Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games.

I have a nightmare about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] killing each other. Not every month, but now and then. I also have a recurring dream about losing.

There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick.

My dad, Donald, was a vet and had a practice in Yorkshire. Cats and dogs were his bread and butter, but his greatest love was large animals.

Sometimes Jonathan [Powell] and myself would go to Tony [Blair] and ask him if he was absolutely sure about this or that. That was our job. But ultimately it was his decision.

I'm certainly driven, I hate losing, I can be ruthless and short-tempered and terribly competitive.

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.