The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries — these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint.

Now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico; it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down; the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia; food riots in Africa.

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.

The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

It's not my job to be popular. I'm goal-driven; my job is to get results.

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.