Robert Paston

Because of the collapse of trust in those who run this place.

I mean, you know, you see a similar phenomenon with the rise of Trump.

The problem was people in low income areas felt that over many years they'd been let down by the likes of Blair and Cameron and Osborne.

And so when they heard Cameron and Osborne and Blair saying it's in your economic interest to stay in the EU, they did.

I'm afraid they did what Michael Gove was urging them to do.

They basically didn't trust them and they didn't trust the experts like you who were saying, actually, these guys are right.

And somehow we've got to rebuild trust again.

you know, in politicians and indeed in experts.

So we've had an absolutely fascinating conversation.

There's one other thing I want to talk to you about, just because it's something that comes up a lot on this podcast.

We talk about it a lot, which is the whole question of the competence of British management, putting the EU to one side.

Actually, you know, the UK did have a period in the run-up to Brexit and certainly in the run-up to the financial crisis

And within Europe, the British economy performed relatively very well.

Over a long period of time, we performed, for example, significantly better than Germany.

Historically, we regarded as the kind of competitor that was always going to do better than us.

But productivity...

has been depressingly low for 20 now years.

Growth in general has been low.

Living standards have been suppressed.

There is an argument that says that part of the problem is that those who run our companies, the quality of our managers is not as good, for example, as those in America.