Dennis Skinner Quotes

Skinner: The hon. Member for Edge Hill seems a bit upset about my saying that he was not there half the time. Will he settle for my agreeing that he was there the other half? That is an advance.

She has been let off because she is a Tory.

Any Tory moles at the Palace?

Is there not something even more sinister in people talking in abstract terms about Britain becoming part of this political union? People may have the impression that we, the 12 countries and perhaps more, are all pals together. The truth is that the real powerhouse of the Common Market lies in Germany. It has just annexed East Germany. It is central to the activities of all the nation states that are falling apart in eastern Europe. Political union spells something much more sinister, and that is German domination. We fought for six years against it in the second world war. If hon. Members allow this political union, they will allow the Germans to win now when they lost in 1945.

Skinner: …it should be placed on record that, according to my hon. Friends who worked tirelessly in the Committee to oppose the provisions of the Bill, including this clause, the Liberal spokesman was not there half the time.

New Labour, New Black Rod.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the 1970s and a lot of the 1980s, we would have thanked our lucky stars in the coalfield areas for growth of 1.75 per cent.? The only thing growing then were the lines of coke in front of boy George and the rest of them.

Coalition's last stand.

every now and then you see the arrogance of Cameron, and that comes through every so often. It is the Bullingdon Club. When they were sat down – him and Gideon [Osborne's birth name] – and he says: 'You know what we really want, Gideon? Every weekend, after we've roughed up one of those hotels, we need an army of volunteers to come in and clean it all up.' And Gideon says: 'Yeah, we could call it the Big Society'.

The Hon. Gentleman is making pretty heavy weather of the fact that he was kicked out of this gentleman's club for 20 days. I call it a gentlemen's club.

David Alton: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets his facts from. If it is from one of his friends on the national executive committee of the Labour Party, I suspect that the information is probably as spurious and ridiculous as most of the other things said in that body. I can assure him that what he said is certainly not the case, and I hope that he will withdraw that comment immediately. [An exchange takes place between the pair and the speaker, who asks Skinner to keep on topic but not to withdraw the remark.]

Does the Prime Minister <nowiki>[then David Cameron]</nowiki> recall that at the time after he became Prime Minister under the coalition and at the time when he was dividing the nation between strivers and scroungers, I asked him a very important question about the windfall he received when he wrote off the mortgage of the premises in Notting Hill... I didn't receive a proper answer then. Maybe dodgy Dave will answer it now.

I have been kicked out of this place about seven times, but I did not have any chance to explain. No one said to me, "Dennis, will you explain why you said that the Right Hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) was lining his pockets when he picked up that non-executive directorship of British Telecom?" I would have loved to tell everyone all about that, but Mr. Speaker said, "On your bike - early bath," and off I had to go.

Royal Mail for sale, Queen's head privatised.

I have noticed not only a change of emphasis but a distinct change of policy, and it may be that the Tories have been conducting some market research with the assistance of the advertising firm which they have engaged. It has a foreign-sounding name. It sounds a coloured name to me—Saatchi and Saatchi. Certainly it does not sound very English.