The Right Honourable Shirley Williams gave this, the 2016 Tanner Lecture on Human Values, just before the European Referendum where voters would be deciding whether to remain in the EU or Brexit.

On the origin and nature of values

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a multiversity lecture series in the humanities, founded on July 1, 1978, at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, by the American scholar Obert Clark Tanner. In founding the lecture, he defined their purpose as follows:



I hope these lectures will contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind. I see them simply as a search for a better understanding of human behavior and human values. This understanding may be pursued for its own intrinsic worth, but it may also eventually have practical consequences for the quality of personal and social life.



It is considered one of the top lecture series among top universities, and being appointed a lectureship is a recognition of the scholar's "extra-ordinary achievement" in the field of human values.