I couldn't live with myself if I thought that these big strategic choices for my generation were there, and I wasn't even making them - or I was making them according to what was expedient rather than what I actually thought was right.

Now, again, what the center ground has got to do is to respond to people's genuine concerns and fears.

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

I think the single most important political distinction today is actually between open-minded versus closed-minded, and that's why I think this crosses the boundaries of traditional - center-right and center-left have much more in common with each other right now than the right does with the center-right, and the left does with the center-left.

The problem with the old ideology was that it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community

No one is to blame for the breakdown in trust between politics, media and the public.

I think the people like myself who are in the center ground of politics and who think that center left and center right can cooperate and work together. Who don't like this sort of insurgent populism because we think it's not really going to deliver for the people, I think there's a big responsibility on us in the center to get our act together. And to work out radical but serious solutions to the problems people face.