It is important not to allow ever wider coalition-building to become an end in itself. As we saw in the Gulf War of 1990, international pressures, particularly those exerted from within an alliance, can result in the failure to follow actions through and so leave future problems unresolved.

You turn if you want to. The Lady's not for turning.

There are some remarkable parallels between basketball and politics. Michael Jordan has already mastered the skill most needed for political success: how to stay aloft without visible means of support.

(I)t is highly questionable whether when 'Europe speaks with one voice', as we are so often told it is doing, anyone is really listening. Europe's reputation as a serious player in international affairs is unenviable. It is a feeble giant who desperate attempts to be taken seriously are largely risible. It has a weak currency and a sluggish inflexible economy, still much reliant on hidden protectionism. It has a shrinking, ageing, population and, with the exception of Britain, rather unimpressive armed forces and, not excepting Britain, muddled diplomacy.

I went to Oxford University - but I've never let that hold me back.

The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things - and get away with it - illustrates the degree to which the new dogma... has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes.

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.