Hi everyone and welcome to this latest instalment of UK in a changing Europe's Brexit and Beyond podcast.

And today I'm delighted once again to be joined by not one, but two fantastic guests.

First we have the ubiquitous Jill Rutter.

Joining her today is Joel Roland, our own researcher who, as we're about to hear, has been

responsible for drafting our divergence tracker. Welcome both of you. Hi, Arnand. Hi, Anand.

So, Joel, starting with you, can you just do the basics and talk us through?

What is this divergence tracker?

And what is it meant to show?

Divergence basically comes back to how the UK is changing its rules now that it's left to EU.

As a member state, obviously, we copied all our laws that the EU was implementing,

and these were copied over into UK, UK rules during the process of Brexit. But now we have the

opportunity to diverge, if we so wish, to change rules which we've inherited from the EU,

or also not to follow new rules which the EU is pursuing and potentially go in a different

direction over any policy area from

financial services to agriculture. So the divergence tracker is basically there to look over what the

UK is doing, where it is making new rules which the EU isn't pursuing, or likewise where the EU is

doing stuff which the UK is not pursuing. And so this, yeah, really gets to the heart of what it

means to be, you know, an independent country doing things differently, not pursuing. And so this, yeah, really gets to the heart of what it means to be,

you know, an independent country doing things differently, not having to, you know, deal as Brexiteers

would present it with those kind of overly burdensome rules coming from the EU about, you know,

brandy bananas is the classic which Boris Johnson used to cite. How can the UK potentially do things a bit

more suited to its own needs? But really the

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