A lot of the politics that is going on left and right at the moment is more about a protest, which we should respond to. It's not often about a policy. And that's why what you get is this strange coalition of different views of what the future should be, coming together in alliance to protest against the status quo.

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.

The first big choice: a government with the strength to deliver stability, or a government that takes the country back to boom and bust.

Times are tough but they are tough because the government is trying to do the right thing, whether on public service reform, education, health, anti-social behaviour and welfare, or in counter-terrorism.

One of the things that I've been doing over the past few years is reevaluating my own powers of political analysis.

Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music.

How do we deal with not just the acts of violence, but the extremist ideology that lies behind them? Because though the numbers of fanatics that go and join and kill for a group like ISIS are measured in tens of thousands, those that support the wider ideology, I'm afraid, you measure in tens of millions or more.