The first big choice: a government with the strength to deliver stability, or a government that takes the country back to boom and bust.

Stirring is OK. It just depends what happens in the end.

People should go about their daily lives, to work, to live, to travel, to shop, to do the things people did in the same way as they did them before 11 September.

We've seen the reality of Saddam's regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.

My view is that we're entering into a situation of enormous instability, insecurity, fragility.

But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.

The relationship between Britain and the US is fantastically important when confronting terrorism.