Hi everyone and welcome to this latest episode of the Brexit and Beyond podcast. And I'm delighted to

welcome today, Chris Gray, who's Emeritus Professor of Organisation Studies. We'll figure out what

that is later on at Royal Holloway. And also the author of a book, I recommend you very strongly indeed,

Brexit Unfolded, which basically tells the story of the Brexit process whilst critiquing it.

He writes better than I speak in the process. Chris, warm welcome to you.

Hi, and Anne. Thanks for having me on. I mean, there's an awful lot to talk about, not least the fact that we both

have picked on the similar name, Brexit and Beyond You for your blog and us for our podcast. But I want to

start with the book itself. The key claim, perhaps, of the book is that Brexit unfolded as it did,

and you argue badly, because of the flawed nature of the Brexit project itself. Can you just

sort of elucidate on that a little bit? Yeah. Even within that, there's two components,

because I think that I kind of want to say it was a flawed project in itself, but that even given its flaws,

the way in which it was executed, kind of exacerbated those flaws. But I suppose, you know,

it's not a new observation at all, but the key kind of flaw, I think, was this, was the fact

of not specifying what it meant at the level of the time of the referendum. And therefore,

it became possible for it to mean, and it did mean, you know, all kinds of at the time of the referendum. And therefore it became possible for it to mean,

and it did mean, you know, all kinds of different and contradictory things.

And I think that in itself was, you know,

was just inevitably a recipe for a certain kind of disaster

because how could it be that therefore be impossible for it to be delivered

in a way which was satisfactory

and which met all of those contradictory kinds of demands and imaginations. But then I think

nested within that, and this is quite, you know, quite a strong kind of theme of the book,

...