Getting something like this wrong is not just an academic error or an argument at conference. It affects the jobs of millions. Unlike the ERM, the si… - William Hague

I was the driver's mate, delivering the bottles and beer around South Yorkshire. We used to have a pint at every stop – well the driver's mate did, not the driver, thankfully – and we used to have about 10 stops in a day. You worked so hard you didn't feel you'd drunk 10 pints by four o'clock, you used to sweat so much. But then you had to lift all the empties off the lorry. It's probably horrifying but we used to do that then go home for tea and then go out in the evening to the pub.

[To Harriet Harman] Before turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the right hon. and learned Lady. She has had a difficult week. She had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she is going: she wears a helmet on a building site, she wears Indian clothes in the parts of her constituency with a large representation of Indian people, so when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she presumably dresses as a clown. As I said, I was going to be nice to her before her previous response.

Labour looks less alarming than under Neil Kinnock but it is also a lot less exciting than under either him or Blair. The party is not the wave of the future, as it was in the early days of New Labour. Sir Keir Starmer's team are currently interesting because they are judged to be close to power, rather than being close to power because they are judged to be interesting. And excitement doesn't even come into it.