Brexit Made Us Poorer? Think Again | Vote Leave CEO Lord Elliot

30:47And he put out briefings on both sides, and people really were guessing until the very last minute, would it be for leave or remain? That whole process, that whole build-up, and the fact he hadn't indicated which way, and he was the most popular politician in the UK, when he came out for leave, that was hugely important. What it meant for people is that they may also have been slightly doubtful and slightly on the fence and wondering which way to go. So to see Boris do that, who was very popular, swayed a whole bunch of people. And, of course, the other key thing was that with David Cameron, with the Bloomberg speech, what he'd said was that Britain would be better off out an unreformed EU.

31:28So when he failed to get anything meaningful from the renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the EU, essentially on his terms, he should have been voting leave. So it was actually quite a jump when he went in for Remain, and enthusiastically and full-heartedly, and then almost sort of said that the world would collapse, we were going to vote leave. So he lost credibility at that point. So we were thinking of the electorate really in terms of how will they leave or remain or swing voters and how enthusiastic were they going to be. And there were a lot of people at the beginning of the referendum thinking that it would be a fairly sort of, perhaps not low turnout, but like a low general election turnout, in which case would be the enthusiastic voters who would be turning out and that would be the key race.

32:13But what became apparent was actually that, as this was seen on referendum day itself, it was people who hadn't voted for years. and successive cycles hadn't been voting, who came out. And when that happened, we knew from that diagram we did right at the beginning that those people were more likely to be for leave. Yeah. Why do you think that Brexit became such a forceful issue? And what I mean by that is, in some ways, it's actually quite complex contracts law. And it's quite technical policy-wise. And yet it became this sort of lightning rod for the country in terms of it being such a significant issue that really stoked passion so strongly.

33:08Why do you think that happened? I think Britain, like other Western democracies, was going through a lot of change at the time. And you can see this in other countries too, where a combination of the effect of the financial crisis, that was crucial. And if you look at the period from 07-08 through to 2016, basically people's living standards hadn't really gone up very much. So people were feeling poor. And that whole thing of the 2.5 % growth we had until 2007, collapsing down to 1, 1.5 % growth a year after that, people really felt that in a big way. So they were feeling poorer than they were.

33:56Of course, you also saw the effects of migration. That became a huge issue politically. And that was really affecting people. And the whole idea of people saying, we want our country back. that sort of feeling was really hitting into politics. And also there's a rise of a sort of anti-politician feeling, which really came to the fore in the UK with the MP's expenses scandal in 2008 and 9-10, that sort of time. And that was a huge issue. But what I would say is that these three issues were happening across the Western democracies. And of course, we saw it within America with Donald Trump, who was the sort of same year, 2016 as well.

34:41But also we've seen in other European countries, with a slight lag to the UK, we've seen how politics has gone from being, broadly speaking, a centre-right party and a centre-left party, a sort of very traditional parties dominating the scene, to moving towards the extremes. And look at France, look at Germany. You see the rise of the populist parties on the right and the Green Party and Socialist parties on the left. This has happened in all the countries for all those similar reasons. But I think in the UK, and this again goes through the countries as well, there was a very traditional voting pattern in the UK up until really the 2000s where basically people were voting along some economic lines.

35:28And roughly speaking, the more well off you were, the more likely you were to vote Conservative. Yeah, broadly speaking. But it was very much a sort of two-party system, taking up the whole race. You've seen a change really since the millennium to now, where that sort of economic voting has been replaced by, some people call it cultural voting. Some people talk about, you know, more internationalist versus more sort of country-centric voting, nationalistic voting, different ways of describing it. but basically people's voting has changed. And now you almost have a situation where people are more likely to vote on the left if they're wealthier and they can be slightly sort of protected from the globalisation and migration and issues like that.

36:16And actually you tend to get people who are slightly poorer being more inclined towards the right now, voting reform and the like. So politics has really changed in a big way. Now, the fact it happened in the UK in 2016 with the referendum, that really criticised everything. And that was, in a sense, a big bang, just like Trump's election in 2016 was a big bang in US politics. But I would argue that similar changes have happened in other democracies for similar reasons. Why do you think the cultural issues have become so much more important? because in a way, and I was struck by this in the book, you've always been focused on economics and growing the economy.

36:57It's a big thing, yeah. And yet that has been a big problem since 2008. And yet rather than it kind of ratcheting up the political agenda, it's sort of, as you say, kind of, there are other things that have come in and sort of crowded around it that we expect from our politicians. We've come a long way from Bill Clinton, it's the economy, stupid. Yeah. Why? So I see the one reason for the culture wars as being low economic growth. And if you have basically GDP per capita stalling, in fact, going backwards in some areas. so people fighting over a static economic pie and having to be cut up into many, many more pieces, that's when you start having fights between people and people saying, well, your rivals shouldn't be getting this money.

37:52That's where the economics hits culture. If you've got a growing economy, you can absorb more migration and you can have less cultural tensions than if you've got a static economy. Yeah. It's interesting because every politician has almost defined this like they have led our country over the last few years from Liz Truss to Keir Starmer you know and Richard Sunak all saying growth is going to be my number one priority and then they get blown off course by it in one way or another and it just strikes me it is the issue that counts above all else and yet it doesn't seem to get interest. I think another problem is that politicians had longer time horizons if you go back to, let's say, the 80s when Thatcher was around.

38:42So what Thatcher did with her pro-growth free enterprise policies, she knew that when she brought them in, there would be a hit. But she was seeing things in terms of an electoral cycle of basically four or five years before the next election, where she could make some changes. She would have a dip in popularity for year one and two of her period in office. But by the time we got to years three and four, things will be on the upswing, people will see the benefits and will come round to the party again. Now you don't see that. Now basically politicians I think are much more obsessed by the short term, by following where public opinion is at any one time, by always keeping their popularity up and not be willing to do anything that's tough or difficult or will hit their popularity.

39:26And I think that's partly also changed in terms of how the media operates and things are much more bam bam bam rather than sort of daily news cycles and the ability of politicians to sort of separate themselves out of it i mean it was interesting i was talking to a labour mp the other day we are recording this before andy burnham has fought the kind of make feel by election which shows just how fast i need to say that but admitted that essentially they got caught up a bit in the kind of like hysteria and the momentum of it and living on twitter and we're now actually thinking like should i you know should we back starmer essentially which i just think is an interesting point but they've already come out and said that you should go and so you know it's just it's just really difficult but they got almost got caught up in that kind of crazy 48 hours i mean the labour party is my area of expertise but But I do wonder whether, looking back, when Keir Star was writing his memoirs, he'll think, you know, crikey, I wish I made more of the opportunity of the election in 24.

40:32Because from where I was sitting, it seemed like for basically a year, two years before that election, it was fairly obvious who he was going to win. So at that point, you could have really been preparing the ground and thinking about what to do. So when he came in, he could have had a really successful first 100 days, first budget, really focused on growth and things like that, making some difficult decisions when it came to things like planning to get house building going, perhaps making some difficult decisions in terms of tax rates for businesses to attract investment, knowing that they may slightly isolate his core vote on the left, but actually see the rewards come to the election, people actually realise why he was doing it.

41:15But the fact he didn't come in with a plan meant he lost momentum so quickly and in fact seemed to go contrary to what he was saying during the election. He was saying sort of go for growth, go for wealth creation and then bringing in the increase in employers and things like that. Just really cut that off straight away. Yeah, it's funny. The Maguire Pogren book I think is amazing on this in terms of like the lack of preparation that there was. I mean, it's like within 100 days they'd got the problem that, you know, they had to change the chief of staff, get rid of Sue Gray, etc. and it just seems mad kind of looking back on it all really.

41:52And how do you think, it's quite interesting though, isn't it? Because almost some of these things need to be separated out, right? It's like you need to let the campaign, it's actually what I think the Conservative Party got sort of quite good at with Lyndon Crosby, et cetera, which is the campaign needs to be done by one side and then you need preparation for government almost need to be separated out. They are two very separate things, which has probably only come about in the last 25 years or so. I think so. This is much more your area than mine. But it does strike me, if you look back at successful prime ministers of recent years who have sort of achieved what they were sort of setting out to achieve.

42:30This is probably controversial now, but let's say Tony Blair. Tony Blair in office. Having Jonathan Powell look after the operational side as chief of staff, and having the political side looked after by really sort of Alice Campbell and sort of Peter Mandelson, I guess. Yeah. Philip Gordons in the polling. So very clear division between the two. And similarly speaking, I'd say with David Cameron's time in opposition and into government, having Ed Llewellyn, very operational, you know trains running on time that sort of thing and very effective chief of staff very low-key with the politics being looked after by really sort of George Osborne in a sense yeah and Andy Coulson and people like that but again a very clear division between the two from my reading what happened within Labour is that Keir Starmer thought that Sue Gray would be the operational chief of staff making sure that Whitehall was running smoothly all the preparations were done and she seemed to try to take over from McSweeney and try and take on his political role as well, causing a whole bunch of infighting and, you know, frankly, ruining his first 200 days.

43:36Yes. I do think it's interesting in that sort of Downing Street chief of staff role, how both Llewellyn and Powell seem, well, works alongside the two longest-serving prime ministers of this century, right? And how much of the foreign affairs side of it they were able to pick up, I always think, is an interesting thing because that ends up taking up so much of the PM's time and people don't see that as much. So yeah, fascinating. What are your thoughts on how campaigning will change over the next 10 years? We've touched on AI a bit, but what are the things that we might see coming down the line?

44:17I think one thing we're seeing in terms of campaigning is really a much bigger focus on single-issue campaigns, which are perhaps slightly shorter-lived, perhaps in response to a certain government policy or a certain issue that's flared up in a country, and will only last that issue with that period of legislation. But those shorter-lived campaigns are a big thing. And like I was saying, with campaigning becoming much more um you know faster paced you can set things up quickly on social media uh they'll need less sort of back office if you like less resource to make it happen i think we'll see a lot more shorter lived single issue campaigns rather than perhaps the bigger more established campaigns that carry on for decade after decade after decade yes i think that's that's true it's my great worry actually you know sometimes we talk about universal basic income and whatever is that we'll just if that came in everyone would turn into like mini campaigners and it would be an essence of more left-wing stuff that's being campaigned for um so yeah that's a uh it's an interesting observation one of the most heart warming parts of the book is where you is the afterward where you talk about being diagnosed with autism and the kind of impact that's had, but also understanding how you've got special skills, partly as a result of it.

45:48What prompted you to go and get the diagnosis? Because you got it in your early 40s, right? It's a very good question. Funny enough, it was actually, I'd often had, I'd long had sort of suspected it. But when COVID hit and COVID affected us all in different ways, but for me, I'm quite regimented in my approach in the sense of going to the office at the same time every day, doing things a certain way, eating in the same places. I'm quite sort of boom, boom, boom. That's how I've always operated my life. And that's what I've been most comfortable with. And of course, when COVID happened, all that was disrupted.

46:26Going into working from home, in my case with our second child, just called the first day of lockdown. So, a toddler in the house does a new baby, and lockdown happening, and what's happening. That really threw me one. And that actually prompted me, why couldn't I be more flexible and adapt to this, as most people seem to? so that really thought okay right let's go from sort of thinking i might be autistic to actually getting it properly diagnosed so i did and i'm really pleased that day because i think it helps me understand myself a lot better and it's given me um some great traits um in particular i think the the focus i have um has been a big sort of help so uh the whole thing with um special interests and for me, basically not just politics more broadly, but also the single issue campaigns I sort of grab on.

47:24And to be able to sort of channel that interest into all the ups and downs of sort of setting something new up means it perhaps gives you a bit more resilience and perseverance than perhaps other people would have. So as you know, with any startup, you need to see through difficult times. So for me, having that sort of focus has been a great help with those sort of single issue campaigns. It's had some sort of difficult sides too. I think that with politics, obviously a lot of it's verbal and about communication. That's never been a thing that's come naturally to me, going way back to my sort of childhood and, you know, speech therapists and non-verbal and all that sort of stuff.

48:05So that's always been a challenge to me. So I've had to sort of think of waves around that, not least hiring great people to do a lot of the comms for me, which has been helpful. But having that diagnosis really helped. And also, I think it helped me, funny enough, helped give me a little bit of an insight into what I do now with the Jobs Foundation. And one of the challenges facing the autistic community in the UK is very low rates of employment, about 30 % compared to a national average of 75%. But one of the crucial challenges is getting more autistic people into work. So for me, that sort of sparked a little bit of an interest in terms of what I'm doing with the Jobs Foundation now.

48:50But I feel very comfortable with it and I haven't really started talking about it until recently. But I felt that with the book, with the memoir, because I talked so much about it in quite a personal way and transparent way, I hope, in terms of my career and some of the ups and downs of different campaigns and Brexit and the aftermath, I thought I had to have that additional dimension in there as well and talk about my autism. And how did it change the way you approach things? Or did it? Did it just give you more awareness and able to explain to people, look, this is the best way to work with me, etc.?

49:27Like, how did it change your approach? I think it has helped internally in the sort of the team and office environment. Again, I can be quite structured and quite rigid and I like things done in a certain way. And I would hope that with colleagues, being open about it has helped them as well.

49:51Yeah, I think that's a key one. Talk me through some of the stats about autistic people and the work at the Jobs Foundation. Because I was quite struck by like how big the divergence is. Sure. So the employment stats, you know, 30 % of autistic people who work should be sort of 75 % of its national average. There's 45 % gap there. There are all sorts of great businesses who do lots of good work in this area. I could name a few we've seen like Green King, the pub chain. They have a special scheme to help neurodivergent people into work, in particular autistic people. What they've often found is actually there can be some – this is why they have training schemes and special schemes for it – initial issues in terms of making sure that people can integrate well and understand the job well.

50:49But once they're in the job and working there, actually their longevity in the job and the fact they stick around tends to be much better than most employees. JP Morgan did an interesting study back in, I think it was 2015, where they hired four autistic people to come and do work in the bank. And what they found was within six months, those people were 48 % more productive than the people who'd been there for a long time. So actually getting people into a job, training them, point them in the right direction, you can see huge productivity gains. That scheme is now done by many professional companies across the world.

51:33So I think as people become more aware of neurodivergence, I think you'll get more companies doing schemes like this. and actually in the world of um we talked about ai earlier and ai changing the employment market um you may get companies actually thinking they need people who do perhaps see the world in a slightly different way yeah i think that's true and i think it's an area that we've probably underutilized well definitely underutilized in terms of it um but it will be fascinating to see how it uh how people do do it because i think it is such a it is such a scale uh and i was thinking there's the stat that you had around 700 000 uh uk adults with autism i part of me thought about your own story in that and i wondered how many are undiagnosed beyond that potentially as well like it's i think there'll be a lot and i think over time there'll be more and more who come out and perhaps more um open about it which I think would be a good thing.

52:35Yeah, absolutely. No, I remember Matt Hancock coming out about dyslexia definitely inspired me to kind of talk about it a bit more and, you know, sort of realise my ways of working, of, you know, not being a great writer. And actually it's something that AI has helped with a lot, right? Because I can get good thoughts down on paper, but, you know, it really helps sort of tidy it up and stop silly spelling and grammar mistakes. um what was the process like after vote leave and after you've won the referendum and how did you decide kind of what to do next that's a great question um i was probably being very naive after vote leave so i sort of almost thought that um you know uh historic unexpected referendum victory um you know companies will be sort of falling over backwards too so welcome me to their great hauls or great salaries.

53:31It wasn't like that. Of course, the shock of the result and the backlash from it meant there was that period afterwards where basically, I won't say I was cancelled in any way, but I suddenly wasn't welcome in some of these great companies. You mentioned in the book about social invitations and things sort of drying up, definitely. Social invitations definitely dried up. And funnily enough, there's some bizarre examples too. I did actually go to work part-time for Shore Capital Group, which I loved working in a bit of investment banking. That's my side of things. I loved that. One day out of the blue, somebody got in touch working for one of quite a big corporate, I'm not going to name them.

54:17We started exchanging articles about Brexit and that sort of thing, as you do on LinkedIn and messaging. And they were working quite close to where SureCap is. And they said, do you want to go out for coffee one day? And I said, sure. And it was all sort of set up. And on the day itself, when it came, they cancelled. And they cancelled because they'd mentioned it to their boss. And their boss said, it wouldn't be a good idea if you do that. He's a Brexiter. So literally, because I was a Brexiter, they thought I couldn't go out for coffee. It wasn't going to be any sort of financial transaction.

54:50and there was nothing based on it. It was just purely two people with an interest in basic current affairs and what was going on beating up. Couldn't happen. That is mad. Yeah. That's how I just don't understand how it became so sort of totemic for people. Like, it's quite strange. Yeah. But talk to us about sort of the Jobs Foundation founding that. Like, what were the other sort of process? Once you got through that, But I mean, and also one of the things I found in that period was that it sort of, it dipped for a while in terms of Brexit anxiety. And then there was the challenge with the general election result.

55:32And then it just, then it started to go up and up and up again towards 2019. And it just, yeah, it was kind of, there was a weird, from my perspective, where I was. But there was a sort of, there was a law and then it all ratcheted back up again. I guess it sort of got caught up with Tory wars, frankly, in a sense, and post-2017 general election and all that. In terms of where I'm now, president of the Jobs Foundation, which I founded basically five years ago, but we launched three years ago, co-founded with George-Jana Bristol. And really, that's a great example of being able to use transferable skills.

56:13because one thing which is a sort of continuation throughout my career is building coalitions and sometimes tricky coalitions and you know in the book there's all all the sort of story in terms of building the vote leave coalition but it was same with the no to av campaign where we had to convince two-thirds of labor mps and peers to come on board as no even though ed milliband their leader at the time was in favor of yes getting different unions on board and i was there who's fresh from fighting MPs' expenses at the TPA, trying to get these people on board and sort of join a campaign, that was tough.

56:49So actually building those coalitions is perhaps one of the skills I've developed. And that's been helpful with VOTO AV, Vote Leave, definitely Jobs Foundation, and now trying to build a coalition of companies, large and small, but cross-party as well. And And it was brilliant to be able to publish a pamphlet recently on energy costs and North Sea oil and gas and get the GMB to write the forward. That's fantastic. So we're campaigning for the same thing. So I love that sort of coalition building side of things. And that's possibly why I've always kept a slightly lower profile in politics. It's easy to build those coalitions if you're not out there commenting on every bit of news that goes out there.

57:35Yeah. as we now see so often uh there's always a tweet um yeah exactly and and what's the what's the kind of aim of the jobs foundation and what are you trying to uh achieve with it so the aim of the jobs foundation is really to show how business is a force for good really for the jobs and training and opportunity that provides and i think this is a great untold story and you know it may seem obvious to you and me, especially with your podcast, that basically the fact that business is out there and creating all of these jobs, and it's not just a job, it's not just a pay packet at the end of the day, it's an opportunity for somebody.

58:15And even if you get in there at a sort of fairly low level, if you work hard and consistent, you can sort of climb up the ladder, that's a great thing that businesses do. And then that takes you on to the sort wider context of how can you make sure that businesses are thriving so they can create even more jobs. And then that leads you into the whole issue of economics. What's the right energy policy to make sure you have low energy costs? What's the right tax policy, making sure we don't have higher employees? And I, that's killed a lot of jobs and really harmed the NEATS employment market in a big way.

58:53So really, it takes me on to the wider economic policy. But But really, for me, the personal thing of making sure there are jobs out there and giving people that leg up in life, that's really important to me emotionally, actually, as a sort of mission in life. But also takes me into my wider love of economics and having a good sort of pro-market, pro-enterprise economy where businesses can thrive. and where do you see the future of jobs in terms of do you think now that we are in a permanent sort of declining employment force etc or you know because it was only six years ago that we were sort of at peak levels of employment and it's it's now one of these things again it's like one of those slow trends now that it's more more people becoming unemployed and it's interesting talking back to you about the sort of low productivity and low economic growth.

59:47I just wonder if we sit down in five, ten years' time from now, what will look like we're living in right now when it comes to jobs? When it comes to the employment rate in the UK, let's focus in particularly on NEETS. It's easy to think that perhaps the NEETS crisis and NEETS challenge is perhaps to do with, you know, reckless youth or social media and things like that. Well, if that was the case, why do other countries not have a needs crisis post-COVID? So it is slightly structural to the UK and the UK jobs market. And I'm really confident that the UK can get this right, but we need to have flexibility as an economy.

1:00:33AI is coming. We've got to be flexible to adapt with it. We've had technological changes before, and we've always had the flexibility to make sure that the new companies of the future, the new jobs of the future, are being created and set up. But if we're too inflexible, that's when we'll really be hit by AI. So I really hope that we have a flexible enough economy, one that will attract the right investment set to the new companies, that we don't get hit too hard by it. One thing I would say is that, funnily enough, this slightly ties back to Brexit. By being in charge of our own regulatory regime, it has meant we'd be able to carve a bit of a niche out on things like tech policy.

1:01:16That's one of the great drivers behind the tech in the UK, which is one of the key areas of growth. Ditto life sciences, that's really helped with it as well. So you can find these areas of the economy where if you have control over the regulation, you can make sure that you actually carve out a good future for the UK. So I hope that whoever's prime minister in a few weeks time, when they're thinking about the economy going forward and employment going forward, they're making sure that the UK as an economy is able to attract the right investment, the right talent, to be able to make sure we have those jobs and companies of the future.

1:01:51one of this i really enjoyed towards the end of the book was the chapter of sort of evaluating brexit and kind of how it's gone on because i don't think enough of that deep analysis happens and i think there becomes a trait that is happening amongst people to sort of say that it was there is a kind of consensus forming around the kind of metropolitan liberal elites yeah that it's not been a good thing, it's damaged economic growth, etc. Now we can all see that. Whereas actually, you had a list of reasons pointing out what had gone well in it. But it feels like that conversation does get... That argument doesn't get put forward as much.

1:02:38Now, it's partly, I think, because the Brexiteers don't have the institutions. And so they've sort of... They've kind of disseminated a little bit. I'd just love your take on that. This comes back to campaigning. When you're in opposition, if you like, you have every reason to basically pull together a campaign. So when Britain was inside the European Union, of course it was Eurosceptics who were sort of setting up campaign groups and campaigning away and creating the weather in the media. Now we've left the EU, it is more the pro-EU side, the Remain side, if you like, who are out there campaigning away and creating the stats and feeding these to the media.

1:03:18So in a sense, the Brexiteers have taken a step back, which is perhaps a mistake. I would say though, that when it comes to Brexit itself and evaluating it, I think you do need sort of a cool head. Of course, it wasn't project fair. That didn't happen. The economy didn't collapse. and we didn't get a spike in unemployment, that didn't happen. People talk about how perhaps there was a sort of decline of growth because of Brexit. What I would do is basically track us against other Western European economies. And we've certainly done better than Germany and Italy by a long shot. And we've done roughly the same or perhaps slightly better than France, depending on the stats that you've got, per capita or as a whole.

1:04:06So I'd say within that swim of sort of Western European economies, we're basically with them. And I think that Tony Blair was writing his essay a few weeks ago when he said that it's not about Brexit. And if you think that rejoin the EU will change things, that's basically his own comfort blanket. We've got to actually look at where we are as a country now with the world economy as it is and the rise of AI and the rise of the Middle East and China. and evaluate our position from that basis, not basically the basis of relationship that went back 40 years before that. So I think as a country, we really need to think, we do have a growth problem in the UK.

1:04:49How do we fix that? All the tools are there. And I can sort of plug another book that I wrote last year on prosperity through growth. You very kindly had Arthur Laff on the podcast last October, I think it was, to talk about that. But in terms of the tax spending, regulation, trade, monetary policy the formula for economic growth is there if you have the political will and the stamina to follow it what do you think about the power of regulators that is one of the things that really strikes me now that is the biggest challenge that we have with our economy is that these regulators that's obviously regulations existed 30 40 years ago but these things and it's one of the reasons why i'm very skeptical about the football regulator because it will just get bigger and bigger that all of these do and the power they amass is actually quite large and there is no democratic accountability for a lot of them the football regulator is a great example because of course people almost don't don't sort of see the um premier league as being a business do they no they sort of think it's almost like sort of part of civil society perhaps yes um but it is actually at its core really a business isn't it and there's a big chance with the football regulator, that will kill off the Premier League as being a sort of, you know, key asset for the UK and being sort of the best football league in the world.

1:06:13It's a real danger. At a more sort of granular level when it comes to regulation, I think there's some basic things we could get right. One is planning. That's a huge one. And, you know, the government, of course, came in with, you know, great aspiration to build a lot more houses as every government comes in with that aspiration to build more houses. And there's some basic things in there, like things like the Habitats Directive from the EU, which is basically at its heart why HS2 ended up costing so much. There's some basic things like that that we need to look at and take a sort of serious look at these rights to make sure we're building and sort of growing as a country and having the right infrastructure and housing for people.

1:06:55So we need to look at things like that. But also I think that when it comes to regulation more generally. I think, for example, Eurosceptics after the referendum, once we left the EU, there's almost a feeling that let's just reverse all of the Brussels regulations. That will fix everything. Now, that basically wasn't going to happen because there was so much of it. Much better to incorporate it as it was already incorporated in law and then basically work out right as a country what do we want our economic future to be where do we see the growing parts of the economy being uh yeah we've got a great specialism in life science that's great for the uk uh we've started one in sort of tech we're doing pretty well in that um the other sectors too yeah universities and what have you where we really excel at the moment how can we make sure that regulation and tax policy is properly optimized to make sure that those areas, those bets we're placing, are the ones that will really take off over the coming years.

1:07:56And I think that any government coming in really needs to sort of think about the economy in those terms. And, you know, in a sense, pick some winners by making sure we've got the most optimal regulation in those areas. Yeah, I completely agree. One final thought I just wanted to ask about, perhaps ties a few of the threads together a bit, is you've talked about your kind of special skill building coalitions. That is not a trait that would probably be normally associated with autistic people in terms of they are often seen as sometimes they work in a way that is suitable for them, etc. That's interesting.

1:08:38But it's quite... So I just wonder how you sort of pull that together. I don't know. That's a very interesting thought. Maybe one will have to come back. With coalition building, a lot of it is perseverance too. So actually having that map in your mind of basically, right, what's the coalition that we need to be able to win this thing? Who are the people we need to be involved? You know, that's all. You'd call it stakeholder mapping, wouldn't you, in PR and public affairs. You know, who's that universe of people that we need to approach and who are the right messages for them and what's the right message?

1:09:12When I start out with a campaign, I do have a vision of how it can be won. And basically from the beginning to the end, what's the right message for it? Who are the right messengers? What's the right medium to get the comms out? So actually be able to sort of see that vision for how it should look and then be able to piece it all together. And having the patience and persistence to actually bring it all together. That's perhaps a skill. I think that is a very neat way to finish. Lord Elliot, thanks very much for coming on Jimmy's Jobs for the Future. It's been a real pleasure.

1:09:47you you