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.

A virtue never tested is no virtue at all.

It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street - which Im also in favour of.

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.

I'm just saying that we need to find a better way to manifest the broader society's aspirations, politically. The key to it has to be some sort of proportional representation, which allows there to be more parties.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

I don't mind being labeled as a political songwriter. I've chosen to do that. What really annoys me is being dismissed as a political songwriter. That really pains me, because life isn't all about love; it's not all about politics, either. It's a beautiful mixture of events that absolutely baffle you, and you think, "Why can't I do something about that?", whether those events are in your bedroom, or out there in the wide world. In our daily lives we engage with them at different times, and I'm trying to write about the whole human experience, or my perspective on it anyway.