Q: "Is there a moral failure in leadership?" *(transcribed with minor paraphrasing alterations, not verbatim word for word)
Dr. RAE North: "Completely, the interesting thing about it, an almost total failure, not of any individual, an almost collective failure to step up to the plate and deliver.
Dr. RAE North: "The EU is a very complex subject, a very complex biological organization. And if you are going to make intelligent decisions about your relationship with this organization, about how it works and how your own government works, and what we see MP's doing again and again, the MP's may speak the words, but they don't have the knowledge to support those words, and again and again and again we find them making elementary mistakes, in the very basics of the nature of the animal they are talking about. And we stand here asking ,,agog, how are they so ignorant to such a level, it's not outright ignorance but stupidity we are dealing with. And there does not seem to be an answer to it."
Dr. RAE North: "Well the road to hell and all that is paved with good intentions. MP's have a world class resource, the Commons Library, they are provided with research funding by the tax-payer, and they have enormous ability to go anywhere they like to ask questions. And they have not, in my view, demonstrated any clear leadership in the context of going out and researching the issue; all too often they are rehearsing memes and received wisdom that does not take us forward technically in what is a very technical subject, to the point they are asking for things which are actually impossible."
Dr. RAE North: "These people are not there for sympathy, they are not there for cuddly hugs, they are there to do job. They are paid a lot of money, they have a lot of prestige and they have a lot of resources devoted to them and it's about time they stepped up to the plate."
Dr. RAE North: "The damage was done before they even got there (DUP), the damage was done even before the Referendum. There should have bene a clear concept of where this would take us. There should have been some effort to assess these options and then look at these options before the Referendum. The Referendum was an example of how information and debate were suppressed."
