If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn't even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.

The British don't runaway from terrorism. We have had 30-odd years of terrorism in our own country from the Irish Republican Army. We're used to it.

UN goodwill may be a bottomless pit but it's by no means limitless.

In the next ten years we will have to continue to make changes which will make the whole of this country a genuinely classless society.

I am not running as Son of Margaret Thatcher. I have my own priorities and my own programmes.

They seem to have moved from total opposition to total subservience.

A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.