Experience is the only real teacher and if you keep a diary you get three bites at educating yourself - when it happens, when you write it down, and when you reread it and realise you were wrong. Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee.

The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity.

It is government policy to phase out subsidies to nationalised industries. In line with this, the government hopes that the coal industry will be able to operate without the need for assistance apart from social grants.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

I think if you do have democracy it would transform the world because if the millions of people who die live on a dollar a day, had the vote, they would redistribute the wealth of the world, and the people at the top are not prepared to see that happen.

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.