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Avantee west coast, feel good travel. Hello and welcome to the Red Box Politics Podcast and the Times I'm Matt Chorley.

Come and see us live in the recording of two special podcasts.

We'll be in Liverpool on September the 23rd.

Well we'll be asking have we reached Peak Corbyn

and then on Monday October 1st we'll be in Birmingham asking can the Tories survive and should they.

For tickets, time subscribers can go to my Timesplus.co.uk.

Now on to this week's episode also from a Times Plus event when the Times Senior Political

Correspondent and Red Box regular Lucy Fisher sat down with Stig Abel, editor of the Times

Literary Supplement to discuss his new book how Britain really works

an in-depth look at the challenges facing the UK.

Getting to grips with Britain is harder than ever a nation that chose Brexit, which rejects immigration but is dependent on it

is getting older but less healthy is more demanding of public services but less

willing to pay for them and is tired of intervention abroad but wants to remain a

global authority.

To let us now join Lucy and Stig is they try to explain how Britain really works.

What you see when you start thinking about it and going into the various rabbit holes that you end up that is

that nothing really is planned properly in this country. We are here because of a series

of accidents and decisions and partially held decisions that's led us to a place which is a bit of a mess.

And once you start unpicking that,

you probably need to do that to fully understand what it is to be British

...