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The journey to Brexit has been compared with many things, many of them unrepeatable on

a family podcast, but this week the cabinet sat round that famous table underneath the

portrait of Walpole and discussed how similar it was to a flight along distance flight.

I think you have to know your destination and sometimes you need to buckle up, tighten

it a bit and get through a little bit of turbulence knowing that the destination is within sight.

And trust the point.

Of course you trust the pilot, but you trust the entire team as well that it's working,

you know, you've got a ground, this is getting a bit torched, isn't it?

You've got a ground team, you've got a team of engineers, you've got your cabin crew,

you've got the whole team working together.

That's Damian Hines, the education secretary, my guest on political thinking this week,

more from him in just a moment.

It was apparently the international development secretary Penny Maudent who first suggested

that Brexit felt like a flight.

She pointed out that generally passengers want to hear from the pilot as they take off

and they land.

They don't want a voice coming over the intercom halfway through the journey saying we're

not sure where we want to land.

Someone else churped up in reply, better that than the pilot saying, I don't know how

to land at all.

Michael Gove, famous lever but also famously terrified of flying, joked that when that happened

...