The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered

There are always great dangers in letting the best be the enemy of the good.

The most moving speech I have ever heard was Hugh Gaitskell saying he would 'fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love. That was the right message in 1960, and I believe it is still the right message today.

Each successive Labour Government has been the most rapacious, doctrinaire and unpatriotic conspiracy to be seen this side of the Iron Curtain.

The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life

Many of the early nationalisation measures were right. They have remained part of the social fabric. I favour measures of that type.

I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken?