Greetings from Saudi Mexico and thanks for joining us again.

I guess your students read your speech that you sent to me.

And before we start, perhaps if you could just give us a brief overview of your background,

working in European politics from the time of Margaret Thatcher,

as well as your work with UKIP and

anything else we are not aware of.

All right, a very quick background then.

I spent four years, 1983 to 1986.

Most of you weren't even born then, I should think, working for Margaret Thatcher, who

was Prime Minister of Britain from 1979 until 1990.

And so I was there for four years when she was at the height of her powers as our Prime Minister.

And she took a thoroughly sceptical view of the value of the European Union.

She, like me, was very keen on the idea of Europe as a continent of individual nation-states,

and it's individuals within those nation-states that made Europe the successful place it is,

and the success of that I mentioned in the speech

that you all kindly read.

But she was not happy, and nor were any of us, that the European Union should be allowed

to govern us without our electing it. Now we do elect a European Parliament, but the European

Parliament is rather like the Duma of Tsar Nicholas II immediately before the Russian Revolution.

It was there, people elected it, but it had no real power.

And when Kerensky tried to give it some real power, it was that that triggered the Bolsheviks to have the revolution

because totalitarians don't like the idea of democracy, whereas on the centre right, which is where Margaret Thatcher and I were

...