How to strike the right balance between our privacy and our expectation that the state will protect us and facilitate our freedom is one of the most difficult challenges facing us all.
When it comes to those who are accused and their right to defend themselves, it is perfectly reasonable to expect relevant evidence to be made public, and I am in favour of open justice.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, in hosting the G20 summit and in the budget, must display the same boldness in tackling the instability at home that they do in promoting a worldwide answer to the global meltdown.
It is feasible for someone who comes from a privileged background to understand the privilege they have had and to use the formal political arena in a way that would disperse power and engage with people in their own lives.
Parents don't believe that lifting life-chances in one school means reducing them in another.
If you have a sense of irony or humour, you're usually cut down, as you're usually distorted or misinterpreted. So it does lead to us being slightly more dour and staid and predictable than would otherwise be the case, which I personally find quite frustrating - because if you don't laugh occasionally in my job, you cry most of the time.
Solidarity and interdependence, a sense of worth, a pride and hope in the future: these are positive gains for those who believe in progressive politics and the beneficial role of government, rather than a detriment.
Privacy is a right, but as in any democratic society, it is not an absolute right.
I should have been a Trappist monk.
We must look to an open, tolerant, inclusive England, which embraces the values of a Britain that still leads the world in terms of an open democracy, as well as an understanding of the needs for responsibilities and obligations to run alongside the affirmation of individual rights.
I'm a great aficionado of history. I was deeply affected by seeing the disintegration of any chance of democracy coping with fascism in the Weimar republic, where woolly-minded, well-meaning liberalism actually allowed the forces of darkness to use democracy, to exploit democracy, to overturn democracy.
Politics is about the participation and engagement of the wider citizenry - to miss that point would doom us to irrelevance.
I've been fortunate when in government to have a car at my disposal, which takes away the nightmare of getting a taxi.
If I pleaded guilty to a mistake while I was home secretary, it wasn't that I didn't get tough - my God, I put immigration and security officials on French soil for the first time.
