If there is one thing Britain should learn from the last 50 years, it is this: Europe can only get more important for us.
I’m not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is. Europe isn’t owned by any of them, Europe is owned by all of us.
Terrorist threats are not happening just in this country, but in every European country and every country across the globe. As a result of that, we do sometimes have to take measures we would rather not take in order to give us the security we need.
I abhor Saddam’s regime, but the basis has to be disarmament.
The jolt that Tony Blair received 35,000ft above the Pacific Ocean was not normal turbulence.
The free enterprise system has not failed; the financial system has failed.
We expected, I expected to find actual usable, chemical or biological weapons after we entered Iraq. But I have to accept, as the months have passed, it seems increasingly clear that at the time of invasion, Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy.
Examine the legacy that we inherited and what we did. We had boom-and-bust economics and a doubled national debt.
If I’d proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner I’d have got less trouble for it.
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.
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.
Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.
There is no doubt as to what needs to happen. There has to be a complete rejection of the type of terrorist attacks carried out in India.
We know British Muslims in general abhor the actions of the extremists.
Real progress cannot be measured by money alone. We must ensure that economic growth contributes to our quality of life, rather than degrading it.
Surely we have the wit and will to develop economically without despoiling the very environment we depend upon.
Make the wrong choices now and future generations will live with a changed climate, depleted resources and without the green space and biodiversity that contribute both to our standard of living and our quality of life.
Your loss we count as our loss. Your struggle we take as our struggle.
We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence-Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.
I haven’t got the time to sit here arguing with someone whose idea of a coherent foreign policy is what comes up in Google when you type in peace!