Hello and welcome to Coffee House. I'm Tim Shipman, the Plus Clubs of The Spectator,

and I am delighted to be joined today by John Bu. Professor John Boe. John is one of the most

interesting people I know. He is an academic. He's a historian. He's a biographer of leaders, including Castle Ray and Clement

Atley. He is a realist in the foreign policy sphere and a centrist dad by training and

inclination. But he's a centrist dad, I'm with a Kalashnikov. John is an interesting character

who has served four different

prime ministers advising them on foreign affairs from both different parties and in some regards

is one of the sort of consistent threads that has held the British security state together

over the last decade. So I'm delighted to welcome John to our show today.

Now, you have just penned a staggering 7,500 word essay for our decorous rivals over at the New Statesman.

New Statesman readers are lucky enough to have waded through all of that.

But fortunately, the spectator viewer, the spectator reader, is going to get the benefit

of you explaining it all quite quickly. Your argument basically is that we're at a bit of a

crunch moment here in foreign affairs and that that has huge domestic implications as well.

Just outlined in your argument, you basically think this is the fourth kind of big moment

that we've had in this country

over the last few hundred years and it's one that the political class needs to rise to.

Yeah, well, first of all, very nice to talk to you, Tim, and I salute your unsictarian behavior

for bringing me across the road from New Statesman Spectator rivalry into your warm and cozy

hovel for a discussion of the piece.

So the piece is a bit of an indulgence, as you say, in a seven and a half thousand word form.

It's a long essay.

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