The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.

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.

A challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence... There is no doubt that the time to act is now.

So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.

Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

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.

Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.