I'd like to think that in a generation or two we'll have politicians whose life experience reflects that of the people who are voting for them.

If you can't see that the glass is half full, you can never be a socialist. You have to believe in the goodness of the majority of people to be a socialist. You have to believe that if the majority of people had their way, they would make a society that would be fair for everyone. If you don't believe that, and if you think that the glass is always half empty, then you're never going to have that sensibility.

I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

Going for constant growth is not actually delivering a decent standard of living and the prospect of your children having a better life than you do. That is the key thing that politics needs to deliver: a better life for your children. That's why people are taking their lives in their hands and crossing the Mediterranean and the English Channel.

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.

By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.

Just because you're gay, I won't turn you away. If you stick around, I'm sure we can find some common ground.