John Reid

“When we've been bold on the Bank of England, on PFI, on great constitutional change, on the New Deal, we've been most successful. So what we have to continue to try and do is to battle with ideas and find new ways of applying those values as the world changes.”

“It is right that people should have a statuary right to holidays and a maximum working week. It is right that part-time workers should have the same equality when it comes to hourly rates.”

“It is a relatively small number of people who want to impose their will by the use of terror on the rest of civilization, who have got a program. It's not blind violence. It's with a purpose. They want to destroy the state of Israel. They want every westerner out of the Arab countries, Middle East and elsewhere.”

“The fact of the matter is that whether it's in London or Egypt or Turkey or New York or Washington, we have to pay the price of guarding ourself, which is internal vigilance.”

“Conservatives conserve and that is why they became irrelevant.”

“When people are faced with a choice between the Northern Ireland they have got and the perfect Northern Ireland, they complain. But in the real world that isn't the choice.”

“Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, precursor chemicals. The inspectors, over a period of ten years, had managed to gain access to much of those precursor chemicals.”

“There are many ways of encouraging people to make life better other than joining a political party. Politics with a small 'p' isn't just about darkened committee rooms, endless meetings - it is about giving people the right to make decisions about our lives.”

“The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries.”