I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.

If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself.

The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society.

The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they’re quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce...

We’ve given more resources. On housing, we are now establishing a regional housing pot.

There are alternate definitions of manhood in the West.

However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbours, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account.

My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.

In a sense, what we do with the regional development agencies is to give them resources to look at the deficiencies in the economy in the regional areas, so they can address themselves to that.

We must not expect a full-scale peaceful revolution every time a Labour Government is elected.

There’s a feeling that strength is determined by the size of a union. That clearly is nonsense.

What government has been doing, we’ve got major programmes now, of billions of pounds, which are directed by central government into these areas of deprivation.

I am not against Muslim schools. But as I believe in integration, I think we would be better off overall if we did not have denominational schools at all.

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.

In the north east, there, they have had quite a bit of government offices moving in. It’s not a new policy.

Yet what you need is not marches, demonstrations, rallies or wide associations, all of them are important. What you need is direct action. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we’ll begin to change things.

Why can’t we, with a more intelligent policy, actually have houses that are affordable, built at higher densities than they are at the moment and built on brownfield sites.

The present system of protecting NHS patients was a bit of a shambles.

How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.

The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas.

It’s moving in the right direction. It was in decline under the previous administration.

You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the...

You go down some street – no doubt it’s there, and we have to do something about it, and our programmes are designed to do that – but if that’s a picture of Newcastle, it’s...

I don’t think we can go into important local elections next year… with Tony Blair as leader and expect to keep many of the councillors we’ve got now.

I believe it is peace for our time… peace with honour.

I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.

Refurbishing I’ve done in the first three years and I’m still giving housing money, of course, to the north.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.

If you find an Australian indoors, it’s a fair bet that he will have a glass in his hand.

Coming from low demand, houses available, prices falling. Depends from area to area, but if you go to the south, it’s exactly the opposite.

I believe it is peace in our time.

All too often miners, and indeed other trade unionists, underestimate the economic strength they have.

So if you look at the money we’ve given, we’ve actually still given more in fact in housing to the north than they had the years before.

First law on holes – when you’re in one, stop digging!

Breaking a glass in the Northwest is rather like belching in Arabia, for it appears to be done as a mark of appreciation or elation.

Down in the south, it’s how we find the brownfield sites without taking too much land take to meet the tremendous demand for housing, and that’s what I’ve done.

150,000 of our fellow countrymen are in prison in the home country, because they have declared themselves against this fratricidal war.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the...

That’s what I think regions are about, making central government more accountable and fairer.

When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

First of all, in our first period of office, we were concerned about the renovation of all those old properties you talked about.

There are always great dangers in letting the best be the enemy of the good.

If you’ve got an industry where you’ve got massive investment, it doesn’t matter whether you bring in alternative supplies. You still lose the money on that industry.

The choice is not normally between the north and south. It might be between Britain and Europe.

The world is blessed most by men who do things, and not by those who merely talk about them.

You cannot teach old dogs new tricks.

I don’t make decisions by the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General makes the decisions in these matters. There’s not even a war either.

A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect.