Sam Gyimah

“I am an outcast in the Conservative party. But that's Brexit. It has divided families. The country is divided. This is a huge fault line.”

“Westminster is gripped by a fanatical race towards a cliff-edge Brexit and nobody is stopping to think about the impact it would have on the everyday lives of the people we serve as politicians.”

“The sheer drop in sterling since 2016 is only a taste of what's to come if we continue down the destructive route of a no-deal Brexit.”

“The astonishing thing for me is that I had a career before politics and I never thought about my colour.”

“A society in which people feel they have a legitimate right to stop someone expressing their views on campus simply because they are unfashionable or unpopular is rather chilling.”

“I was born in the UK and brought up by my single mother in Ghana, where being black was unexceptional. As an adult, I learnt to succeed in white Britain, going from a state sixth form, to Oxford university, to a well-paid job in the City, to becoming the first black Conservative MP to attend the cabinet.”

“I've been involved in the Conservative party for two decades. I've fought for the party. I have an unusual background - I'm not your typical Tory recruit. I've spent a long time evangelising about why people should look at the Conservative party seriously.”

“I started thinking about getting into politics when David Cameron became leader.”

“Born in the UK, brought up in Ghana, it was a sort of childhood of hardship and difficulty.”

“Every election cycle there has been some manoeuvre against me, so at some level I am used to it.”

“The big thing in Ghana is a strong sense that if you failed in your education that was it. There was no system... to give you support later on, there really wasn't much of a second chance so there was a big emphasis in... this is your life chance and you have got to take it.”

“That's my upbringing. Try, if it doesn't work out, try again. It was the same thing with Parliament.”

“One point leavers and remainers agree on is that if there had never been a referendum, and this deal had been proposed as the basis for our country's future, it would have rightly been rejected by parliament and the public.”

“Leaving people worse off financially is a Brexit outcome nobody supports, whether they voted leave or remain.”