Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of InCompass.

Go to InCompass-Hevon.com for free access to all our podcasts to date.

This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Rob Ford.

Rob is the Professor of Political science at the University of Manchester

and co-author with Maria Sovaleska of a new book,

Brexit land, identity, diversity,

and the reshaping of British politics.

I know Rob, following your career,

you have an interest in this broad topic,

but what made you actually come to write the book

around this topic?

Well, I should divulge something about the author team here. We're actually husband and wife, and this book has it genesis in sort of many, many dinner table, lunch table conversations we

had because my wife and I have kind of complementary

research interests. So I've long been interested in the politics of immigration and nationalism

and national identity and the radical right. And she has done a lot of work on the politics of

ethnic minorities in Britain and elsewhere. And we decided that we wanted to try and write a book that

brought those two together. We were already talking about it before Brexit happened. But then

when Brexit did happen, we thought, well, an awful lot of people are thinking about this purely

in terms of Britain's sort of transactional relationship with the European Union. But we felt right from the outside that it was about a lot of people are thinking about this purely in terms of Britain's sort of transactional

relationship with the European Union, but we felt right from the outside that it was about

a lot more than that, and that it reflected indeed the kinds of identity conflicts which

regularly appeared in the kinds of political issues that we researched.

...