Let us be clear. Prison works. It ensures that we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists, and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice.

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.

I will never stand again for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

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

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.

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.

We must rediscover the habit of thinking the best of each other