We spend billions of pounds on welfare, yet millions are trapped on welfare. It's not worth their while going into work.

Christmas gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the important things around us - a time when we can look back on the year that has passed and prepare for the year ahead.

Let me completely condemn these sickening scenes; scenes of looting, scenes of vandalism, scenes of thieving, scenes of people attacking police, of people even attacking firefighters. This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

We can't afford to waste time going slow on changing our party so now is not the time to put our foot on the brake. Now is the time to press on the accelerator.

It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.

It does make a broader point which is the fight against Islamist terror is not just one that we can wage by the police and border control. It needs every school, every university, every college, every community to recognize they have a role to play, we all have a role to play in stopping people from having their minds poisoned by this appalling death cult.