My question right now would be to Colonel Gaddafi, which is: 'What on earth do you think you are doing? Stop it.'

In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked?

But we will say something else. That for far too long in this country, people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work: you cannot go on claiming welfare like you are now.

The news that Osama Bin Laden is dead will bring great relief to people across the world. Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the worst terrorist atrocities the world has seen - for 9/11 and for so many attacks, which have cost thousands of lives, many of them British.

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.

The political system is broken, the economy is broken and so is society. That is why people are so depressed about the state of our country.

It is vital that we get these policies right as we take forward our plans to drive down the deficit and transform our economy.