I made friends with a boy who was a communist when I was 13 and that broadened my political views, but it also brought me into conflict with my father who was very Right-wing.

Where there is flagrant abuse of corporate entities we must and will seek to tackle it.

I am a bit of a lefty on some issues.

You can't win with some people. If you're not in government, you're criticised for being not serious. If you are in government, you're criticised for wanting power. That's the Labour party's line of attack, and it's a bit ridiculous.

We need a new British business bank with a clean balance sheet and an ability to expand lending rapidly to the manufacturers, exporters and high-growth companies that power our economy. Today I can announce we will have one.

The Robert Mugabe school of economics provides a salutary warning about uncontrolled monetary expansion in generating hyper-inflation. The road to Harare is not as long as we might hope.

Many of our problems are home-grown. Gordon Brown regularly advised the rest of the world to follow his British model of growth. But the model was flawed. It led to the highest level of household debt in relation to income in the world.