I have to be sure of myself - in a conditional way, always being open to the possibility that I'm wrong.

Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.

Activists can get very preachy about things. It's more about understanding people's own experiences and tapping into them.

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.

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.

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.