But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

If people in the end think that you can't do something in a way which is acceptable then it won't fly. The only way you get anything like this done is if people think, 'I understand why it is being done.'

I have never pretended to be a great House of Commons man, but I pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it.

I think it is having answers and not simply anger, and providing solutions that people believe will change their lives in a radical way but do it in a way that's sensible.

NATO's got a vital role to play. It's very important that we protect NATO.

We fall for... the theories of betrayal very easily, and one of the things that's always depressed me about the left, ever since I started in politics, is their ability to imbibe the propaganda of the right and regurgitate it to the left.

Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.