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Actually the royal family were very gracious and good to me. But I also found that the British establishment were never quite sure what to make of me. I was a Labour figure, but I'd come from a very middle-class background. In one sense I offended both traditional right and traditional left. But I thought that was no bad thing.
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The Iraqi elections struck a blow to the heart of global terrorism.
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I think the people like myself who are in the center ground of politics and who think that center left and center right can cooperate and work together. Who don't like this sort of insurgent populism because we think it's not really going to deliver for the people, I think there's a big responsibility on us in the center to get our act together. And to work out radical but serious solutions to the problems people face.
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The Spanish PM rang me to say: 'I have the support of only 4 per cent of the people.' I said, 'Crikey, that's even less than think Elvis Presley is still alive.'
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I think crime is a huge issue for people. If you were living in the poorest state, and you've got drug dealers at the end of the street, and your life's in misery, and you're afraid of your kids going out the door. I mean, the job of progressive politicians is to do something about that.
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And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.
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Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.
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The best philanthropy is not just about giving money but giving leadership. The best philanthropists bring the gifts that made them successful-the drive, the determination, the refusal to accept that something can't be done if it needs to be into their philanthropy.
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The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth.
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I just want to say this. I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly: There is a tendency for the world to say to America, ‘the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out,’ and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.
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My view is that we're entering into a situation of enormous instability, insecurity, fragility.
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Terrorism brings the reprisal; the reprisal brings the additional hatred; the additional hatred breeds the additional terrorism, and so on.
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In this day and age if you've got the technology then it's vital to use that technology to track people down. The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get.
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The great advantage of the Lib Dems is precisely that no-one knows what they stand for.
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You don't have to keep looking at the future foreign policy in terms, simply, of the past.
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Terrorist threats are not happening just in this country, but in every European country and every country across the globe. As a result of that, we do sometimes have to take measures we would rather not take in order to give us the security we need.
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I also, as I think most people do, have a healthy instinct that if we upset the balance of nature, we are in all probability going to suffer a reaction. With world growth, and population as it is, this reaction must increase.
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Fifteen years ago, if you said business will help save the environment people would have laughed at you. Today, I believe that is a serious proposition.
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There are people who are anxious about immigration for reasons that are perfectly sensible. They think it's uncontrolled. They think it's, therefore, arbitrary in its consequences, and there are some communities affected much more deeply than others.
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What I'm really more interested in doing - because I think, in a way that's kind of obvious - and you can see, look into Austria - you've got a far-right candidate who may become the president because he's in a close-run race.
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The moment you stigmatize a whole group of people - for example, Muslims - then, obviously, you make the decent, law-abiding Muslims feel as if they're under threat in some way or that their legitimacy, as members or citizens of society, is brought into question.
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So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.
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I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.
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I think conspiracy theories have gotten more and more close to the mainstream because what you've got is a fragmentation of the media, where the media becomes much more polarized today, left and right.