Hi, folks. Welcome to the podcast of Lotus Thesis for Monday the 2nd of December, 2024. I have the pleasure of being joined by Ben Habib. Hi, Ben. How are you?

I'm very well indeed. Thank you, Carl. Thank you for having me on. I was really looking forward to this interview, I have to say.

It's been a long time coming, hasn't it? So obviously you guys won't know, but we've had massive scheduling problems.

I've been trying to get Ben on for ages, and it's just every single time someone's schedule

fell through, but finally we made it happen. It's my fault, I think, actually part of it.

I was trying to organise it to start with, wasn't I called? Anyway, enough of that, yeah.

But yeah, no, but I had the same problem on the other end. But anyway, so today we're going to be talking about what Brexit meant and why it hasn't

been properly followed through on, Keir-Stama's apparent turn towards the right, which I'm

very suspect about, and why Ben decided to leave the reform party, which I'm sure nobody

has any strong opinions on.

So, okay, so let's begin talking about Brexit then. So as I understand you've been a Brexit

supporter for the entire time that the topic had come about. You joined the Brexit party,

and you were a prominent voice among the right-wing commentariat about Brexit,

and you don't seem to have ever backed down from that position. So would you like to give me

a quick summary as to why you were a Brexit here? So I was actually, being frank, I was a mild

Eurosceptic. I'm a businessman by background, and I was a mild Eurosceptic. I'm a businessman by background. And I was a

mild Eurosceptic. I knew that I didn't want to be part of the European Union, but I was running my

business and getting on with life. And I didn't campaign for Brexit in 2016. I did donate to

vote leave, which was the appointed, you know, the anointed campaign group by the government.

But the thing that got my attention was Mark Carney saying things like, if we vote to leave

the European Union, we will need to put 250 billion pounds aside in case there's a run on

the banks.

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