Uh, Ben, I want to, uh, I want to ask you a question first about Brexit, because Brexit has shaped all of our lives, but it's also shaped your life and, and your trajectory.

Uh, yes, so to quote John Lennon, "You don't know what you've got until you lose it." And I think the saddest morning of my life was when, in 2015, the Conservative Party won the general election, and my wife...

I'd been up all night watching the, the results coming in, and my wife found me in tears, and she said, "Oh, s- it's not so bad.

You know, the left will win the next election." I said, "No, you don't understand.

Britain is going to leave the European Union." That, that was, that was the moment when it seemed clear to me that, that this was an inevitability, and I've never felt more European than when I lost my European citizenship.

Um, as you can probably guess, I was very strongly in favor of remain in the referendum [laughs] campaign.

But the...

Ben, you've prepared some wonderful slides, and I, I, I've seen them, but I, I, I should have asked what would be the clever question that would bring us on, but I know you're interested in borders and questions about democracy, and I wonder maybe you might talk us through some of your slides and how it connects with how you approach some of these big questions.