I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too. So I speak as British prime minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part.

Just as I believe that Britain should want to remain in the EU so the EU should want us to stay.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history, Europe has experience [with] heretics who turned out to have a point.

2012 has been an extraordinary year for our country. We cheered our Queen to the rafters with the Jubilee, showed the world what we're made of by staging the most spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Games ever and - let's not forget - punched way above our weight in the medals table.

I mean UKIP, I mean it's just a sort of, you know, bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists, basically.

Edward Heath and Richard Nixon took personal awkwardness with each other to new and excruciating levels.

At a time when we're having to take such difficult decisions about how to cut back without damaging the things that matter the most, we should strain every sinew to cut error, waste and fraud.