I suppose I've always carried what is regarded as a bit of unnecessary baggage in Britain. I've always carried the charge that I am an intellectual in politics.

It'd make a wonderful change to have the leader of a pluralist democracy who acted on that, who told people just how tough things are going to be, just what's going to have to be done - and, maybe, ran all the risks on the side of honesty, rather than spinning stories and trying to win the headlines every day.

I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral background is the vulgarity of much of the cut and thrust of politics.

It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

It is curious that atheists have proved to be so intolerant of those who have a faith.

But the ability to articulate what you are doing, to be clear about it, and to stick to it is, I think, the essence of political leadership.