Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.

There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong.

You have a huge number of people who spend their time writing papers which show that migrants pay more to the country than they take out in benefits, and they say, "Why don't you approve of migration? Why don't you open up borders?" They're not able to empathize with how people feel about migration.

I sound like a church nut, but look at the role of the churches in the civil rights movement in the States. People are brought together in other ways that can become drivers of change.

There's a tendency for people who believe passionately in something to be so convinced of their rightness that if they just repeat themselves a lot at the person, that will convince them. And that hasn't worked on things like immigration or trade deals.

Often we're having an argument with something imaginary - a fixed idea of the "enemy" and the good. We need to get beyond that and actually develop a deep curiosity about people and systems and understand them better.

People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.