The problems that the world faces - from nuclear proliferation to climate change - can't be tackled by the West alone. They need a coalition of not just West and East, but they need a coalition of Christian and Jew and Muslim.

The window of opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change is closing more quickly than previously thought.

My advice is very simple: if you can win a small battle, it gives you confidence in the political process to take on bigger battles, and so it is very much a bottom-up grass-roots way of doing politics.

We are a European nation - must stay one.

The clearest evidence that we are living beyond environmental means is the threat of dangerous climate change. The scale of this threat, to human life and to the natural resources and assets on which it depends, for everything from oxygen and clean water to healthy soils and flood defence, means that this simply must be our top priority

The wedding ring on my left hand was bought by my grandfather, Samuel Miliband, in Brussels in 1920. I never knew him, as he died when I was one. But his ring was kept by my aunt until it was placed on my finger by my wife Louise 32 years later.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.