with me is sir simon fraser — he is a managing partner at the business cosultancy, flint global.e used to be permanent secretary at both the uk foreign office & department for business as well as chief of staff to the eu's trade commissioner. soa man so a man well placed to give us an insight into what's going on! i'd like to get your reaction to the british foreign secretary's boris johnson's comment a few days ago that this border issue is being caused to frustrate brexit, what's your assessment? i don't think that was the case, we have boys known this was a key issue and liam fox, as we have heard, hasn't said avoiding a hard border is essential. 0ne avoiding a hard border is essential. one of the things is that the government has got to come up with a proposal outlining what it wants. we have had significant days in the past year of the negotiations but it becomes significant today, the lawyers have to get in a room and the first things out and there does not seem to be a significant position from the british government. yes, it's important, we are moving from political negot

doctor simon fraser seemed less than impressed.r the time being we've lost the plot in terms of understanding or we intend to go and it has to be said that in terms of big geopolitical strategy, whilst brexit is consuming us and this country, it is not the central deal in global geopolitics. i think that global britain at the moment is really a slow oven, and we need more clarity of thought. as a set in the streets that mr murray referred to, it seemed to me that we need to think through, where that leaves us on the international stage, what are the objectives that this country outside the european union will be seeking to achieve in its international policies, what are the priorities for us, what is the message we want to give to the world? what are the relationships and institutions and other methods of leverage that we're going to use to achieve our goals. at the moment, there's a lot of mushy thinking about this and a lot of simplistic words, and we need to sit down and put some hard content behind it. when i was a vicar, the o