I haven't come to the conclusion that centrist politics is wrong or dead. On the contrary. I think it's very much alive - but it needs to be given a renewal, a revival, and a muscularity which it presently lacks.

People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.

The full horror of what has happened in the United States earlier today is now becoming clearer. It is hard even to contemplate the utter carnage and terror which has engulfed so many innocent people. We've offered President Bush and the American people our solidarity, our profound sympathy, and our prayers. But it is plain that citizens of many countries round the world, including Britain, will have been caught up in this terror.

The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability - that threat is real.

Look, I am very competitive.

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.