To the hard-working people who set a little bit aside each month, to provide for their children, or to fund their own retirement, I say: you should be rewarded not punished.

You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don't agree with, or find disagreeable, so it's important to stress that balance.

Obviously a Conservative government will always leave taxes lower than they have been under Labour. Those things go with the territory of the Conservative Party.

Britain does not normally these days play a huge part in peacekeeping.

Not all politicians are bonkers, but most of them are.

The EU should be concentrated on adapting to globalisation and global competitiveness, not building more powerful centralised institutions in Brussels.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.