Hello and welcome to our sixth Beyond Brexit podcast.

Since our last episode in March, a lot has happened, an unexpected general election with an

even more unexpected result and the start of the negotiations from the UK to exit the European Union.

I'm joined today by three of our experts to help us consider the political landscape,

some international perspectives and the free movement of labour.

On our panel we've got Neil Sherlock, our head of reputational strategy, who has held a number of governmental

advisory roles, including being special advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, where

he covered business issues and political reform.

Julia Onslow Cole, head of global immigration and legal markets leader, who has been advising various

governments on European immigration and the refugee crisis. She also sits on the Mayor of

London, Sadie Kahn's Brexit expert advisory group. And thirdly, Ray Taylor is from our

public policy and reputational affairs team and is based in Brussels.

So Neil, shall I start with you? So perhaps you could just give us an update on the political

landscape post the general election. Has anything changed?

Well, as you rightly said, it was an unexpected general election because we had a fixed term

parliament and the Prime Minister called a vote which led to the election.

The assumption was from people in every party, all the pundits, all the pollsters,

that there'd be a big Conservative win.

And then when we saw the exit poll from John Curtis, we knew what was happening.

And in fact, the Conservatives had lost seats, Labourhood gained seats,

and therefore we had a minority government. And within

that situation in a way, it's a bit sort of back to the future, the future being 1976, 77,

...