Do I know I'm right? Judgements aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe.

I think crime is a huge issue for people. If you were living in the poorest state, and you've got drug dealers at the end of the street, and your life's in misery, and you're afraid of your kids going out the door. I mean, the job of progressive politicians is to do something about that.

The trouble is nowadays that parts of the media operate in a very partisan way. There's no point in complaining about it, that's the way it is. But let's be clear, a lot of it is driven by the views of a pretty small number of people, rather than a normal standard of journalism.

In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.

You know, the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that's healthy and indeed even creative. But it's where - it's really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.

Our aim is not just an educated nation but an intelligent one