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Hello and welcome to a special Coffee House at Shots podcast with the former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott.

James, nice to be here.

Well, Anthony, you're in London. You gave a speech yesterday at Policy Exchange saying that if Brexit fails, Britain fails.

Coming from overseas, how do you see the British political situation as you've landed here?

Look, I should be absolutely straight with you. I'm an incorrigible anglophile. Always have been,

always will be. Britain is an extraordinarily successful and an extraordinarily influential country. If you look at what Britain

has given the world, the Industrial Revolution, the mother of parliaments, the world's common language,

no country on earth has had as much impact on the wider world as Britain. The modern world

has effectively been made in English, if not always in England. So this is

an extraordinary country which has managed to get itself shackled in a European Union, which

I think is holding Britain back, which the British people have democratically decided to leave,

and that vote has been undermined and subverted at every turn by the British establishment,

and at the moment the Parliament is threatening to derail the thing.

Now, I just think that's verging on the unconscionable.

I understand that there are lots of people who were disappointed with the result.

I understand there are lots of people who, for their own perfectly good reasons,

would have preferred a different result.

But the people have spoken, and when the people speak in that way, a Democrat has got to say, okay, we'll do it.

Now, Theresa May was right when she said no deal is better than a bad deal.

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