This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Jonathan Grant.

Jonathan Grant is the director of the Policy Institute at King's College London.

Jonathan, you wrote a piece for E Sharp just after the referendum result at the end of June,

where you talked about

I'm an expert and I'm proud of it.

And you made a comment about the anti-foreign, anti-expert sentiment and much the debate

joined the referendum campaign.

Could you talk a bit about what you meant by that?

Yes, I think one of the sort of shocking aspects of the debate we had up to the referendum on June

23rd was how we challenged the role of the experts in society.

And Michael Gove, the former Justice Minister, came out with a statement saying, you know,

the countries had enough of experts and I

think that it was a very very dangerous comment to make and something that as an expert

as I make clear in that article we need to but rest I think we I think there are a

number of issues going on in that. The expert is being conflated

with elites, and clearly there is also an anti-elite sentiment in the referendum debate. We have to be

careful what we mean by elites because there are elites that are deserved, they're merit-based elites

who we've asked to make decisions on our behalf. And there are probably elites that are not

deserved who haven't gotten to those positions of power through merit-type routes. So I think

we've got to unpack what we mean by elites. And then we have to unpack

what we mean by experts. And as I point out in that article, if my toilet leaks, I call a plumber.

A plumber is an expert. We are all experts. And we've got to really start to respect the fact

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