Simply asking the British people to carry on accepting a European settlement over which they have had little choice is a path to ensuring that when the question is finally put - and at some stage it will have to be - it is much more likely that the British people will reject the EU.

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?

The well of public opinion has been well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode.

I am not a British isolationist. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.

The economies in Europe that will prosper, are those that are the greenest and the most energy efficient

What you call austerity is what I might call efficiency.

I think we need to just be very clear about what we're trying to do in Afghanistan. Frankly, we're not trying to create the perfect democracy. We're never going to create some ideal society. We are simply there for our own national security.