I'm back... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'.

I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society - from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

My first guiding principle is this: willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.

I'll stay until I'm tired of it. So long as Britain needs me, I shall never be tired of it.

It used to be about trying to do something. Now it's about trying to be someone.

We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral.