If the Europeans truly wish to improve their NATO contribution they can show it simply enough. They can establish professional armed forces, like those of the UK. And they can acquire more advanced technology. Indeed, unless that happens soon the gulf between the European and US capabilities will yawn so wide that it will not be possible to share the same battlefield. Alas, I do not think that sharing battlefields with our American friends - but rather disputing global primacy with them - is what European defence plans are truly about.

The acid test of politics is not what you say at the hustings, but what you actually do in government.

Working hard may not make you rich, but it should make you successful.

A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country's flag.

Socialism's results have ranged between the merely shabby and the truly catastrophic - poverty, strife, oppression and, on the killing fields of communism, the deaths this century of perhaps 100 million people. Against that doctrine was set a contrary, conservative belief in a law-governed liberty. It was this view which triumphed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Since then, the Left has sought rehabilitation by distancing itself from its past.

Peace is hard work and we must not allow people to forget it.

Each generation has to stand up for democracy. It can't take anything for granted and may have to fight fundamental battles anew.