From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CEO podcast.

It is a critical moment.

If we do not act with urgency, we would then severely undermine the liberal order.

Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it.

The wind is back in Europe's sales.

We have now a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever.

Hello, you're listening to the CER podcast with me, Beth Oppenheim.

And today I have with me John Springford, who is the CER podcast with me, Beth Oppenheim. And today I have with me,

John Springford, who is the CER's deputy director, and Christian Odendale, who is our chief economist,

who is on the phone from Berlin. And today we're going to talk about the diverging fortunes of Europe's regions. John and Christian both found, along with their co-authors, a kind of clustering effect where

highly skilled people and profitable businesses come together in successful cities, leaving less

successful areas behind. John, first of all, could you explain the title of your paper to listeners?

Why have you called this paper the big European sort? The title of the paper

is a kind of reference to a book which did the rounds in the United States and made a bit of a

splash by Bill Bishop, which is simply called the Big Sort. And it was a book published in 2008,

which explained or tried to explain some of the patterns of political polarization in the

US. And Bill Bishop's argument really is that rich, educated, younger and more liberal people

are tending to live together, closer together, in space, and that poorer, less educated,

older and more conservative people are doing the same. So you're essentially having a

sorting effect of people with different political outlooks and that's having some big effects on

political polarization. Bishop is kind of less interested in economics than we are, but we just wanted

to reference his book because obviously with the rise of the radical right and sort of neo-nationalism

...