We are keen to stress that a strong euro zone is good for a strong United Kingdom. It's not for us to write the changes that the euro zone needs to embark on.

I have got instincts that, I think, are very much in tune with people's very keen sense to see something different. I did not dream of being in politics since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I was not involved in student politics, or not in that partisan way.

You've got some very powerful countries: Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and others who have a genuine desire to see the euro zone straighten itself out. It's good for all of us, whether you're in the euro zone or not, to make sure that it doesn't lead to a fracturing.

One thing I've very quickly learned is that if you wake up every morning worrying about what's in the press, you would go completely and utterly potty.

Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.

I don't even pretend we can occupy the Lib Dem holier-than-thou, hands-entirely-clean-and-entirely-empty-type stance. No, we are getting our hands dirty, and inevitably and totally understandably we are being accused of being just like any other politicians.

Liberalism is a really old British tradition and it has a completely different attitude towards the individual and the relationship between the individual and the state than the collectivist response of Labour, and particularly Old Labour, does.