I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

You don't have to keep looking at the future foreign policy in terms, simply, of the past.

I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

If you're interested in politics and you're not following it, then it's a little bizarre.

Politics may be the art of the possible; but, at least in life, give the impossible a go.

I say the elite looks out of touch because it's kind of saying; look we'll manage all this for you. You know, we know best. We'll sort it all out for you. And then because people believe that doesn't meet their case for change and they want real change, social media and the way the relationship between people can come into a sense of belonging very quickly, that then is itself a revolutionary phenomenon. You see this around the world.

I mean, you can agree or disagree with Iraq or Afghanistan, but by the way, now the great campaigning cause out there is the absence of intervention in Syria. And then in Libya, it's partial intervention. And that doesn't really explain why some countries that have literally nothing to do with the interventions in the Middle East end up getting targeted.