Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you very much for tuning in.

Happy New Year to you all, although doesn't it sound an even more banal proclamation than usual,

given the context in which this year opens and some of the themes which make it quite a, quite such a dark start to the year of course we'll be exploring together so as ever with the podcast we've got a lot to get through if you're running start running if you're ironing

start ironing you'll have a few neatly crisp items garments by the end of this uh if it's okay with you, I'm going to start with a few

reflections on Brexit. I'll keep it short because you'll be fed up with Brexit, but I'll tell you,

it's quite dangerous to be fed up with Brexit. We've got to keep our eyes out and ears alert,

as I'll explain in a moment.

Then we'll come to questions.

We'll come to questions.

Actually, you've been busy during this silly Christmas New Year period with brilliant questions and points.

And I'll break up some of my reflections with your much more profound thoughts and questions because they relate to the kind

of things I'll be talking about. And for those of you who've joined us for the first time as a

positive start to the new year, thank you for joining in. This is the rock and roll politics

community. Takes many wacky forms. And you can email too anytime you wish. I'll give you the email details. I'll give it to you now actually. Now I can never remember. So I'm going to have to just look them up, look up the address. So if you want to write to me with any thoughts or questions, it's Steve Rick 14 at

iCloud.com. That's Steve Rick, S-E-V-E-R-I-C-1-4 at iCloud.com. And I'll put it on all the

podcast spiel, you know, wherever you get it, Spotify or iTunes or whatever.

So off we go. Just a few thoughts on that Brexit deal announced on Christmas Eve and then the

debate that followed kind of hours before the deadline was reached. It isn't a deal. I was wondering, maybe you were, given

how much time we've reflected on Brexit in this podcast, how the two sides were going to reconcile

all the fundamental differences that we've been exploring since 1848, the level playing field

from the EU side, the desire for a kind of pure

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