Let's not be afraid to speak the common sense truth: you can't have high standards without good discipline.

We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.

The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies - and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister – no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

I've always been opposed myself to prisoners having the vote.

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.