The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered.

The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the...

We are making the fundamental changes. It was like the decent housing target. We said by 2010, we’d have taken a million houses and refurbished them into decent housing.

Smoking is the now the principal avoidable cause of premature death in Britain. It hits the worst off people hardest of all. Smoking is one of the principal causes of the health gap which leads...

London is the clearing-house of the world.

I was the one that brought it in, but not only for the north-east, for every area so we can develop all the regional economies, lift up the national productivity, get greater wealth and share...

The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life.

The trade unions and the Labour Party… failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.

We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent.

All businessmen are scum.

We would fight not for the political future of a distant city, rather for principles whose destruction would ruin the possibility of peace and security for the peoples of the earth.

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.