The UK used to be known, not so long ago,
as 'the sick man of Europe'.
Then in the '80s and '90s and early 2000s, things improved.
But now I find when I travel in Europe
and elsewhere, people ask me what's wrong with Britain?
And it sounds very familiar to me,
it reminds me of my childhood.
So this will be my answer.
We are facing six interlocking crises simultaneously.
The first is economic.
We experienced the financial crisis.
But we've sort of overcome that.
But the big problem is that productivity is stagnant.
In fact, we have almost the worst record
on productivity among all the rich countries
apart from Italy.
That makes life very, very difficult. Because on average,
we're not getting better off.
The second crisis is over national identity,
and in particular the fundamental question
about whether national identity is exclusive;
one must have absolute sovereignty in the nation one
identifies with; or whether it can be complex,
ie can one be European and British at the same time?
And this relates, of course, to the way this particular crisis
has emerged, which is Brexit, the divisions over Brexit which
divide the country evenly and lead one side to conclude
that the other side is essentially
treacherous because it has betrayed its country
for this European cause.
The fourth crisis is political or of politics.
These divisions over Brexit, these divisions
over national identity, in other words,
made into a political cause, divide our parties.
They have rendered both the Conservative party
and the Labour party incapable of performing their functions
as governing parties or as the opposition party.
And that, of course, makes political life
basically impossible.
The fifth crisis is constitutional.
These are not just narrowly political questions.
Membership of the EU was a constitutional settlement
for Britain.
It resolved, as it were, the rules of the political game
for well over 40 years.
Undoing it by a referendum was itself a constitutional device.
We've had this now for a few decades.
But we've never really thought seriously
about how you implement constitutional decisions
of this kind made by referendum because parliament
has to do it.
And the referendum's meaning is not obvious.
And the final crisis, and possibly the most important
of all, is simply one of leadership.
Political leadership has been extraordinarily weak
now for quite a long time.
And it looks likely that the next election will be between
Boris Johnson leading the Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn
leading the Labour party.
If so none of these issues that I've discussed
are likely to be resolved.
And the overwhelming likelihood is
that the British constitution, political settlement,
and political life will continue to be a troubled mess
for the indefinite future.