The intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression.

So much of politics is about the daily grind of political business: the people to see, the myriad different facets of government, the remorseless agenda of this part of the media or that.

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.

In 1997, we faced daunting challenges. Boom and bust economics..... Now, for all that remains to be done, dwell for a moment on what has been achieved.

There is good evidence that last year's European heat wave was influenced by global warming. It resulted in 26,000 premature deaths and cost $13.5bn.

The thing always is to go to where people really are and what they're really feeling about life.

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.