The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right… - Tony Blair

Yes, I did have to struggle very hard to get this [the vote on the Iraq war] through, but the reason I did it was because I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn't take this on myself... just because I thought, 'Let's give myself a really hard time for a couple of years!'

On these issues, the public fib. They say they want increased spending, and in theory they do — but in practice they think someone else should pay for it. However, there it is. As I used to say, the public aren’t always logical, but that’s their prerogative. They do expect their government to be, nonetheless.

We have done all that, but lots of people like you say because it's not perfect, you've done nothing and therefore I'm walking away from it – it's pathetic. And as for this rubbish that we took the whole of the social services budget and blew it on Kosovo – first of all, the figures are nonsense; secondly, I want to tell you this about Kosovo. I think the day that this movement, with its values, when we could do something about it, would walk away from the worst case of ethnic cleansing and racial genocide since the second world war, then we'd have something to be ashamed of.