Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of E-Sharp magazine.

Go to e-sharp.E.U for free access to all our podcast to date. This is Paul Adamson,

and I'm in conversation with Stephen Fiddler. Stephen Fiddler is the UK and BRICS editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Steve, it's now a week since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

That was maybe not a great surprise to most of us.

But what is your reaction to the nomination to his cabinet

and the various advisory posts he's made since became Prime Minister?

Well, it does seem to be a cabinet that's designed to tell people that the UK is preparing

for an exit from the EU on October 31st come on May and if necessary, a no-deal exit.

So in a sense it's the cabinet that and if necessary, a no-deal exit.

So, in a sense, it's the cabinet that might have existed immediately after the referendum in June 2016,

because we have a lever prime minister, and he's surrounded by a large number of pro-leave cabinet ministers and your significant advisers. So if you like, finally the Leave campaign owns Brexit for the first time, probably,

since the referendum.

Well, it's early days, of course, of the Boris Johnson administration,

but there are already some signs of sort of unclear signals being given out from Downing Street.

One is that, of course, we have to prepare for the snow deal scenario, as you say.

But at the same time, the Prime Minister is saying that it's highly unlikely in what he's striving

for is a deal so what credence to give that is he do you think he's relatively sincere in trying

to seek a new deal with Brussels I find it hard to read what's inside people's minds and

one tries to sort of really look at their actions I think and it's it's hard to it's frankly hard to say

well what one can say that one knows already that a no deal Brexit would be a

difficult issue for the economy and as Philip Hammond the former Chancellor of the

...