Thank you for listening to this Spectator podcast. Before you start, I'm just here to briefly tell you about our Brexit flash sale.

You can get 10 issues of the Spectator for the price of one in our flash sale, plus a commemorative Brexit mug absolutely free.

It has the butterfly completely out of the box, which is the cover of our issue this week.

The offer ends on Monday and you can go to spectator.com.com.uk forward slash sale.

Hello and welcome to The Edition,

the Spectator's weekly podcast where we discuss

some of the most important and intriguing issues

within our pages each week with

the writers behind them. I'm Lara Prendergast. This week, it's finally Brexit Day. So has the

country's healing process begun? Plus, we look at what the response to the coronavirus tells us

about modern China. And finally, we ask, is it time we started building our own coffins?

First up, as the news agenda is dominated by things like Huawei, HS2 and public spending, could

politics be, and whisper this, returning to normal? In his cover piece this week, Rod Liddell writes

how, for the most part,

the election result has calmed the civil war between Remainers and Brexiteers. One such

Remainer who has reconciled herself with the result is Stephanie Bolzen, the UK correspondent for Germany's

developed newspaper. She writes in the issue this week about why Germans are so heartbroken about Brexit.

Stephanie joins me now and Rod joins us down the line. So Rod, Brexit's finally happening

this week. How are you feeling about it? Oh, reasonably cheaper. I think the country feels

reasonably chipper as well. Frankly, even the European Union was only ever a secondary concern to me

to respecting democracy. That was the thing which really infuriated me that the country

seemed as if it was not going to reflect a respect democracy. I was in favour of leaving the EU,

...