"You are talking NONSENSE!" | Jeremy Hunt and David Starkey clash over state of Britain

At this week's Oxford Literary Festival I hosted my first live edition of David Starkey Talks, in which I interviewed the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt about his new book, 'Can We Be Great Again? Why A Dangerous World Needs Britain'.

I thought the discussion was highly illuminating both for the degree of intellectual competence that Jeremy Hunt clearly displays, but also the (in my view) utter inadequacy of his political analysis of what ails this country.

Time and again we butted up against fundamental differences of what it is that the British state is for. For Jeremy, it seems to be the promotion of liberal democracy around the world. For me, it is to promote the welfare of the British people.

While Jeremy speaks with pride about the surgery performed on Britain's finances during the Conservative governments of 2010-2014, and some perhaps justifiable frustration about commentaries which make it seem like government at that time should have been easy, I simply cannot ignore the macro-results of that period in our politics: which is that it left Britain poorer, more divided, and more defenceless.

I respect any politician whose priority is to find solutions to the problems facing this country, but in order to find them, it's necessary to have a clear appreciation of what those problems are. And I worry that the scale of public disillusionment is lost on Mr Hunt.

Ultimately, these differences must be aired so that voters can see clearly where public figures and, in this case, influential members of the Conservative Party, really sit and in what manner they will really approach the challenge of fixing Britain.