I am happy to debate the past with the Prime Minister... I have a big dossier on his past, and I did not even have to sex it up.

People often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics or perhaps in political science, who have led their governments into disastrous decisions and miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever of the historical background, the cultural universe, of the foreign societies with which they have to deal.

So long as the international community consists of sovereign states, war between them remains a possibility, of which all governments have to take reasonable account.

History is what we read, write and think about the past.

I am happy to debate the past with the Prime Minister... I have a big dossier on his past, and I did not even have to sex it up.

I believe abortion should be available to everyone, but the law should be changed. In the past I voted for a restriction to 22 weeks, and I would be prepared to go down to 20.

A common language is the most obvious binding element in any society.