the Maastricht Treaty was supported by all the major parties in France, except for the Front National. And in the voting, the moderates of the left and the right, moderate left and right voters supported it, but the extremes on left and right were against it and the extremes are much stronger than many people thought. If you look at Britain and Germany at the time, there were no referendums and all the major parties favor the treaty but even so, survey evidence indicated it was by no means certain that Maastricht would have been endorsed, had it been put to the popular vote. And I suggested at the time that the European Union was giving rise to that most dangerous and intractable of cleavages that between the political class and the people. It gives rise to populist parties, when these parties can say the establishment is all united, they don't represent you, whether you vote conservative or Labour makes no difference. They're together, plague on all their houses. And that's been that was said really by Farage's party and Trump in America, in a different way perhaps by the Scottish Nationalist Party. So I'm not calling let me say that a populist party but it's saying differences between Labour and conservative don't really matter that much. The key issue is whether you're really a proud National Scott or not. And I think all this cast doubt on the central purpose of the European Union, which was to create European unity that nationalism seem much stronger, and I suggested that this popular disenchantment, if not checked, would cause serious problems. And I would say that the rejection in 2005 of the EU constitution or proposed EU constitution by France and the Netherlands, two of the countries assumed to be at the heart of the European project has confirmed my view. The 2008 credit crunch was led, as did the Wall Street crash in 1929 to a revival of nationalism and populism and a weakening in philosophies of internationalism, social democracy and Christian democracy in many countries, not only in the EU, let me say. Now the EU leaders I think have done very little to counter popular alienation from the project. Perhaps they haven't in fact read my chapter. Now brexit challenges what might be called the ideology of Europe because it's a serious matter for any democratic organization when a major member state decides to leave. President Macron France, gave an interview and BBC in early 2017, when he seems very honest he said he couldn't guarantee you wouldn't get the same result in France you had in Britain if there was a referendum. And he said the European Union must respond to brexit with appropriate institutional and other reforms and I'll be looking at some of those other reforms a bit later. When Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council declared as president in 2016 after the referendum. It would be a fatal error to assume that the negative result in the UK referendum represents a specifically British issue. The Brexit vote is a desperate attempt to answer the question and questions that millions of Europeans ask themselves daily. And before the referendum Tusk had said the EU needs to take a long hard look at itself and listen to the British warning signal. Now I think the central problem of the EU is it's been unable to represent the people of Europe effectively. The essence of a democratic political organization is that it represents and representation is of course a key concept in in Britain. And you may argue it's at the very core of what it means to be British. You may argue to be British is to wish to continue to be represented in the House of Commons. And of course if you're a nationalist if you were supported the SNP I think that proves my point because they're saying well we do go to Westminster, but we don't want to continue to be represented there. We want to get independence to Scotland so we can take our MPs away as the Irish did after the First World War and be fully self governing in Edinburgh. Now the idea of representation does imply that decisions are made by a majority and the minority accept that minority no doubt hoping to become the majority at the next election. So there must be some degree of homogeneity or unity amongst the electorate. The Hobbes in Leviathan says a multitude of men are made one person when they are by one man or one person represented. Now of course, some minorities don't accept that and I mentioned the Scottish Nationalists they don't say we're a minority in Britain. They say we're a majority in Scotland. And that's what the Sinn Fein MPs in Ireland did in 1918 election. They said we don't recognize Westminster boycott it and Sinn Fein still boycotts it. The SNP don't of course boycott it but they don't see themselves as part of a minority. Perhaps there's some analogy between the position of the SNP as they see themselves in Westminster and our position in the EU. We didn't really see ourselves as part of that whole. Perhaps we didn't feel we had enough in common with the other member states, just as the SNP doesn't feel it has enough in common with people south of the border. We didn't want to enter with the other European member states with them into a political union and accept common laws and policies. Now, this was an issue I think obscured when we entered in 1973, and the Heath government issued a statement saying that it involved no sacrifice of essential national sovereignty. That takes two questions. The first is what is essential one which people might disagree but secondly perhaps more important. The powers and obligations of the European Union were not at that time at least a closed category, which could be defined in advance. They were going to be developed they're going to be new common policies. Now until the introduction of the principle of subsidiarity in the mastery treaty. That's not even then there was no inherent limit to the common policies, which the EU might adopt by contrast with federal states such as America there was no states rights clause in the EU structure. The American Constitution has such a clause in the 10th amendment, which says that anything not done by the EU is reserved by sorry by the federal government is reserved to the states. Now our debate when we entered was only about what might be called peripheral committee stage type issues, the length of the transition period the contribution to the EU budget and so on. That's not the basic principle did we wish to merge our fortunes with a new political unit. After we joined we had all sorts of problems, as you all know, and the basic issue was avoided through patching up. Margaret Thatcher's budget negotiations which in which resulted in a rebate agreed in 1984 and various contrivances in particular many opt outs we had. Also, the conservatives had a special relationship with the European people party which is committed to a federal Europe course the conservatives are not, but they were allowed special leeway. But we were never made to face up to the full implications of political union. Very interestingly, we thought with Poland, we had an opt out on the European Charter of fundamental rights. In the Khabush case of 2017 decided by Supreme Court here as important I think constitution is fact that they showed that we didn't that we were much subject to the charges every other member state. That surely follows the logic of political union because how can a genuine community have different stands of rights in different parts of that community. I've written there's been some discontent not in Scotland so much but south of the border in the European Convention of Human Rights, and the government has set up a review committee to consider its implications. But the European Union Charter is much more far reaching than the convention with 54 articles. I'll give some brief examples, an article 13 right to academic freedom which course I value very much. Article 14 right to vocational and continual training, a specific article 21 right to non discrimination on ground such as sex race color, ethnic or social origin, genetic features language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national property, birth disability age or sexual orientation. And this article unlike the European Convention provides explicit protection for members of the LGBT community. Article 24 rights of the child article 25 rights of the elderly. And this is a catalogue article 34 right to social security article 35 right to healthcare article 38 right to environmental protection. Now I wonder if people in Britain will really prepare to accept the implication of this charter. I think in passing I might mention I believe the Scots are much keen on I believe I'm open to correction. I want to incorporate the charter into the provisions of the Scotland Act in so far as they affect devolved matters but I'm open to correction on that. I know they're much more sympathetic to the European Convention and England. My broad question is, to what extent would we have been prepared to accept the implication, and all this illustrates my point, but a presupposition of effective representation is that those represented feel they belong to a single community. And that is what makes majority rule acceptable. Now there is a second requirement for effective representation. It is that there be an effective party system. Israeli famously said, you cannot have parliamentary government, unless you have party government, there must be parties broadly united on matters of public policy competing parties. So the executive can be accountable to the legislature in which they are represented. And if we do not like one government of one party, we can turn it out and replace it with another. And if we do that easily, I think if parties were purely regional, if there was one party say in the north of Britain and other parties the south, it would be difficult because the south might always have a majority, it would be difficult for either party to win over floating voters. And the same is true with a party system based on religion or nationality, such as you had in Northern Ireland under Storm, the old storm month between 1922 and 72. There was no possibility of an alternative government since the unionists who predominantly Protestants were a permanent majority. So democracy requires some alternative system, sometimes called consociational democracy, which Northern Ireland now has system of power shown. Now party secures a broad correspondence between the views of the government and those of the electorate not perfect certainly under our electoral system not perfect but broadly. Certainly a parliament of 650 independents couldn't do that, nor could a parliament composed of chance and contingent majorities, as was the case with the parliaments before from fifth republics in France and possibly Italy today. Now, can these ideas of representation be made effective in the EU. Now the EU course, a difficult organization to understand. I think Madeleine Albright the former American Secretary of State, once said to understand the EU, you have to be either a genius or French. Now I'm neither but I shall do my best. Now in Italian political scientist called Sergio Fabrini has written that the European Union is like the United States, what he called a compound democracy. And by that he means a political system divided not only territorial along federal type lines, but with a division of powers at the center in the United States between the President Congress and Supreme Court in Europe between the Council for Commission of Parliament and the European Court of Justice. And of course there are huge differences between the two political systems, but the one I want to concentrate on is that in the Europe, there's no analogy in America to a main institution in the European Union, which is the commission that is not directly elected, but is given the sole power of legislative initiative. And we find difficult to understand because we think the power of legislative initiative should be given only to those who've been elected it's a political power. And we have as they do in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, a broad separation of powers between those who are elected and accountable to parliament. And civil servants who are not accountable to parliament, who are career officials, nonpartisan neutral and serve governments of any political color and of course you have that in Scotland if the SNP defeated in the elections to be rude, then the civil service would serve just as loyally, conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat or coalition, administration, whatever it is. So, we find it difficult to understand the continental conception of the unelected politician or the elected official. And many years ago I heard a conservative MP address a member of the commission, the late Mr Finn Gundelach as an official. And I suspect that the law would have bristled even more, but we don't understand how a non elected person can enjoy such wide powers as those wielded by the law. Now the commission has admitted to become weaker since the end of the law's reign in 1995 he was the most activist president of the commission of Europe was known, but nevertheless it does retain a distinctly political power. Now, how can you get effective representation and democratic accountability in a system of this kind. There are two answers. The first is by analogy with other separation of power systems such as the American or French, where there's a unifying element in the direct election of the executive, the presidential system. Now that system, just like the British system of parliamentary representation requires a fairly unified and homogenous community. Now, American its history course had a problem in this regard because in 1861, the southern states declared, they were not a minority in the United States, but a majority of their own in a new Confederate nation which they sought to create. And that's done said the South had created a notion, possibly on grounds of self determination he was right, but whatever the arguments, the North had superior force, and so the indissoluble federal union came into existence. The second method of securing accountability is through a parliamentary parliamentary method through a European Parliament elected as it is by universal suffrage, and through a broadly common roughly similar electoral system that itself raises two problems. The first is the problem of what is the EU executive, which is responsible to the European Parliament what is the common government, and to whom it is accountable. Now founding fathers such as a money, believe that the Commission would be that government, and that in a unified Europe, the Council of Ministers representing the member states will be the upper house of the European Parliament on the model of a European Germany which represents the German states. And Angela Merkel, speaking to the European Parliament in November 2010 reiterated that view, and she actually predicted the Commission would eventually become the government of the EU. If you hold that view, the Commission must be not what it is now a Commission representing broadly all streams of opinion in Europe, but a partisan Commission representing the left or the right. And that would mean if the European Parliament doesn't like its policies, it could remove the Commission and replace it with one more to its liking. Or if the voters do not approve of the Commission, they can turn it out to their votes at the next European election, and replace it by another. In addition, if a commissioner makes a mistake, as Ursula von der Leyen did over vaccinations, she would be accountable to the European Parliament through a vote of confidence as ministers are both in London and in Hollywood. And now perhaps a von der Leyen mistake in invoking article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol to prevent EU vaccines coming into Britain via Northern Ireland, cast a shaft of light on the central weakness of the institutional structure of the EU. Because does it not show the failure to anticipate public reactions, both in Britain and Ireland is dangerous for a body which is only indirectly accountable if at all to the people, and whose members have not had to undergo the gamut of popular and media scrutiny. Now some argue that Commission is too much people with politicians who to put it mildly have not always been successful at national level. And the parliamentary system someone who makes a mistake of this sort would be immediately met with a no confidence motion that didn't happen with Miss van der Leyen. Her name was not before the voters of Europe in the 2019 European palms election no one voted for it, and apparently she didn't even apply for the post as president of the Commission. Now, in theory, the transnational political parties in the European Parliament could yield left or right coalition which would make accountability of the Commission feasible. The partisan Commission would of course be a great innovation and would alter its role. It will no longer be a kind of neutral power over and above the member states the body dedicated the common good, rather like the body in the fourth French Republic that commissari do plan from which the idea of the Commission derives that commissari incidentally was chaired by Jean Monet and I think that's where he got the idea. The parliamentary accountability in the EU requires as I've said, a fairly homogenous and unified electorate in the 27 member states. It would entail that Europe had genuinely become a community. Now perhaps it was when it was found in 1958 with six member states excluding Britain of course, and perhaps if there was an inner core of just a few member states which favored further integration. It would not be a community but it is a community amongst 27 states. I think we're very far from that. Now, all sorts of measures have been produced with the purpose of helping to make your political community a customs union, which helped make Germany a political community in the 19th century so called solverine direct elections for European Parliament. Transnational political parties, creation of the single market, creation of the single currency, co decision of the European Parliament for the Council, the Spitzman candidate idea and now banking and fiscal union, but none of them have succeeded in achieving the aim of securing a unified and homogenous European community. All were thought to be game changes, but none of them have in fact been they have not succeeded. The main divisions in the EU remain those between member states on burden sharing between the so called hands the attic states led by the Netherlands and others. This is the rule of law between the ex communist states in the east and those in the West. There was not that sense of common and unified allegiance needed for a system of parliamentary accountability to work. And that's likely to be a long process. Now some federal states have sped up that process by the use of force after the war, the America I've already mentioned, Germany, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, the United States, Now some federal states have sped up that process by use of force after the war, the America I've already mentioned Germany with Bismarck's Wars, and Switzerland, with a war in the 1840s. But war is not really an option I think available to the European Union. So it follows. The European Parliament does not have the same relationship to the peoples of Europe that domestic legislators had to their own peoples. Most Europeans continue to give primary allegiance to the legislators of their member state, not the European Parliament, whose elections attract a much smaller turnout. But people feel more represented by their national parliaments rather than the European Parliament. And some see the European Parliament as representing not the European people, but the political class, them and not us. It seems remote from those whom it seems to represent. And indeed, many in Europe do not know who their MEP actually is. I wonder, I won't ask embarrass anyone, but I wonder if those in the audience, especially those who were enthusiastic about the European Union could have named who their MEPs were when we were actually in the European Union. As I said, I won't embarrass the audience by asking you for a show of hands. Now, the commission is not only geographically remote like the Parliament, it's also institutionally remote because not chosen by the people of Europe, inherently remote. And it's seen even more than the Parliament as part of an alienated superstructure. In practice, of course, the real decision-making body of the EU is the council of ministers, the executive. And that can't be responsible to the European Parliament because it's composed of ministers of the member states responsible to their own Parliament. And it's only accountable to the voters in a very indirect way. No doubt in theory, it would be possible for each of the 27 states to remove their governments and replace them with 27 other governments committed to a different policy in Europe. But that's unlikely. So the European Parliament can't, in practice, replace one EU executive with another or one set of policies with another, nor can European voters. And the council clearly isn't accountable to national Parliaments once majority voting was introduced. With a veto, you could be because you could say to a minister, why didn't you use your veto? But now with qualified majority voting, the minister might say, well, I argued against but was overruled. And no one can tell what the minister did argue against or how effectively he or she argued. So national legislatures can't really scrutinize the council. And if the legislature can't scrutinize a process, how can the people, how can the people say, we do not like what you've done. We want an alternative policy. So the council remains outside the area of political challenge. It's difficult to make it accountable before decisions are made since they are to be the subject of negotiation. And governments say, as John Major famously did in 1997 in relation to the common currency, please don't tie my hands in the negotiations. Trust me to get the best possible deal for a country. Now, parliament could perhaps in theory seek to limit the scope of what a government can do. And sometimes Westminster did that. And it's often done in Denmark, I think, which has special machinery because they have regular minority governments, which the single chamber parliament wants to bind. But I don't think the EU could operate if all 27 governments were to work in that fashion. Now, after when negotiations have been completed, it's very difficult for a legislature to untie the package. So national parliaments are commentators on the process rather than bodies to which their governments are accountable. So there's a power shift from national parliaments to national governments, national executives. And the powers of each government come to be shared with the governments of the other member states, powers external to themselves with which national parliaments and national electorates have little control. Now, I mentioned earlier President Macron and he's put some wide-ranging proposals forward for the reform of Europe. In a speech in the Sorbonne in September 2017 and a further speech to French ambassadors shortly afterwards. He said there should be reform of the Eurozone so to secure a coordinated European economic policy and a common budget under the control of a common minister and subject to parliamentary control at European level. He also advocated convergence on tax and social policies. Now, past crises in Europe have indeed led to further integration and there's some talk today about a conference on the future of Europe, the relaunching of the European Union. Much talk of new economic and budgetary instruments to place the Euro on stronger foundations, some talk of a fiscal union. And COVID has already led to an extension of the EU's reach with a 750 billion Euro recovery fund. The EU is now borrowing and redistributing money for something fairly new. And for the first time, it's agreed to a common fiscal response to an economic shock. And this is seen by some as a first step towards fiscal union. But if what I've said is right, more common policies that EU develops, the more remote it becomes from national governments and the people. More common policies therefore in my view are dangerous. Now, suppose the EU were to embrace fiscal union so that it rather than national governments made decisions on tax policy. What would be left for national government and general elections? After all these issues of economic policy are the issues on which dramatic elections are fought, monetary policy interest rates, exchange rates, fiscal policy tax rates. Now, that wouldn't matter if the EU had acquired the same sort of allegiance that federal states have such a Germany, United States, Canada and Australia. But really, as we've seen, I think it hasn't. So Brussels would be developing a fiscal capacity without the politics needed to hold itself to account. The EU would have become an economic entity without the political infrastructure. And that would increase popular alienation from the EU and strengthen the appeal of populist parties. And for this reason, further integration seems to be the very last thing that Europe needs. There's a fundamental contrast between the EU and federal states. In federal states, to transfer powers, say to the American government, the German governor somewhere, is to transfer to a accountable government, elected. In Europe, it isn't. It's to transfer powers in effect to an indirectly elected council of the ministers, which means further isolation from the people. Let me repeat my quotation from Thomas Hobbes. A multitude of men are made one person when they are by one man or one person represented. Has the EU succeeded in creating that one person from a multitude? Clearly not. In consequence, populist parties have resurrected the question, who in fact represents the people, the European Parliament or national parliament? The answer I fear is obvious. And I also fear that the more common policies that the EU develops, the more targets there will be for the populist parties. The more policies are transferred to the European level, the greater the democratic deficit. Ministers will have to say even more than they do now, not me, Chum. I'm sorry you don't like this policy, but there's nothing I can do about it. And nothing you can do about it. Even if you change the government, it won't make any difference because the limits on national accountability are also the limits on the ability of voters to alter policies of which they may disapprove. And this leads a vacuum which the populist parties have sought to fill. And it's clear to me the problems faced by voters who've come to support the radical right in Europe, economic deprivation, unregulated markets, housing, educational inequalities, undermining of local communities, lack of social mobility and so on. These problems must be resolved at domestic level, not at the level of Europe. Now, it's not surprising, perhaps, there are fundamental structural weaknesses in the whole EU project because the basic principles were laid down over 60 years ago in 1957 in the Treaty of Rome, perhaps even earlier in the European coal and steel community in 1950 in very different conditions. If you'd bought a car or radio set then, how useful would it be today? Now, I think the institutional remoteness of the EU is not an accident. It was inherent in the conception of European integration held by Jean Monnet, its founding father. Now, Monnet was a great man who understood that European unity could not be achieved by goodwill. Goodwill needed instead to be embodied in common policies and common institutions. But he exercised influence from behind the scenes. He never in his life held any elected position. And perhaps it was for this reason, he never thought he appreciated that political legitimacy was secured primarily by direct election, a principle fundamental to the British conception of parliamentary government. The epigraph to Monnet's memoirs declares, we are not forming coalitions between states but union among people. But the people he had in mind were the elites who would construct Europe by stealth using economic means to lock nation states together with the people perhaps being almost unaware of the process until it had become irreversible. He hoped to achieve a united Europe without it being wholly noticed by the people. That might have been possible in the more deferential Europe of the 1950s when the leaders led and the followers followed and an era when unelected officials enjoyed great prestige. It is hardly possible in the Europe of today. Now, in his Storban speech of 2017, President Macron declared the founding fathers built European isolation of the people because they were an enlightened vanguard. But as he then went on to say, European democratic doubt put an end to that chapter. And I think we were wrong to move Europe forward in spite of the people. We must stop being afraid of the people. We must simply stop building an isolation from them. My basic proposition then is that the European Union need to confront the problem of the democratic deficit and the greater the integration, the greater the danger. Monet did not see this. Another Frenchman, President de Gaulle, did see it. And some French Gaulists have suggested bringing the commission under the control of the European Council, which represents the government of the member states. The power to initiate legislation should be transferred from the commission to the council, which would then be seen to be executive of the EU. The commission would become a secretary of the council and would lose the power to initiate legislation. Such a reform would help to undermine Euro skepticism, which thrives on the anathema when unelected and unaccountable legislative body, something that we in Britain in particular found difficult to understand or accept. Now the Monet de Law conception of Europe, which was responsible for the early successes of the European unity, is now coming to appear Moriband. And as long ago as 1990, when the law told the European Parliament Strasbourg that he wanted Europe to become a true federation by the end of the millennium, French President Mitterrand watching a speech on television burst out. But that's ridiculous. What's he up to? No one in Europe would ever want that. By playing the extremist, he's going to wreck what's achievable. Now you may find this ironic, but there's a sense in which Brexit, Britain, together with Gaulist France, could be said to have been in the vanguard of European development rather than hindrances to it because they appreciated Britain thanks to a long evolutionary history. And Gaulists, as a result of France's experiences during the Second World War, what the sacrifice of sovereignty would actually mean in practice. Some member states, especially those which had recently emerged from dictatorships, did not fully appreciate what the sacrifice of sovereignty would in fact mean in practice. It was easy for them to say rhetorically that they favored sacrificing sovereignty, but the new handsiatic league led by the Netherlands when it comes to sharing debts, Greece when it came to budgetary restrictions, and the Visigrad countries of Central Europe, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia when it came to accepting a due quota of Syrian migrants, all found that their acceptance of shared sovereignty was subject to very strict limits. Questions affecting the fundamental national identity of member states cannot be settled by the qualified majority voting introduced in the Single European Act of 19th century and always used related to the single market. So my conclusion is that Europe can only be unified on a confederal basis. What are the realities of Europe to Gaul lasting his memoirs? What are the pillars on which it can be built? The truth is these pillars are the states of Europe. If Europe will remain what the Gaul called a Europe des Etats, but a confederal Europe would be an intergovernmental organization with a difference because member states would consider not only their own national interests but the interests of Europe as a whole. The continent has suffered in the past from the absence of such a transnational perspective. Had it been there in 1914, had the states of Europe considered the interests of the continent as a whole rather than restricting their gaze to their own national ambitions, war would have been avoided. Perhaps then it is the Gaul rather than Jean Monnet who should be regarded as the prophet of today's Europe and perhaps in a confederal Europe, Britain could have an honored place which it does not have in the European Union moving towards integration, towards ever closer union. Now I don't think it will ever achieve that in. Now let me add as a coder to my talk how all this might apply to Scotland. Now when discussing Scottish nationalism, I used to speak of Scottish separatism and I was taken to task by the SNP and they were right to take me to task because an independent Scotland would not be separate. It would be not part of the United Kingdom but it would be part of the European Union. I should perhaps say this is a comparatively new policy for the Scottish National Party. In the first EU referendum in 1975, the SNP was the only party in Scotland recommending that Britain should leave the European Union or European Communities. It was then they said that Europe was even more remote than Westminster from Scotland's point of view. And the fear then in the referendum, oddly enough in 1975 was that the fear of the opposite to that of 2016 that the rest of Britain would vote yes to stay in Europe, but Scotland would vote no, though in the event Scotland did vote yes and only the Shetland isles and the Western isles voted to leave. But the SNP might be a paradoxical stance because it wants to leave a loosely organized European community in 1975 but wants to stay in a much more tightly integrated European Union. And it's odd in a way it seems that a nationalist movement wants to call in an outside power to help it in running its affairs. Now the Scotland would face the same question as Britain faced. Does she have enough in common with the other 27 member states? Would her interests be better guaranteed by the 27 states from Westminster? Let's look first at representation where Scotland has 59 out of 650 seats in Westminster. And certainly the SNP would not wish to form a government but Scotland can sometimes have a government in accordance with its majority views because of course it did with Labour in between 1997, 2010, earlier Labour governments. And then the Conservatives in 1955 when the majority both of seats and the voters supported the Conservatives. So in the United Kingdom, Scotland belongs to a parliament to which government is accountable. Now in the European Union, Scotland would belong to an organization whose decisions as we have seen are not accountable. It lies to the European Parliament nor to Holyrood and therefore not to the voters. And the limits to accountability would, as it would Britain, be also the limits to the power of Scotland's voters. The powers of Scotland's government would be shared with other governments extern to itself over which it has no control. And of course some powers would go back to the European Union, primarily fisheries and agriculture. And from this point of view, Brexit meant a restoration of power for Scotland because the evolution of agriculture and fisheries didn't mean much when policy in these areas was decided in Brussels. Now Scotland hasn't got as much devolution as it wanted in these areas. The Scotland Act says that all powers in those areas should go back to Scotland, but some powers have been retained at Westminster for good or ill. But nevertheless returning to the EU would weaken devolution in Scotland and weaken it further if Scotland joined the Euro with the common currency and matters flowing from that how to do with inflation, for example. Scotland's current budget debt is 8% under the Eurozone rules. It would have to be reduced to 3%. And I fear the policies needed to reduce it to 3% would make George Osborne look a bit like Santa Claus or Father Christmas because they would involve very heavy expenditures in, sorry, very heavy cuts in public expenditure or heavy tax rises. Now, it's worth remembering that the freedom we had from being out of the Eurozone enabled Gordon Brown at the time of the currency credit crunch of 2007, 2008 to devalue the pound in effect by 25%, which I think reduced unemployment certainly compared with the Eurozone countries. Now, the EU can, of course, develop more common policies. I've said that there's no obvious limit to the powers and obligations which Scotland has to accept in advance. And so with more economic powers under the EU, Scotland might have a little autonomy in economic affairs as she has under Westminster. And also the SNP defense policy might be under threat if the EU develops or some wish it to do a common defense and foreign policy. And then, of course, there's a hard border with the UK as the UK now has with France. Now, sometimes when I've talked about Scotland, some people, I think none in the audience now I don't know but some people have been rude enough to say, who are you as an Englishman to discuss these matters with Scotland and tell us what to do? You keep off the grass and leave us to make our own decisions. None of your business to give us advice. Well, fair enough. But in the European Union, people from 27 other states will not only be giving advice to Scotland but telling her how she should organise her affairs in certain areas. The EU legislates for Scotland and Parliament can do nothing about it. The supreme right to legislate and the power to impose certain taxes will be with Europe. And Hollywood will not be able to call Europe to account but will be in the position of a commentator on EU policy. Scotland, as I understand it, has a principle not of the sovereignty of Parliament but the sovereignty of the people. And that was shown in the 2014 referendum and of course in the devolution referendum. That principle cannot be maintained in my view if Scotland were to join the European Union. So I come back to my book that the conclusion of the book is that Brexit was not an aberration either of Britain or the European Union. It's yesterday's issue in a way. And I think instead of saying it was a good thing or a bad thing, we should start to learn the lessons and perhaps one good place to start learning the lessons is the Glasgow Philosophical Society. And so I look forward very much to your comments. Thank you for listening to me. Here we are back again. Right, there's a lot of questions. I think, can you hear me? Yes, yes. Well, why don't we start off with a simple question from Colin Brown. Why would Scotland in the EU be any less sovereign than the other 27 sovereign nations? In other words, if they're happy with it, why wouldn't Scotland? Well, she wouldn't be less sovereign than the other 27. She'd be less sovereign than as part of the United Kingdom because the other countries are not sovereign either. And their traditions are different from those of Scotland which has tradition, not only perhaps or not mainly a parliamentary sovereignty but sovereignty of the people and that is weakened in the European Union. The other countries had different motives primarily to overcome the past in the case of Germany, France, Italy and so on or to escape from communism. I mean, Scotland doesn't have that problem. And it is odd to say you want to be independent but then to be a subordinate unit in a larger body, that's not independence because a lot of decisions on economics, particularly trade and all sorts of other things are made elsewhere. Now, you may say some of these decisions are made elsewhere now, Westminster, but these are represented there and the ministers are accountable to you and it's possible for Scotland to play a large part in choosing its own government. I'll let one in 11 of the MPs sitting at Westminster. That's my answer. Of course, I suppose it comes down to a sense of identity, doesn't it? Which seems to play such an important part emotionally in people. Yeah, I can understand that. I have more sympathy with someone who wants an independent Scotland outside the EU and said, you know, we want to be on their own like Norway or Iceland or Switzerland. I can see that. What I can't see is how a sense of identity is compatible with EU membership which wants to merge the identity to a larger political unit. That's what I find odd. Well, many people in Scotland look to Ireland of a question from Trisha Ford who says, why are other small countries in the EU, EG Ireland, doing well? Has Ireland done so well? Look at what happened to her in 2010 when she had to be bailed out by the rest of the EU and also by Britain, which is often not remembered, gave her a loan on less onerous conditions in the EU and at a lower rate of interest. Ireland had heavy unemployment because of her membership of the Euro, which we avoided. Now, Ireland has special reasons for the European orientation. It gives her a separate role from that of the rest of the United Kingdom, of course. But the position of many people in Ireland has been weakened, I think, because, for example, there was for a long time after Irish independence, there was discrimination against the minority Catholic population of Northern Ireland. Now, had Irish MPs as a whole been at Westminster, there'd have been a very powerful pressure group on their behalf. And that wasn't there. And of course there's no similar problem in Scotland. But look, you're saying, you see what they're saying or your question is saying, really. And I put this in an article in the Daily Telegraph. There's a marriage which has gone on for 300 years that's fairly irritating. And there are a few marriages that at some point people aren't irritated. And perhaps there are many in which one of the partners says, I'd like to leave. But do you leave a marriage to be not on your own, but to have 27 other mistresses? Now, I mean, you know, some of these mistresses are far away in Latvia or Poland or Slovenia. Are they going to be actually interested in Scotland's needs? Their needs are quite different from those of Scotland. And as I say, some of Scotland's powers in fisheries, agriculture, go back to the EU. So you get less devolution than you've got under Westminster, under the current system. So I can't see it. I don't have more sympathy in a way. I wouldn't support it. I have more sympathy if Scott said, well, we want independence, but not in the EU. We don't want an outside body. We've got full confidence around our own affairs. We don't need to be helped by an outside body like the EU. And that was the SNP's position in 1975. I mean, it's odd now that when the EU's much more integrated, they say, well, we'd like to be integrated with them, too. That's not, it just strikes me as rather odd. Somebody has asked, should the UK also be built on a confederal basis in the way you were suggesting might be suitable? Could you see that Vernon happening? You can't have confederation between Britain. Some people have argued with Federion, which I think is, is absurd because I think it doesn't suit England. But Scotland has a lot of the powers of the federal, the UN and federal government would have. It's got very wide devolution. And I think important thing now in our constitutional arrangements with regard to Scotland and Wales for that matter is to use the power they've got effectively. I mean, there are problems that everyone knows with education and health in Scotland. And it's arguable these powers aren't being used as effectively they might be used. And it's important to say, you see, that this is a matter of UK concern, for example, a bit of a skills gap in Scotland because the government cut places in further education to pay for free university tuition. Now, if there's a skills shortage in Scotland, I think there is a matter of concern with the whole United Kingdom. We, I mean, British government, I think might should do something about it, actually. I'm not sure the EU would be very bothered, frankly. We've got another question on about the EU and the UK. Should the UK treat the EU as a country or an international organisation as far as diplomatic recognition is concerned? No, it's more than an international organisation. I think we want good relations with the EU. And I don't have any point in having pinpricks. I mean, there've been pinpricks on both sides, it's fair to say, not just British government. I think, frankly, there've been more pinpricks on the EU side, but still. And I see no reason against recognition. Somebody is challenging you. Leslie Buchanan says, on a point of fact, the professor wildly overstates the power of the Commission, which is, in fact, the EU's bureaucracy, subject to control by both the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. Both of these are elected directly and indirectly. My question is, can the professor not see that he advocates a Council of Despair where the UK leaves a multinational group run by consent to return to the joys of the nation state, which gave us 1914 and 39? Well, there are two points here. Firstly, on the Commission, I agree it's powers are not what it had under the law, but it is the only power that can initiate legislation. That is a key power. That's why I'd want the position suggested or the position the questioner would like to see, I think, actually put into effect with the Commission being a secretariat of the Council of Ministers. I think that would regularize things and make the position much clearer. On the broader point, yes, I think it's a pity. We left, I voted, remain. And partly for the, well, mainly, I think for the reason that the questioner gave, the EU's basically a peace project. And it's not an economical federal project in a way. And I wanted Britain to be part of that, but we're not and we have to make the best of it. And Brexit was a mistake, but that argument's over now. It's yesterday's argument. And we're not a nation state. We're a country of sometimes had four nations, actually three nations, Northern Ireland's a nation. We've got three nations and a contested province. I think we've done quite well in holding nations together. We've scottened over 300 years, Wales since 1536. I don't think we've done too badly. I think it's a pity to break up a marriage over irritations. One of the worst arguments used to break it up, I think, is that people don't like Boris Johnson, but Boris Johnson's prime minister for a given period of time. You can break up the union and break it up forever. Now, other people wonder about the long term future of the EU. Is it likely to have a long term future? Other multinational unions like the Soviet Union have broken down and become separate countries again. Could that be the outcome? We might not want it, but could that happen? It could happen. I hope it doesn't. I mean, it might well happen, I think, if, for example, Marine Le Pen won the French presidential election. Certainly a possibility or perhaps the AFD came to power in Germany, which I profoundly hope they won't. It could happen. I deeply regretted it did happen, because I think the cause was, as your previous question said, was she's absolutely right, nationalism. And my conception of the EU would contain national through a more confederal unit of people thinking about Europe, not just their own countries. But I profoundly hope the European Union doesn't break up. But of course, it is a possibility, it can't be excluded. Why did the principle of subsidiarity disappear? Has it been retained? You think it would have been prevented or mitigated any of the problems? To my knowledge, it hasn't had much practical effect. I'm open to correction on this, but I don't think the courts have used it to strike down European Union laws. But I'm open to correction. Others may know more about this than I do. Could I got a question? Could we play a constructive role, even though we're outside the EU? Could we play some sort of constructive role in helping Europe rethink its whole agenda? I mean, we're used to historically playing a part in Europe, trying to keep the people from warring each other and holding a balance of power. And we still have a lot of respect and influence, maybe when this government has changed. Well, yes, I think we should be constructive. I think, particularly on defence policy, we're the only nuclear power with the French, and I think we should certainly cooperate with the French and other European countries on defence and foreign policy, if we can. More generally, if President Macron's idea of concentric circles comes in, he did say Britain would have a place in such a Europe. If there were such a Europe and with a loose outer ring, we might well find a place there. We haven't got a place in the current integrated Europe, but we might have a place in that. I mean, I'm very much in agreement with you with the idea of your question of us making a constructive approach to Europe, yes. And what's happened to bodies like the EEA, somebody else wants to know? Well, yes, that's Norway's part of that, and that the EEA is in the internal market, but not the customs union. And the problem with that is that that requires free movement of people. And of course, one of the motives behind the Brexit vote was we don't want the free movement of people. The internal market would give us closer access than what we've got at the moment under the free trade agreement. But as I say, it involves free movement of people. It may be the Labour Party takes up that issue and argues the election for a closer relationship with Europe. What about the Council of Europe, Vernon? Yeah, that's that's an intergovernmental body and the European Convention of Human Rights comes from the Council of Europe, not the European Union. That's an older instrument about 1950, 51, which the human rights that broadly brings into our laws. Scottish government actually incorporated it into its system, excuse me. That still exists. Yes, but it has no the European Union is distinctive in its superior legal order to Westminster, just as in America, the federal government's superior legal order to that of the member states and in Australia, Canada and so on. It's a distinctive organization. It's obviously pretty confusing sometimes for the electric to understand the range of these bodies. You hear people getting confused about human rights, where it comes from. It makes you wonder whether there's a better communication system would be helpful across Europe. There's a question here about Northern Ireland, which is bugging a lot of people. Now, I've lost it. But the question is the issue of Northern Ireland straddling the UK and EU customs, there's got to be a border somewhere. It seems to me and everybody else, what do we do? Well, one of the sad things about Brexit is that it resurrects the Irish question. And the whole point of the Good Friday agreement was that it matters less whether you're a unionist or a nationalist. And one of the effects was that someone in Northern Ireland who wished could be an Irish citizen as an alternative to or in addition to being a British citizen. Now, the Brexit resurrects that issue. And it polarises nationalists and unionists. And one issue in which it polarises the question of the border. There obviously, as you say, it must be a border with the EU. And that border could be in one of two places. It's either in the Irish Sea, which it is in effect at present, or it's on the island of Ireland. The problem is if it's in the Irish Sea, it bisects the United Kingdom. And I wonder whether other countries put up with that. Would France agree to a customs border with Alsace-Lorraine or Italy with the Alto Adigea? I think probably not. And after the grace period, some goods coming into Northern Ireland will need customs declarations. Now, the unionists say, and I have some sympathy with them, this is unacceptable. It's one country. But as I say, you're faced with a binary choice. The border is either in the Irish Sea or it's on the island of Ireland. Haven't people tried to think of ways of which to mitigate the border a bit by having things like trusted traders? Because it's really about what we do about trade. And if we could have a system whereby some people just were trusted to behave and fill out the forms without inspection, except for snap infections from time to time, might it seem less of a problem? You can mitigate it, yes. And I wonder if you, the methods you've suggested, can stop smuggling or people taking advantage of different regulations. You see, suppose we have an agreement with the Americans and we have the dreaded chlorinated chicken. Now, let's not get in the oven, whether it's a good thing or not. But let's say we have a trade agreement with them. Now, the EU says, well, our standards don't let chlorinated chicken in. How can you ensure that people aren't sending chlorinated chicken from Great Britain to Northern Ireland? The only way you can do it is, I think, by checking its standards. Not so much the customs duties, perhaps, but the standards, the regulations. Let's say it raises the question of where these checks are to take place. They have to be such checks, but they need to actually take place at any border wherever it is. You can have an electronic border, have the check cells where. But the conceptual border must be somewhere. OK, another question from Jamie Burton. Isn't the problem that a genuine free market requires fiscal governance, which requires a political union? In other words, it is all or nothing so long as the EU remains a free market union. No, look, you can have free trade with anyone without it. And obviously, you have to accept their rules if you want to trade with them. If you're trading with, I don't know, let's say France and they won't accept chlorinated chicken. Obviously, you have to accept that, but you don't need political unions and trade. We have we can have free trade with Australia or New Zealand or Japan without getting into a political union. The element, the key element of the. EU is the solverine, the customs union. And the purpose for that is to create a political union and the customs unit and then the internal, a single market. Those do require political supervision, if you like, but free trade doesn't. We were free trade country from 1846. There wasn't any question to the union with the rest of the world. Could we now turn to the question of the Commonwealth, which you talk about in your book, when we when we were debating whether to join or not, one of the big questions was, well, what about the preference of Commonwealth, getting cheaper food instead of having to pay the cap and having to pay for expensive. And I haven't noticed since we've left a great flooding of cheap food from the Commonwealth. Why not? Well, let's see. But look, the whole point, the common agricultural policy would have no point if food in Europe was cheaper than food outside. It only has point by keeping out cheaper food. But you wouldn't need a common agricultural policy if EU prices were lower. They're not. And therefore it's open to us to have cheaper food is open to us to alter our system of agricultural subsidies back to the old efficiency payment system. We don't need to have guaranteed high prices. And that was one of that. We weren't actually a free trade nation from 1846 as a commercial and industrial nation. We had a small agricultural sector by contrast with the most of the countries in the EU, which is why they had the CAP and it suited them. It didn't suit us. You see, what would have suited us would have been free trade in agriculture, but not in industry to shelter inefficient companies. But of course, the Germans and French didn't want that. They wanted free trade where they had the advantage, but not in agriculture, where they had an uneconomic agricultural sector, large peasant sector, partly political reasons for them to keep it strong. And so they had a policy which suited their needs, but not our needs and was there before we joined the same with the common fisheries policy, which surely Scotland has suffered from, which suits them, but not us. And that was the price we paid for getting in. One of the reasons why we were heavy net contributors always have. Yeah, so we I suppose I was sort of wondering whether New Zealand, Australia and Africa would suddenly see an opportunity to to sell us more produce. Anyone anyone have said to buy food in the cheapest market? Yeah, I say our agriculture subsidy system before we joined Europe was a deficiency payments made by the government through the tax plan, which didn't involve higher prices, but paid the difference between what the food was on the market and what the farmers needed. Now, the government, as I understand, is adopting a variance of that system to encourage environmental protections on. So you may be paying a little more for that. But obviously, we can now buy the cheapest market in terms of agricultural goods and motor cars as well. But yes, we can buy from where we want. We no longer it was a protected market, the agricultural market. Yes. With the common currency. Let's talk about services for a minute. Yeah. I think you mentioned in your book, there's some 300 services, which were never really unified under membership. Yeah, we were expected to accept free movement of capital and labor, but not of services. Yes, wasn't that a big I mean, there's a bit of humbug there. You're right. They wouldn't give that. And you see, one of the reasons I thought we had a good deal in Europe because we had a balance and we had the opt out some things we didn't like, but they wouldn't give us that on free movement. They were dogmatic about it. But as you imply, they're not so dogmatic about free movement of services. You try setting up as an architect in France or Germany, or dare I say, the hairdresser, you'll find lots of the examinations and qualifications that are really forms of protection. And they might have given us. You see, the EU always puts on high principles, but these principles are very, very flexible when it suits their interests to be flexible, as Ms. von der Leyen found out. And so, you know, I think the Angela Merkel and the rest of Mr. Trix there, but perhaps Cameron wasn't false enough. Who knows? But I think if we'd been given concessions on immigration, we'd have stayed in the EU. On the other hand, Dr. Julie Armstrong says that shared research and development in technological developments is a major success in the EU. And we've been a major leader in research and development. And it's good to have that, you know, on food regulation, environmental regulations, et cetera, shared intelligence. We're going to be worse off, aren't we now? Well, you can do that without political union. If you look at research, the Israelis share a lot of research with Europe. They're not in the EU. We can do that. And we can we can arrange bilateral agreements on particular things that we want to. This is valuable, as the questioner says, but it doesn't necessarily require political union. And that, I say, the pre-substitution of political union is that you feel part of one large community, which I don't think the British do. And I suspect, frankly, the Scots don't either, actually. But I may be wrong. Yes. Somebody's asked a question about the border between Scotland and England. Would you like the border problem in Northern Ireland? Well, it would be a hard border, of course, because Britain is outside the customs union and the internal market. It's the hard Brexit, if you like. And therefore, there must be some means of checking on my chlorinated chicken example. Suppose the rest of the UK signed an agreement with America, free trade agreement, bringing chlorinated chicken. And the EU doesn't want chlorinated chicken. They'll have to stop that happening. And then there have to be passports because we don't have the free movement of people. So there are going to be there are restrictions already on EU immigration and those restrictions would apply to Scotland. So families and friends would be divided. There'd be less. So if we'd have a softer Brexit that like Theresa May's, which kept us in the customs union. But even so, I think with different immigration policies, you need passports. Yes, it's a hard border, which I think lessens the case for Scottish independence in my personal opinion. Obviously, the SNP doesn't agree. But that's my personal view. The harder the border, the less viable independence is really. And it would divide a lot of families and friends. It's interesting, isn't it? I've noticed that when we've got vague, I mean, I'm just as bad, when we've got very complex discussions, people leap to a single image, like having to have straight cucumbers, which was Boris's thing. Florinated chicken. I wonder whether we don't fall into a trap where we use these things as tokens for something that they're not really able to carry. I was in America last year and talked to quite a lot of Americans and they were appalled to think they were eating chlorinated chicken. They said, we're not. Where do you get this idea from? We wouldn't eat that. We're very keen on our food being pure. Now, they may have been liberal West Coast people, but I do wonder sometimes whether we throw these things around instead of really trying to understand the issue. Well, that may be. But the standards and regulations of other countries are obviously different. Why should they not be America, Japan, Australia, wherever you like to look, countries with which we trade? And the EU does insist on certain standards. They may be right. They may be wrong. You can argue it out. Some say their protectionism. Others say they're necessary for health and so on. But there's a difference and therefore the EU will need to check this. Why? It has these standards. It's a standard the same. The goods can go through, but they have to check. I mean, if there's no chlorinated chicken, the EU says, fine, this can come through. But I say they have to check to find out and forms have to be filled in. So I'm a lot of extra bureaucracy. Another reason I was against a lot of extra bureaucracy. I'm managing all forms filled in and checks and so on. That's the cost of business. I mean, that's one of the disadvantages of Brexit, I think. Right. Well, Vernon, we're coming near to an end now. Could I and we've had lots of interesting questions. I've managed to get most of them in. Could could you sum up? You could you mention very, very nicely at the beginning that you were pleased to be speaking to this 219 year old philosophical society? Could you leave us with a two or three thoughts on what we as a society should be over the next two or three years trying to promote by way of discussion and debate to try and move this forward in some creative way? Well, I think there probably does need to be a discussion about the constitutional future of the United Kingdom. Not, I think, so much Scotland, but how England should have devolution for itself, if that's what you're interested in. I think another discussion is very worrying about Scotland, the educational stand, particularly skills, as I mentioned, but also I think standards in the schools. But one of the problems we have outside Brexit is that we're much more dependent on our skills and our brains. And if you look at those countries that are broadly successful economic in the modern world, places like Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and so on, they've got very few natural resources, but they use they use their brains. They place a very high premium on education, which traditionally the Scots have done much more than the English. And if the Scots could tell us how to adopt a more radical skills policy, that would be doing a lot of good. You see that the model the Brexiteers had was really a model, a kind of factor right model that outside the EU we could be more competitive. We deregulate, we reduce subsidies and tariffs. We would ideally before Covid reduce personal and corporate taxes to get entrepreneurs here to make us a kind of Singapore or New Zealand or Australia, whatever it is. Now, that probably won't happen. But whatever sorts of policy adopt, we do need much greater skills and adaptability, which we haven't got. It's been a problem Britain as a whole has faced, less so Scotland, I think, for many, many years. And if you could do something about that and suggest a skills policy, both for Scotland and the rest of the country. So we've got wonderful universities, our universities, both in England and in Scotland and Glasgow, other universities, amongst the best in the world, no question. But we do badly on those who are interested in technical and vocational education always have done. We look down on people that are sort of dirtying their hands as it were. We do very badly there. We do well academically, but not on this other end. This is, I think, something you might look at, really. Well, thank you for that. That's a very good point. We'll take that up. Now, on behalf of all the people we've had over 140 people joining in, I'd like to thank Professor Bogdanoff for the most interesting, stimulating talk and especially on the Q&A part of the end. I hope you, I'd love to give you a bottle of whiskey or something. It'll have to be over the moment. I much enjoyed it, thank you. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be in Glasgow, which is a wonderful city. But before passing it to me, I'm sorry I couldn't come. But another time, I hope.