The only society that works today is also one founded on mutual respect, on a recognition that we have a responsibility collectively and individually, to help each other on the basis of each other’s equal worth. A selfish society is a contradiction in terms.
Times are tough but they are tough because the government is trying to do the right thing, whether on public service reform, education, health, anti-social behaviour and welfare, or in counter-terrorism.
After the terrible events of last week, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger; there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit.
Their barbarism will stand as their shame for all eternity.
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.
There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.
This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life, and we the democracies of this world are going to have to come together and fight it together.
So much of politics is about the daily grind of political business: the people to see, the myriad different facets of government, the remorseless agenda of this part of the media or that.
We can debate this or that aspect of climate change, but the reality is that most people now accept our climate is indeed subject to change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge, but all economies know that the only sensible long term way of developing is to do it on a sustainable basis.
There is good evidence that last year’s European heat wave was influenced by global warming. It resulted in 26,000 premature deaths and cost $13.5 billion.
When my parents were growing up the world’s population was under three billion. During my children’s lifetime, it is likely to exceed nine billion. You don’t need to be an expert to realise that sustainable development is going to become the greatest challenge we face this century.
What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that’s the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand.
Personally, I have already turned down the Downing St thermostat by 1 degree.
We need to develop the new green industrial revolution that develops the new technologies that can confront and overcome the challenge of climate change; and that above all can show us not that we can avoid changing our behaviour but we can change it in a way that is environmentally sustainable.
If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world.
Climate change is probably the greatest long-term challenge facing the human race.
The understanding which has driven New Labour’s reform is to put the individual citizen – the patient, the parent, the pupil, the law abiding citizen – at the centre of each public service, with the service reformed to meet their individual requirements.
If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you’re weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations. Everybody knows this in their walk of life.
The appalling details of the campaign of intimidation – which include grave-robbing – show the depths to which the animal extremists are prepared to stoop.