My guest is Paul Tucker. So Paul Tucker is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former deputy governor of the Bank of England. His latest book is called Global Discord, Values and Power in a Fractured World Order. Welcome to the podcast, Paul. I should say welcome back. Oh, it's really nice to be back. Thanks for having me, Paul. Right. So this is quite a dense,

heavy and a very serious book, extremely comprehensive and wide-ranging, all about what you call

geo-economics within geopolitics. Before we come onto some of the scenarios you've been

sketching out, obviously you spend a great deal of time thinking about these kind of things.

So what prompted you on this occasion, since you've written books in the past, what prompted you, motivated you to write this particular book?

Two things, really.

I mean, one was just a sense that our generation, anybody that is served in power or being a commentator on power government over the past decades has been able to take for granted peaceful coexistence among the major powers.

And I think that it's well before the Ukraine war. I came to think that this was something not to take for granted.

And so it always seemed to me, or long seemed to me,

that the rise of China would change the world in profound ways,

which we will discuss.

The other thing is that my first book, having been about constitutional democracies,

delegating lots of power to central banks and regulators and others that don't have to go

and answer in parliaments in quite the same way and don't stand for election.

There's a kind of parallel with our governments having pulled a lot of power

and delegated a lot of power to international organisations.

Of course, the EU is a special case of that.

But even with the EU effectively delegates power and pulls power in the IMF, Basel, the United Nations, the International Court, and so on.

And I thought that the shared thing with my previous book is how much power can shift away from parliaments without the people getting a bit fed up.

Right. So your book is the starting premises we're living in a fragmented world. I think most

people would agree with that. So what does fragmentation in your book mean in practice and in detail?

I mean, it's all about maybe designing international institutions for a world in which the liberal dream of growing harmony is no longer feasible.

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