In political debate, changing one’s mind is not so much under-rated as but actively punished. As such I enjoyed this column from Juliet Samuel in The Times, on how she has belatedly become a Leaver. This part resonated:

The slow, remote and politically dysfunctional structures of the EU do not make it easy to achieve this change. They entrench timidity, coddle vested interests, insulate our administrative class in a way that lets cosmopolitan ideologies run amok and help us deny responsibility for our problems. The EU was certainly not the only or even the greatest source of these tendencies and so leaving was never the solution in itself. But it was a prerequisite.

Perhaps you can construct theoretical scenarios in which we could have brought about a revolution in political culture from inside. But if you actually confront the way our courts, mandarins, lobby groups and even politicians use human rights law, treaties and EU directives to thwart change and build a culture of ideological insularity, it becomes clear that membership of overbearing legal structures like the EU is a serious obstacle to change.

The full piece is behind the paywall, here.