Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

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Hi, I'm Toby Young, one of Quilets London-based editors.

The United Kingdom was due to leave the European Union on March 29th, but that date came and went and the British government still hasn't resolved the question of how to leave or indeed when.

One of the most eloquent and erudite voices on the leave side of the Brexit debate is Robert Toombs, a professor of history at Cambridge

and the author of the English and their history, among other books.

In addition to making the case for leaving the EU in the public square, he's the co-editor of

Briefings for Brexit, a website that brings together the handful of British academics who are

pro Brexit. I spoke to him in his rooms at St John's College, Cambridge.

Can you briefly summarize the case for leaving the EU?

Briefly is difficult.

I would say in my personal opinion is that first of all one has to look at the EU

its direction the problems it's facing which are in above political, the EU itself as a system creates opposition to itself,

which it has no way of resolving.

And therefore I think it's very clear one can see it by looking about around Europe

...