Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics.

One thing I'm not sure of - and it's a very open question - is whether the type of politics that I represent really has had its day or not. Now I obviously believe passionately it hasn't, that it's still the answer and not the problem, and, you know, the evidence points both ways.

One of the most important things in politics is you've got to keep your mind infinitely curious and alive to what is happening differently.

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.

My view always is that we should learn the lessons, both of the last sort of 50 years of policy-making and it is possible to get to a foreign policy that is engaged and active without going back to where we were in the post-9/11 world.

Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth...is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.

I may find Saddam Hussein's regime abhorrent - any normal person would - but the survival of it is in his hands.