I think we woefully failed to connect Britain to the growing Chinese economy in the previous decade, and I have sought to remedy that. China is now the sixth biggest trading partner with the UK. We have attracted now the lion's share of Chinese investment that is going into Europe.

China is absolutely one of the biggest players in the world and if Britain wants to be connected to the world it has to be connected to China.

I think Britain needs to get out there on the world stage and make itself heard. And for much of my political career, there has been a sense of retreat from the world stage because of what happened in the Iraq War.

Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain’s credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success. Protecting the credit rating will not be easy The pace of fiscal consolidation will be co-ordinated with monetary policy. And we will protect Britain's credit rating and international reputation.

Whether [people] run their own business, work for a business, go out there, pay their taxes and see the money wasted, fed up with the money going to the next door neighbor sitting permanently on out of work benefits. There needs to be a coalition of change.

Britain has no divine right to be one of the richest countries in the world.

We want people to have a stake in the British economy so I am in favour of actually encouraging people to have small shareholdings and feel they've got a stake in our economic future.