No, because I do my sums with matchsticks. - Alec Douglas-Home

Britain is not earning her living. We are not keeping pace with the economic performance of our European and North American neighbours, and we are certainly not achieving the potential that is in us. ... At the end of a war of prolonged sacrifice we were left with much obsolete industrial plant, and a short-fall in the capital necessary to scrap and renew it. For a century we had lived on cheap food and raw materials imported from overseas. They are not and will not in future be available to us. ... We cannot continue to live beyond or ability or our willingness to earn. That is the one basic fact with which Britain has yet to come to terms.

There is one question, fundamental to everything, which has yet to be convincingly answered. “Will a democracy of one man-one vote faced with a choice always go for the softer of two options?” ... If the answer to the question...were to be ‘yes’ then Britain and the democracies of Europe and America would go under, and we should be supplanted by another political, military and economic philosophy. But there is evidence that the people of Britain are beginning to tumble to the fact that if they want to enjoy the fruits of life then rights must be balanced by duties and individual effort must be made.

There is the chance, too, if we have the imagination to see it, to resurrect the vitality of European civilisation and give to our new generation of Europeans the inspiration to set against the alien but undeniably dynamic, almost religious, creed of Communism. At this point in time when we are seeking reconciliation and yet are faced with increasing evidence of militancy everywhere, I look to an active European Community as a necessary complement to the NATO Alliance.