If you're going to make sense of politics you have to have a historical perspective and also recognise that you have to work with people you don't agree with.

I really think in the Commonwealth of Europe you should have Russia. I listed a hundred countries that would be in it and it would then be a really European United Nations.

Having served in eleven Parliaments, it would be difficult to describe this as a maiden speech. It would be like Elizabeth Taylor appearing at her next wedding in a white gown.

There is good and bad in all of us and the Church uses the idea of original sin to control us by saying that, if we do not obey the bishops, we will rot in Hell.

Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths

We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism

Undoubtedly the war with Iraq was a tragedy. I think it was also a crime.