It's not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money.

We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence-Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.

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.

Ah yes, liberal democrats unified as ever in opportunism and in error.

If you're living in a community that's become fragmented and left behind, there's not proper investment in it and so on, in the end, the answer is to make sure that we go and we help those communities, we educate the people properly, we build the necessary infrastructure of support for people.

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

Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.