Politics can be likened to driving at night over unfamiliar hills and mountains. Close attention must be paid to what the beam can reach and the next bend.

We had the IRA ceasefire in August 1994 and a lot of people assumed that a deal had been done - which wasn't right.

The Republican movement have not behaved properly over the years. They have not themselves implemented the Agreement. If they had implemented the Agreement then they would have disarmed completely in May 2000, that is what they undertook to do, that is what they failed to do.

I had read an early profile of [Tony] Blair by Frank Millar in which he said that Blair was very keen on the 'consent principle'.

It wasn't too difficult to see that [Ian] Paisley would never do anything positive.

The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind - a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.

I was organizing a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in October 1994 and I got a message that the Prime Minister would like a meeting. I went to the meeting. It was just me and John Major.What Major said to me was this: "If you were in my shoes, what would you do?". He wasn't asking me what a unionist should do, but what he should do. And I knew that I had to give him a sensible answer.