This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Sir Julian Priestley.

Julian Priestley was the Secretary General of the European Parliament, its most senior civil servant, for 10 years,

and now he is a writer and commentator, and most recently published a political novel, a thriller,

called Putsch, available, as they say, at all good bookshops.

Julian, it's almost five months of the day since the famous referendum on UK membership

of the European Union. How do you see things now five months down the line?

First of all, we're entirely uncharted waters.

Article 50, which Jean-Claude Piraeus, who you interviewed recently, had something to do with the writing of.

Article 50 was never meant to be used, and so we're into a process of extraordinary complexity, and maybe what's

going to come out of the court cases at the moment about the parliamentary control of this process

will take us into very, very complicated areas, with the government having to be clear at the outset what part of all this

body of community legislation which applies in the EU will continue to apply.

So there's basically a fog there compounded by the fact that within the government there are clear

divisions between those who wish to have basically a complete break with the European Union

and those who would like to save what can be saved in terms of access to the internal market

membership of the internal market membership of a customer's union.

And the Prime Minister, and we have this on the authority of anybody who has had anything

to do with her, tends to play cards for her chest, is a secretive person, doesn't delegate,

is a detailed person, which may not be the qualities most required in a process which requires leadership.

So I think it's unfortunate that at a time of this great crisis, we have a government which is led by,

to use the words applied to Lord Liverpool, the arch

mediocrity, and an opposition about which perhaps we may talk later, but which defies description.

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