There have been the most terrible, shocking events taking place in the United States of America within the last hour or so... I am afraid we can only imagine the terror and the carnage there and the many, many innocent people who will have lost their lives... It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.

So much of politics is about the daily grind of political business: the people to see, the myriad different facets of government, the remorseless agenda of this part of the media or that.

You choose your own reality and you - social media then amplifies those conspiracy theories. So that's why I say social media is itself a revolutionary phenomenon.

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

I still think there is a residual desire amongst the majority of the public to be given a proper solution.

But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.

But as I always say to people I'm essentially a public service person.