We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.

Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.

Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.

At the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam.

In the modern age where everything is connected to everything, the most important thing about what you can do is what you can do with others.