The view we took at the time and we take it now is that the war was justified legally because he [Saddam Hussein] remained in breach of UN resolutions.

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.

Moreover, for decades we have been prone to far greater swings in the economic cycle than our continental counterparts. It has been boom and bust....Under this Government, there is an entirely new framework for economic management in place.

The 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism.

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.

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

The understanding which has driven New Labour's reform is to put the individual citizen - the patient, the parent, the pupil, the law abiding citizen - at the centre of each public service, with the service reformed to meet their individual requirements