I'm prepared to take advice on leisure from Prince Philip. He's a world expert on leisure. He's been practicing it for most of his adult life.

The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

At various times in the next 20 or 30 years I think it reasonable to anticipate that I will be among the leadershp of the Labour Party, but as far as being leader, I can't see it happening, and I'm not particularly keen on it happening.

I take notice of those who have argued consistently for the modernisation of the E.U., but so many of the skeptics in Britain are just hostile to the whole European idea.

I am the first male member of my family for about three generations who can have reasonable confidence in expecting that I will leave this earth with more or less the same number of fingers, hands, legs, toes and eyes as I had when I was born.

The unforgivable political sin is vanity, the killer diet is sour grapes.

People who are in politics to be right all the time would be better off taking up fly-fishing. It's less dangerous. Politics that is not applied in the real world and doesn't address the real challenges and paradoxes and agonies is a hobby.