“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.”

“My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.”

“The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they're two different things.”

“Education is the best economic policy there is.”

“My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.”

“In government you carry each hope each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.”

“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.”

“The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.”