John McDonnell

“We need an NHS with fewer managers, fewer contractors and more power (rather than choice) to patients - with the input of the real experts: healthcare professionals.”

“Governments usually end not with a bang but with a whimper, as the Conservatives learned in the 1990s. Support and authority erodes over time until there is a final collapse of support and pivotal electoral shift.”

“We urgently need a major programme of investment in renewable energy generation to tackle climate change.”

“If we as a party are serious about devolution, then we must respect councils and nations enough to determine their own agenda.”

“It may sound corny in a cynical age but literally generations of our people have given much of their lives to establishing and cherishing the Labour party because they believed what the party told them when they joined.”

“Heathrow is in my constituency and I have been at both the Terminal 4 and Terminal 5 planning inquiries. At these inquiries my community has been assured by the inquiry inspectors, BAA and government ministers that each development would be the last piece of expansion of the airport because of its ever-increasing noise and air pollution.”

“There's something in people's character, particularly the British character, about unfairness. They don't like it.”

“I saw the Blair-Mandelson regime as a coup, and I think it was a well-funded coup as well - resources obviously came from big private-sector backers. But all through that period the bulk of the rank and file party were what the party has always been, a socialist party.”

“There'll be creative business leaders but actually, when it comes down to it, they can't do anything unless they're part of a collective. Unless they've got that wealth creator, that engineer and that work person, that skilled person at the bench to fulfil that idea... they're nothing.”

“We want to be absolutely clear to the people what we are about. No backroom deals whatsoever and we're not going to be held back by any other political parties.”

“I think that I was the first MP to call for the nationalisation of Northern Rock, although that is hardly surprising because I have been calling for the nationalisation of the financial sector for 30 years or more.”

“I do not want to be associated with those that are willing to support undermining the basic human rights that socialists have fought and sacrificed themselves to secure and protect over generations.”

“Nationally, unrestrained Heathrow expansion has prevented the balanced development of regional airports and their economies and the planning of an integrated transport system maximising more environmentally friendly modes of transport such as rail linked more effectively to Europe.”

“I'm from the north. You can take the boy out of the north but you can't take the north out of the boy.”

“Political rivalry is one thing but personal smear campaigns scrape the barrel of political infighting.”

“My ambition is to learn to play the trombone. My wife pulls my leg about it. I'll find time, my neighbours might not appreciate it but I'm going to try.”

“Tightening up border and immigration controls go nowhere in addressing the underlying causes of terrorism in our society and in our world.”

“Politicians have patronised and talked down to us all when it comes to our economy, but ordinary working people have to manage on incomes significantly lower than the likes of George Osborne and his friends in the City. They could teach the bankers and many commentators a thing or two about managing a budget responsibly.”

“If people need homes then put councils and building workers to work to build them, buy up the empty ones and stop the repossessions.”

“The illegal 2003 invasion had little to do with liberating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Instead, the real freedoms and benefits were destined to go to corporations like Halliburton and others that stood to gain from the privatisation of the formerly state-owned Iraqi economy.”