Mayors of London

"The tragedy of the stooge is that even if he thinks this through, he wants so much to believe that his relationship with the candidate is special that he shuts out the truth. The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge."

"I accused men of being responsible for a social breakdown which is costing us all, as taxpayers, £9.1 billion per year, and which is producing a generation of ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children."

"With £90 billion currently spent on welfare, the great economic issues of our time are social. They are moral. And yet the Government is virtually incapacitated from utterance by its own bumbling."

"The modern British male is useless. If he is blue collar, he is likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless, and perhaps claiming to suffer from low self-esteem brought on by unemployment. If he is white collar, he is likely to be little better."

"Something must be found, first, to restore women's desire to be married. That means addressing the feebleness of the modern Briton, his reluctance or inability to take control of his woman and be head of a household."

"Weep O ye shirt-makers of Jermyn Street ye Cool Britannia tailors and whatever exists of human finer feeling In the Ministry of Sound, the tank-topped bumboys blub into their Pils. In the delicatessens of Elgin Crescent the sawdust is sodden with tears For months years Carla Powell will go into mourning her plumage as black as night For Mandy is dead dead ere his prime!"

"On the other hand we don’t want our children being taught some rubbish about homosexual marriage being the same as normal marriage and that is why I am more than happy to support Section 28 ..."

"Labour's appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it."

"Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power."

"If you see anyone who is obeying the law, apart from the odd motorised rickshaw, please give me a ring. The national speed limit is, de facto, 99mph, because everyone knows that you lose your licence at 100mph. The law of the land is disregarded by good people, held in contempt by Middle England, and scorned by no less a person than Jack Straw, who saw fit to scream through the sound barrier when he was Home Secretary."

"Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It's time for a rethink, and the Tory party - the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth - is where it's happening."

"Ok, I said to myself as I sighted the bird down the end of the gun. This time, my fine feathered friend, there is no escape."

"It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."

"The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more... Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. … the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right... If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited... The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty."

"I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap dancing, and other related and vital subjects."

"We are confident in our story and will be fighting this all the way. I am very sorry that Alastair Campbell has taken this decision but I can see that he got his tits in the wringer."

"Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on."

"It is hard to think of a measure that the Government could have brought to the House that I could support more unreservedly and with greater pleasure than this Bill to expand the European Union. To sum up my response, I would merely say, "And about time too.""

"I am not by any means an ultra-Eurosceptic. In some ways, I am a bit of a fan of the European Union. If we did not have one, we would invent something like it—some means of association between the sovereign states of Europe, perhaps an organisation in Brussels—overnight."

"I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil."

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

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

"The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."

"I could not fail to disagree with you less."

"Not even Mr Blair has been able to erode the unions conviction that we all have a “right” to a minimum wage... Both the minimum wage and the Social Charter would palpably destroy jobs."

"Any seat would be mad not to take him. He's a terrific chap."

"It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."

"As snow-jobs go, this beats the Himalayas."

"That is the best case for Bush; that, among other things, he liberated Iraq. It is good enough for me."

"Some readers will no doubt say that a devil is inside me; and though my faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, in that the signal comes and goes, I can only hope that isn't so."

"If Amsterdam or Leningrad vie for the title of Venice of the North, then Venice - what compliment is high enough? Venice, with all her civilisation and ancient beauty, Venice with her addiction to curious aquatic means of transport, yes, my friends, Venice is the Henley of the South."

"[On Tony Blair] He's lost the plot, people tell me. He's drifting rudderless in the wide Sargasso Sea of New Labour's ideological vacuum."

"Look the point is ... er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it."

"It was a stellar performance. I may as well give up now and make way for an older man."

"There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge."

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

"I didn't see it, but it sounds barbaric. It's become like cock-fighting: poor dumb brutes being set upon each other by conniving television producers."

"Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth profit matrix, and stay conscious."

"I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel."

"Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form."

"I advise you all very strongly - go for a run, get some exercise, and have a beautiful day."

"Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under."

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

"But here's old Ken - he's been crass, he's been insensitive and thuggish and brutal in his language - but I don't think actually if you read what he said, although it was extraordinary and rude, I don't think he was actually anti-Semitic."

"Howard is a dynamic performer on many levels. There you are. He sent me to Liverpool. Marvellous place. Howard was the most effective Home Secretary since Peel. Hang on, was Peel Home Secretary?"

"I'm having Sunday lunch with my family. I'm vigorously campaigning, inculcating my children in the benefits of a Tory government."

"What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored."

"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."

"The proposed ban on incitement to "religious hatred" makes no sense unless it involves a ban on the Koran itself; and that would be pretty absurd, when you consider that the Bill's intention is to fight Islamophobia."

"I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest."

"I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar."

"I lost the job, but the well the honest truth is that this has been embellished by, probably by me, in the sense that there were two of us who were taken on as trainees, and this was in the, the, the 80s, I think it was the late 80s, and it was him or me who was going to get the job at the end of, at the end of, eight months or nine months.... It was, it was absolutely, it was mano-a-mano and of course it was him who got it."

"I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I'd listen to this amazing crash from the greenhouse, next door, over, over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory Party, and, and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of, of power."

"I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?"

"Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."

"Old Man Howard, that Old Man Howard, he just keeps rolling, just keeps rolling."

"I'm very attracted to it. I may be diverting from Tory party policy here, but I don't care."

"Life isn't like coursework, baby. It's one damn essay crisis after another."

"I'm a rugby player, really, and I knew I was going to get to him, and when he was about two yards away I just put my head down. There was no malice. I was going for the ball with my head, which I understand is a legitimate move in soccer."

"Not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him."

"Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase... Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms: Chinese concert pianists are technically brilliant, but brilliant at Schubert and Rachmaninov. Chinese ballerinas dance to the scores of Diaghilev. The number of Chinese Nobel prizes won on home turf is zero, although there are of course legions of bright Chinese trying to escape to Stanford and Caltech... It is hard to think of a single Chinese sport at the Olympics, compared with umpteen invented by Britain, including ping-pong, I'll have you know, which originated at upper-class dinner tables and was first called whiff-whaff. The Chinese have a script so fiendishly complicated that they cannot produce a proper keyboard for it."

"For 10 years we in the Tory party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing, and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour party."

"I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I'm sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity like the rest of us... I am happy to add Papua New Guinea to my global itinerary of apology."

"I've got a brilliant new strategy, which is to make so many gaffes that nobody knows which one to concentrate on. [...] They cease to be newsworthy, you completely out-general the media in that way, and they despair. [...] You shell them, you pepper the media... you've got to pepper their positions with so many gaffes that they're confused. It's like a helicopter throwing out chaff, and then you steal on quietly and drop your depth charges wherever you want to drop them."

"The real hero of Jaws is the mayor. A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beaches open. OK, in that instance he was actually wrong. But in principle, we need more politicians like the mayor - we are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense which is really a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer."

"The world's population is now 6.7 billion, roughly double what it was when I was born. If I live to be in my mid-eighties, then it will have trebled in my lifetime. The UN last year revised its forecasts upwards, predicting that there will be 9.2 billion people by 2050, and I simply cannot understand why no one discusses this impending calamity, and why no world statesmen have the guts to treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves."

"[O]ver the years, the argument changed, and certain words became taboo, and certain concepts became forbidden, and we have reached the stage where the very discussion of overall human fertility — global motherhood — has become more or less banned."

"All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control. Isn't it time politicians stopped being so timid, and started talking about the real number one issue?"

"Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb."

"[On attempting to find any reason to oppose Barack Obama] In the end I gave up, goggle-eyed and exhausted, having trolled the wilds of the Neocon internet without finding anything remotely approaching a smoking gun."

"Had it been us staging the Games, I don't think we would necessarily have done the switcheroo with the girl with the braces"

"My policy on cake is still pro having it and pro eating it!"

"Thank you very much Mr Meyer, Anthony Meyer that is. I want to thank you, I want to thank the police of course, and my wife Marina and my family, and my utterly brilliant campaign team, the Conservative GLA candidates — some of whom were extremely unlucky tonight — and of course the thousands of Conservative activists, the ward captains and knocker-uppers who did such an amazing job today, and indeed yesterday, rather."

"This has been a marathon election as you can tell with a record turnout and I think it has been good for politics and it has been good for London."

"I want to thank Sian [Berry, Green Party] and Lindsey [German, Left List] and Alan [Craig, Christian Peoples Party] and Gerard [Batten, UKIP], who have sometimes joined us for hustings, but mainly I want to thank my two colleagues in the strange triumvirate who have been trundling around London's church halls and TV studios violently disputing the meaning of multiculturalism and the exact cost of conductors. On which point I think I'm going to declare victory."

"And I want to congratulate you Brian [Paddick] on your great common sense and decency with which you put your case and I do hope that it is not the end of our discussions about the police."

"And as for Ken, Mayor Livingstone, I think you have been a very considerable public servant and a distinguished leader of this city."

"You shaped the office of mayor. You gave it national prominence and when London was attacked on 7 July 2005 you spoke for London."

"And I can tell you that your courage and the sheer exuberant nerve with which you stuck it to your enemies, especially in New Labour, you have thereby earned the thanks and admiration of millions of Londoners, even if you think that they have a funny way of showing it today."

"And when we have that drink together which we both so richly deserve, I hope we can discover a way in which the mayoralty can continue to benefit from your transparent love of London, a city whose energy conquered the world and which now brings the world together in one city."

"I do not for one minute believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a Conservative city but I do hope it does show that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted after 30 years with the greatest, most cosmopolitan, multi-racial generous hearted city on earth in which there are huge and growing divisions between rich and poor."

"And that brings me to my final thank you which is of course to the people of London."

"I would like to thank first the vast multitudes who voted against me - and I have met quite a few in the last nine months, not all of them entirely polite."

"I will work flat out from now on to earn your trust and to dispel some of the myths that have been created about me."

"And as for those who voted for me, I know there will be many whose pencils hovered for an instant before putting an X in my box and I will work flat out to repay and to justify your confidence."

"We have a new team ready to go in to City Hall. Where there have been mistakes we will rectify them. Where there are achievements we will build on them."

"Where there are neglected opportunities we will seize on them, and we will focus on the priorities of the people of London: cutting crime, improving transport, protecting green space, delivering affordable housing, giving taxpayers value for money in every one of the 32 boroughs."

"And I hope that everybody who loves this city will put aside party differences to try in the making of Greater London greater still. Let's get cracking tomorrow and let's have a drink tonight."

"In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?"

"The meat in the sausage has got to be Conservative"

"When a regime has been in power too long, when it has fatally exhausted the patience of the people, and when oblivion finally beckons – I am afraid that across the world you can rely on the leaders of that regime to act solely in the interests of self-preservation, and not in the interests of the electorate. ... First-past-the-post has served this country well, and served dozens of other countries well. We would be mad to go to a great deal of trouble and expense to adopt a system that is less fair than the one we have. ... By all means let us have a referendum – the one we were promised, on the Lisbon EU Treaty."

"The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink off the scale."

"They are like glistening wet otters frolicking."

"It is often useful to give the slight impression that you are deliberately pretending not to know what is going on, because the reality may be that you don't know what is going on, but people won't be able to tell the difference."

"If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by “Bwussels”, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure."

"Now can I ask you a question, "Why is it that we're lucky to have so many Chinese students?" Is it because of the weather? Is it because we have so many French restaurants? Is it because we have so many communist bicycles? [At Beijing's 798 art district, 13 October 2013]"

"[A demonstration of "cultural interpenetration" between the UK and China] Who, according to JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter novels, was Harry Potter's first girlfriend? Who is the first person he kisses? That's right, Cho Chang, who is a Chinese overseas student at Hogwarts school. [...] Ladies and gents I rest my case. [From a speech at Peking university, 14 October 2013]"

"[On deputy prime minister Nick Clegg] He's there to serve a very important ceremonial function as David Cameron's lapdog-cum-prophylactic protection device for all the difficult things that David Cameron has to do that cheese off the rest of the ... [ending absent] He’s a kind of shield. He’s a lapdog who’s been skinned and turned into a shield to protect."

"Putin's proxy army was almost certainly guilty of killing the passengers on the Malaysia Airlines jet that came down in eastern Ukraine. He has questions to answer about the death of Alexander Litvinenko, pitilessly poisoned in a London restaurant. As for his reign in Moscow, he is allegedly the linchpin of a vast post-Soviet gangster kleptocracy, and is personally said to be the richest man on the planet. Journalists who oppose him get shot. His rivals find themselves locked up. Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant."

"The choice is really quite simple. In favour of staying, it is in Britain’s geo-strategic interests to be pretty intimately engaged in the doings of a continent that has a grim 20th-century history, and whose agonies have caused millions of Britons to lose their lives. History shows that they need us. Leaving would be widely read as a very negative signal for Europe. It would dismay some of our closest friends, not least the eastern Europeans for whom the EU has been a force for good: stability, openness, and prosperity. It is also true that the single market is of considerable value to many UK companies and consumers, and that leaving would cause at least some business uncertainty, while embroiling the Government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country – low skills, low social mobility, low investment etc – that have nothing to do with Europe."

"Think of Britain. Think of the rest of the EU. Think of the future. Think of the desire of your children and your grandchildren to live and work in other European countries; to sell things there, to make friends and perhaps to find partners there."

"And then there is the whole geostrategic anxiety. Britain is a great nation, a global force for good. It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU. This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms: the membership fee seems rather small for all that access."

"There is only one way to get the change we need - and that is to vote to go; because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a population when it says no."

"They want us to go to the polls in such a state of quivering apprehension that we do the bidding of the Euro-elites, and vote to stay in the European Union."

"Leaving the EU would be a win-win for all. The EU costs us a huge amount of money and subverts our democracy"

"[The UK is] big enough and strong enough to stand on its own"

"Would anyone in their right mind want to join the EU today?"

"You look at the plan to increase the efforts to prop up the single currency with an ever denser system of integration, with more and more regulation about all sorts of social and economic issues which will impact directly on this country, I think the risk is increasingly in staying in the project. I think the best thing we can do is show a lead, show an example and strike out for freedom."

"The EU is 50 years old, it is going in the wrong direction. It is time for real reform. The only way to get that is to leave."

"We will be informed by our most important ally that it is in our interests to stay in the EU, no matter how flawed we may feel that organisation to be. Never mind the loss of sovereignty; never mind the expense and the bureaucracy and the uncontrolled immigration. The American view is very clear."

"Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009. Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why. It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington. No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision. Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender. Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date. Well, if that's why Churchill was banished from the Oval Office, they could not have been more wrong."

"There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn't even stop to thankera."

"Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically [...] The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. But fundamentally what is lacking is the eternal problem, which is that there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe. There is no single authority that anybody respects or understands. That is causing this massive democratic void."

"After we liberate ourselves from the shackles of Brussels we will be able to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs right across the UK."

"Take back control of huge sums of money, 350 million pounds a week, and spend it on our priorities such as the NHS."

"Oh shit, we've got no plan. We haven’t thought about it. I didn’t think it would happen. Holy crap, what will we do?"

"There is no need for haste about severing the UK's ties [with the EU]"

"[The UK is] no less united... nor indeed any less European [following the decision to leave the EU]."

"It is vital now to see this [Brexit] moment for what it is. This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt, but it is a moment for hope and ambition for Britain. A time not to fight against the tide of history, but to take that tide at the flood, and sail on to fortune."

"We can all spend an awfully long time going over lots of stuff that I've written over the last 30 years... all of which in my view have been taken out of context, but never mind... I'm afraid that there is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I have said that have been one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued that it would take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned."

"If Monsieur Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some World War Two movie, then I don't think that is the way forward. I think, actually, it's not in the interests of our friends and our partners."

"I think Rex Tillerson is absolutely clear in his view, which is the same as mine. You have got to engage with Russia, but you have got to engage in a very guarded way. You have got to beware of what they are up to. There is no question that, when you look at Russian activity on the cyber front, when you look at what they are doing in the western Balkans, when you look at what has been happening in the Ukraine, you've got to be very, very cautious. I think it is entirely right to have a dual track approach. We don't want to get into a new Cold War. That's something London and Washington are completely at one on. But nor do we want Russian behaviour to continue as it is - and Rex Tillerson has been very clear about that."

"There is no plan for no deal because we are going to get a great deal,"

"There's a group of UK business people, wonderful guys who want to invest in , on the coast, near where Gaddafi was actually captured and executed as some of you may have seen. And they literally have a brilliant vision to turn Sirte, with the help of the municipality of Sirte, to turn it into the next . The only thing they've got to do is clear the dead bodies away and then they'll be there."

"[At a Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee meeting on 1 November 2017] When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it. [Neither] Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe nor her family has been informed about what crime she has actually committed. And that I find extraordinary, incredible."

"[In the Commons on 7 November 2017, after criticism his earlier comments might make Zaghari-Ratcliffe's position worse] My point was that I disagreed with the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime - not that I wanted to lend any credence to Iranian allegations that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been engaged in such activity. I accept that my remarks could have been clearer in that respect, and I'm glad to provide this clarification."

"Ridiculous outcry over Toby Young. He will bring independence, rigour and caustic wit. Ideal man for job."

"[The attack was] a sign [from President Putin that] no-one could escape the long arm of Russian revenge ... [The attack] was a sign that President Putin or the Russian state wanted to give to potential defectors in their own agencies: 'This is what happens to you if you decide to support a country with a different set of values. You can expect to be assassinated'."

"If you do that you have to answer the question what next? What if the Iranians do rush for a nuclear weapon? Are we seriously saying that we are going to bomb those facilities at Fordo and Natanz? Is that really a realistic possibility? Or do we work round what we have got and push back on Iran together?"

"[T]hrow the baby out with the bathwater"

"If he can fix North Korea and if he can fix the Iran nuclear deal then I don't see why he is any less of a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama, who got it before he even did anything,"

"I don't see why he's any less of a candidate for the than Barack Obama."

"[America wants to see] a confident free-trading Britain able to do its own deals"

"[A trade deal with America can not be achieved if the UK remained] in the lunar pull of Brussels"

"[A customs partnership would create] a whole new web of bureaucracy"

"Fuck business."

"[The Brexit] dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt"

"If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran. I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any – invariably male – government to encourage such demonstrations of "modesty"."

"If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct."

"I am against a total ban because it is inevitably construed – rightly or wrongly – as being intended to make some point about Islam. If you go for a total ban, you play into the hands of those who want to politicise and dramatise the so-called clash of civilisations; and you fan the flames of grievance. You risk turning people into martyrs, and you risk a general crackdown on any public symbols of religious affiliation, and you may simply make the problem worse."

"It [Theresa May's Chequers plan] is a humiliation. We look like a seven-stone weakling being comically bent out of shape by a 500lb gorilla."

"Theresa May's Chequers plan for future relations with the EU would mean] abandoning our seat around the table in Brussels and continuing to accept the single market legislation"

"[There has been a] collective failure of government, and a collapse of will by the British establishment, to deliver on the mandate of the people."

"[The Chequers proposals represented] the intellectual error of believing we can be half-in, half-out"

"[A Super Canada deal would involve] zero tariffs and zero quotas [on all imports and exports]"

"[A Super Canada deal would involve: mutual recognition agreements covering UK and EU regulations to ensure] conformity of goods with each other's standards"

"[The UK should] chuck Chequers"

"[EU regulations would] cheat the electorate"

"if we get it wrong we will be punished"

"[I am] grateful to the committee for recognising that there was no intention to mislead the House and that I had been completely transparent"

"[I] didn't say anything about Turkey during the referendum. Since I made no remarks...I can't disown them"

"Take that [Irish border] backstop out, or at the very least give us a legally binding change - within the text of the agreement - that allows for the UK to come out [of the EU] of its own accord, and then we will be able to say that the agreement is imperfect but at least tolerable."

"I think an awful lot of money, an awful lot of police time, now goes into these historic offences and all this malarkey and you know £60million I saw has been spaffed up the wall on some investigation into historic child abuse? What on earth is that going to do to protect the public now?"

"The British people won't be scared into backing a woeful Brexit deal nobody voted for"

"We are being asked to vote for a customs union and a second referendum. The Bill is directly against our manifesto - and I will not vote for it. We can and must do better - and deliver what the people voted for."

"We will leave the EU on 31 October, deal or no deal. The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal."

"[I will beat Labour and] put Nigel Farage back in his box"

"We will not be forgiven if we do not deliver Brexit on October 31"

"We need to realise the depth of the problems we face. Unless we get on and do this thing, we will be punished for a very long time. There is a very real choice between getting Brexit done and the potential extinction of this great party."

"I believe I am best placed to lift this party, beat Jeremy Corbyn and excite people about conservatism and conservative values."

"[The backstop is a "monstrosity" that wipes out the UK's sovereignty and is] being used to coerce the UK into becoming a vassal state of Brussels"

"[I am] not aiming for a no-deal [Brexit] outcome"

"[I will take the UK out of the EU by Halloween] come what may, do or die"

"If you Brexit sensibly and effectively, you take away so much of the ammunition of the SNP."

"We should actively campaign for a public understanding of the benefits of the [UK] union, economic and strategic, for the people and its component nations,"

"Interviewer: Can you give an example, in your political life, when you've set your own self-interest aside for the benefit of the country? Boris Johnson: Well, er, pfft, um, it's a good question, but er, I, I, I would, you know, I don't, obviously, it's an embarrassing but, but true that, um, er, it is obviously, possible, er, how should I put this, to make more money, er, by not being a full-time politician. Um, I don't, I don't want to put too finer point on it, er, but, you know, you have to, you have to, you have to, make sacrifices sometimes."

"Andrew Neil: You talk about article 5B in . Boris Johnson: Article 24, get it right Andrew, it's article 24, paragraph 5B. Andrew Neil: And how would you handle paragraph 5C? Boris Johnson: I would confide entirely in paragraph 5B. Andrew Neil: But how would you get round what's in 5C? Boris Johnson: I would confide entirely in paragraph 5B which is enough for out purposes. Andrew Neil: Do you know what is in 5C? Boris Johnson: No."

"[I will] deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn"

"We are going to energise the country. We are going to get Brexit done on 31 October and take advantage of all the opportunities it will bring with a new spirit of can do. We are once again going to believe in ourselves, and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self doubt and negativity."

"Under no circumstances would we agree to any free-trade deal that put the NHS on the table."

"We want to, and we are going to, deliver on the mandate of the people, which is to take the UK out of the EU whole and entire on 31 October"

"[The Irish border backstop would] keep us locked in EU regulatory orbit, locked in the EU trading system, unable to control our own laws"

"Preparing urgently and rapidly for the possibility of an [EU] exit without a deal will be my top priority, and it will be the top priority for the civil service too."

"MPs should "honour the mandate of the people" by leaving the EU."

"There's a terrible kind of collaboration as it were, going on between people who think they can block Brexit in Parliament and our European friends"

"[The Irish border backstop is] inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK"

"I do think they [the EU] understand there's an opportunity to do a deal. I think it's going to be touch and go."

"I just say to everybody in the country, including everyone in Parliament, the fundamental choice is this: Are you going to side with Jeremy Corbyn and those who want to cancel the referendum? Are you going to side with those who want to scrub the democratic verdict of the people - and plunge this country into chaos. Or are you going to side with those of us who want to get on, deliver the mandate of the people and focus with absolute, laser-like precision on the domestic agenda?"

"[I would] rather be dead in a ditch [than ask the EU to delay Brexit beyond 31 October]"

"I've looked carefully at no deal, I've assessed its consequences, both for our country and yours, and yes, of course, we could do it, the UK could certainly get through it, but be in no doubt that the outcome would be a failure of statecraft."

"Man: The NHS has been destroyed. It's been destroyed. It's been destroyed, and now you come here for a press opportunity. Boris Johnson: Well actually there's no press here. Man: [Points at camera crew] What do you mean there's no press here?"

"I've never heard such humbug in all my life."

"We have got a deal, oven-ready, by which we can leave the EU in a few weeks. It’s a great deal for this country. It delivers everything that I wanted when I campaigned for Brexit"

"Let's get Brexit done, but first my friends let's get breakfast done."

"I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands. People obviously can make up their own minds but I think the scientific evidence is... our judgement is that washing your hands is the crucial thing."

"I want to stress that for the vast majority of the people of this country, we should be going about our business as usual."

"We are embarked now on a great voyage, a project that no one thought in the international community that this country would have the guts to undertake, but if we are brave and if we truly commit to the logic of our mission - open, outward-looking - generous, welcoming, engaged with the world championing global free trade now when global free trade needs a global champion. I believe we can make a huge success of this venture, for Britain, for our European friends, and for the world."

"We are telling cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants to close tonight as soon as they reasonably can and not to open tomorrow. To be clear they can continue to provide take out services. Night clubs, theatres, gyms and leisure centres should close on the same time scale. These are places where people come together and indeed the whole purpose is to bring people together. Some people will be tempted to go out tonight. Please don't. You may think you are invincible bit there is no guarantee you will get mild symptoms. As far as possible we want you to stay at home - that's how we can protect our NHS and save lives."

"We have so far succeeded in the first and most important task we set ourselves as a nation to avoid the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world."

"At this stage I do not think that the international comparisons and the data are yet there to draw the conclusions that we want."

"I am meant to be in control. I am the Führer. I’m the king who takes the decisions."

"[On the assumption Carrie Symonds, now Johnson, had briefed against Dominic Cummings] She hasn't briefed anyone and my instructions to all were to shut the f*** up. How is any of us supposed to know where these briefings come from? Look at the claims made on behalf of allies of Lee [Cain] and Dom, that I'm out in six months, that I can't take decisions, that Carrie is secretly forging lockdown policy, and about a billion equally demented claims. Are you responsible for all that crap? No. Then look at it from my point of view. This is a totally disgusting orgy of narcissism by a government that should be solving a national crisis."

"[The Conservative Party] thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just Nature's way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much."

"We have to recognise that the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass are over, and there are other, better things we should be investing in, in FCAS, in the future combat air system, in cyber, this is how warfare in the future is going to be."

"No more fucking lockdowns - let the bodies pile high in their thousands."

"I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that I have been repeatedly assured since these allegations emerged that there was no party, and that no COVID rules were broken."

"I can tell you; I DO brush it! I have a comb in my office!"

"I believed implicitly that this was a work event. But Mr. Speaker, with hindsight, I should have sent everyone back inside, I should have found some other way to thank them, and I should have recognised that even if it could be said technically to fall within the guidelines, there would be millions and millions of people who simply would not see it that way."

"[I]f we took away the whip from everyone here [in the House of Commons] who's pinched someone's bottom, we'll lose our majority."

"It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. … I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks. … I want to thank you, the British public, for the immense privilege that you have given me. And I want you to know that from now on until the new prime minister is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried on."

"He [Vladimir Putin] threatened me at one point, and he said, "Boris, I don't want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute" or something like that. Jolly. But I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate."

"To those who say we may be denuding our own arsenals by giving the support, I say what is the point in deploying tanks and planes in North Carolina or North Rhine-Westphalia when Ukrainians could be using them now, where they are needed to help assure our collective security for decades?"

"I believe that, once this war is done, once the Ukrainians have won, then yes they should begin the process of induction both to Nato and to the EU."

"I have received a letter from the Privileges Committee making it clear - much to my amazement - that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament. They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons. They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons, I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister. They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister - including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak - believed that we were working lawfully together. I have been an MP since 2001. I take my responsibilities seriously. I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts, the Committee know it. But they have wilfully chosen to ignore the truth, because from the outset, their purpose has not been to discover the truth, or genuinely to understand what was in my mind when I spoke in the Commons. Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court. Most members of the Committee - especially the chair - had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence. They should have recused themselves."

"[In March 2021, I] had commissioned some work on whether it might be technically feasible to launch an aquatic raid on a warehouse in Leiden, in the Netherlands, and to take that which was legally ours and which the UK desperately needed."

"[After consultations] I secretly agreed with what they all thought, but did not want to say aloud: that the whole thing was nuts."

"Frankly, once I pulled the carpets out of the flat in No 11, which is where we lived … the whole thing was looking a bit like a crack den, to be totally honest, and it needed to be refurbished."

"We're waging a proxy war (Russian invasion of Ukraine), but we're not giving our proxies the ability to do the job. For years now, we've been allowing them to fight with one hand tied behind their backs and it has been cruel."

"[On George W. Bush] What has brought so many folk on to the streets, however, is a much broader case: the President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy and who by his violent and ill-thought-out actions in Afghanistan and Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In so far as this may be an accurate representation of the marchers' beliefs, it deserves an answer. Let us dispense with the trivial abuse. The President was duly elected. He cannot help his buzzard-like appearance. Whatever the deficiencies of his syntax, they do not justify the loathing in which he is held."

"With friends like these, who needs Yemenis?"

"Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility."

"I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else."

"Boris was told to engage his brain before speaking in future."

"You are a self-centred, pompous twit. Even your body language on TV is pathetic. Get out of public life. Go and do something in the private sector."

"Boris Johnson, people always ask me the same question, they say, 'Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?' And I always say, 'No.'"

"Boris Johnson voted in favour of scrapping section 28, although he had previously compared gay marriage to bestiality in a book he published, and referred to gay men as "tank-topped bumboys" while working as a journalist."

"Most politicians are ambitious and ruthless, but Boris is a gold medal egomaniac. I would not trust him with my wife nor – from painful experience – my wallet. It is unnecessary to take any moral view about his almost crazed infidelities, but it is hard to believe that any man so conspicuously incapable of controlling his own libido is fit to be trusted with controlling the country. His chaotic public persona is not an act – he is, indeed, manically disorganised about everything except his own image management. He is also a far more ruthless, and frankly nastier, figure than the public appreciates."

"I would not take Boris's word about whether it is Monday or Tuesday."

"What does that say about you Boris Johnson? Aren't you in fact making up quotes, lying to your party leader, wanting to be part of someone being physically assaulted...you're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?"

"There's no point trying to contain Boris. He's mayor of London, he can speak out if he wants to"

"The book reads as if it was dictated, not written. All the way through we hear Boris's voice; it’s like being cornered in the Drones Club and harangued for hours by Bertie Wooster."

"Mr. Johnson ... made his name in Brussels not with honest reporting but with extreme euroskepticism, tirelessly attacking, mocking and denigrating the European Union. He wrote about European Union plans to take over Europe, ban Britain’s favorite potato chips, standardize condom sizes and blow up its own asbestos-filled headquarters. These articles were undoubtedly colorful but they bore scant relation to the truth."

"I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead."

"I am surprised and disappointed that you have chosen to repeat the figure of £350 million per week, in connection with the amount that might be available for extra public spending when we leave the European Union. This confuses gross and net contributions. It also assumes that payments currently made to the UK by the EU, including for example for the support of agriculture and scientific research, will not be paid by the UK government when we leave. It is a clear misuse of official statistics."

"He has turned being an upper-class buffoon into an art form."

"Not in my lifetime has there been a politician with less substance inflicting greater national damage."

"I've made an assessment of him over many years. He is a shallow populist – manifestly unsuitable for high office – who would undoubtedly be a disaster for the country and bring doom to the Conservative Party."

"I know that within the Tory party the hard Brexiteers are compared to the leaders of the French revolution. I think Gove is Brissot, and Boris Johnson is Danton, and Rees-Mogg is compared to Robespierre. We should not forget that the efforts of these men were not appreciated by the common man they claimed to represent – because they all ended up on the guillotine. So that’s important to remind [them]."

"You just don't care for anything because you're spoilt. You have no care for money or anything."

"Boris is an intellectual. They are rare among PMs. Gordon Brown was one, as was A J Balfour at the beginning of the 20th century. Boris should write a book a year to keep his mind engaged and active."

"Boris will be the most fun prime minister since Harold Wilson. We need that quality back into the heart of the nation and recognise that quality of life matters as much as economic statistics."

"Boris is a big man who doesn’t bear grudges. He should have a broad-based government of all talents. Once Brexit is resolved, there'll be long overdue challenges to solve."

"We must let Boris be Boris — and watch the fun begin."

"Good man, he's tough and he's smart. They're saying "Britain Trump", they call him "Britain Trump"."

"A clownish figure with silly hair and a passing relationship with the truth."

"90,000 Conservative members, whose views have become more extreme as their numbers have fallen, recently selected Boris Johnson as their new leader, and thus as the country's new prime minister. In doing so, they have chosen a mendacious chancer. It is no exaggeration to say that Johnson has lied his way to the top, first in journalism and then in politics."

"The Prime Minister's advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect."

"Feel a bit sick at Jo's name being used in this way."

"My brother is using words like surrender and capitulation as if the people standing in the way of the blessed will of the people as defined by 17.4m votes in 2016 should be hung, drawn, quartered, tarred and feathered. I think that is highly reprehensible language to use."

"The thing about the greased piglet is that he manages to slip through other people’s hands where mere mortals fail."

"The Prime Minister of our nation will, at times, have to stand up to President Trump, President Putin, President Xi of China. So it is surely not expecting too much that he spend half an hour standing up to me."

"Look what happens when the Labour party moves so, so far to the left. It comes up with ideas that are not able to be contained within a rational basis quickly. You're also going to see people saying, my God, Boris Johnson, who is kind of a physical and emotional clone of the president, is able to win."

"The Boris Johnson government's initial response to COVID-19 was the now discredited policy of "herd immunity" — the strategy of letting the virus rip through the population, infecting up to 40 million people, most of whom would recover and then supposedly be immune to the virus. The only problem was that this would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths — a prospect the Tories had to abandon in the face of expert denunciation and widespread public outrage. Johnson's change of tack was to move finally towards lockdown, advising against mass gatherings and urging people to avoid clubs, pubs, and restaurants — and most travel — as well as advising older people to self isolate."

"According to the Director-General of the WHO, the choice to abandon systematic testing and contract tracing, which were effective in Korea and Taiwan, was a major mistake that contributed to the spread of the virus in virtually every country. The ultimate cause of this alarming delay were strategic choices. [...] Other countries waited far too long to react, largely on the basis of the and crypto-Darwinian strategy of "herd immunity." Boris Johnson's United Kingdom was entirely passive in its initial approach."

"What I would say to people is, the prime minister's got very, very difficult choices to make, and I would encourage all members of the public and MPs to listen extremely carefully to what the prime minister says today and over coming days"

"The most accomplished liar in public life — perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister."

"He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox."

"Calling Johnson’s radicalism “hard right” might sound overdrawn. He did not set out to lead the party further to the right or, indeed, to lead it anywhere. His primary aim was to lead the party. Finding a label for his outlook is accordingly in one way pointless. Like Trump, he has no settled outlook. Nor is he unique in that regard among British Conservatives. Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Thatcherism, the Conservative Party has had no clear viewpoint. Anti-Europeanism, which appeared to fill the gap, was negative and temporary. Lacking aims or content of its own, Johnson’s radicalism lies in his forceful, hard-right style, with its disregard for familiar liberal-democratic norms and its claims to speak for “the people” against the elites and institutions. As a superbly skilled “trimmer,” Johnson is suited to improvisation by character and driven to it by predicament. Britain’s divided hard right, which he took over and found himself having to manage, promised implausibly to please both global-minded business and voters fed up with neglected public services, insecure work, and lack of housing."

"From the start Johnson has been a clown, but a useful clown. Now and then he has to be sacked, but he is always taken back, perhaps with a mock sigh. He has never quite equalled the stream of lies that he manufactured as Daily Telegraph correspondent in Brussels in the early 1990s: that the EU wanted to ban prawn cocktail crisps and British sausages, and to standardise the size of condoms because Italians had smaller penises. Week after week, he produced juicy fibs which had news editors on other papers demanding similar stuff from their own reporters in Brussels. Conrad Black, then the owner of the Telegraph and himself on the receiving end of several Johnson lies, was delighted. When Johnson was about to become prime minister in the summer of 2019, Black saluted his old employee, who "was such an effective correspondent for us in Brussels that he greatly influenced British opinion on this country's relations with Europe"."

"[Response to Q1109] Fundamentally, the reason for all these problems was bad policy, bad decisions, bad planning and bad operational capability. It doesn't matter that you have great people doing communications if the Prime Minister changes his mind 10 times a day, and then calls up the media and contradicts his own policy, day after day after day. You are going to have a communications disaster zone. Few things are discussed more inaccurately than communications"

"[Response to Q1126] nobody could find a way around the problem of the Prime Minister just, like a shopping trolley, smashing from one side of the aisle into the other."

"[Response to Q1194] The heart of the problem was fundamentally I regarded him as unfit for the job."

"The culture wars suit the Johnson way of doing things [...] He's good at things that involve short, memorable slogans and showmanship. Is he good at test and trace? Not conspicuously so. Is he good at PPE? No. Is he good at lockdown timing? Absolutely not. But the thing that he's quite good at is spotting a dividing line."

"He rewrites reality in his mind afresh according to the moment’s demands. He lies — so blatantly, so naturally, so regularly — that there is no real distinction possible with him, as there is with normal people, between truth and lies."

"He [Johnson] is totally untrusted by anybody in No 10 yet has a superpower for making people feel sorry for him — "I feel sorry for him like my old dead-beat boyfriend, I hate myself for it but I can’t help it," said one in despair after a particularly dreadful meeting."

"His natural instinct is not to be open, not to be transparent, not to be accountable, but narcissitically to think 'what suits me, how can I extricate myself from this awkward situation, by what means can I arrogate blame somewhere else?'"

"I expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take. Yesterday, he did the opposite of that. So I'll remind him of a quotation, altogether too familiar to him, of Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain, "You have sat there too long, for all the good you have done, in the name of God go.""

"Most politicians, as far as I can work out, are pretty incompetent, and then have a veneer of competence, you do seem to do it the other way around."

"Right now a visit of Boris Johnson in Kyiv started from one-on-one meeting with President Zelenskyy"

"This would activate the Queen. Lascelles Principles will direct her to decline his request for a dissolution. She then is left with the choice to dismiss him or not."

"Now think of Boris Johnson. All of these feelings will apply to him. He is going to be Heath with jokes added in, and Thatcher with consistency taken out, all rolled into a bundle of resentment, denial, attention-seeking and attempted vindication that will be a permanent nightmare for the new prime minister. That he wants revenge on Rishi Sunak is already apparent, but if Liz Truss is elected, she will face the identical problem. The chances of her loyalty to him being repaid are close to zero. Boris lives his life as a performance, and he will want the next act to fill every seat in the theatre of British political life. The Conservative Party had no choice but to remove Johnson from office. His standards of governance and veracity had fallen below what reasonable people could defend. The downside is that the party will always have the problem of what he will say next."

"Q: You have supported a Prime Minister that has continually lied to the Queen, Parliament and the entire United Kingdom, therefore does this not bring into question your own personal integrity and honesty? A: I don't agree with that. Boris Johnson has been an excellent prime minister. He delivered on Brexit. He delivered on the Covid vaccine and he delivered on standing up to Vladimir Putin and backing the Ukrainians. I am proud of what he did."

"In some sense, him running is the dream [...] Droning on about how they need a sensible, serious person to fix the mess they’ve made then that honking pudding turns up with his travelling circus trailing behind. ... Is he a greased piglet any more? He became deeply unpopular with the public because the joke wore thin, he got humiliatingly booted out as PM and he set the Tories on a path to ruin. He was booed at the Queen’s Jubilee. The public tolerance for him would be so, so thin."

"There are several very good potential candidates for Conservative leader. But choosing Boris now would be — and I say this advisedly — an absolutely catastrophic decision."

"In his resignation speech, Boris Johnson showed no awareness of any personal failings that had led his party to turn on him. "When the herd moves, it moves," he complained, without apparent thought as to what might have provoked the herd into stampeding. He later complained the rules had been changed halfway through the relay race that the premiership had become. There had indeed been no rule against No 10 parties, but by the time they happened in lockdown it was against the law. There was no rule that a PM must resign if more than 50 of their ministers quit, but since being able to form a government that commands a Commons majority is the basis for being in power it should hardly need saying that these are circumstances that make resignation inevitable. Boris tried to break rules that no one had previously thought it necessary to state."

"Johnson and I really loathed each other. It was obvious. We really never spoke behind the scenes very much."

"[Sir Keir Starmer on being referred to as Sir Crasheroonie Snoozefest by Johnson.] It doesn’t matter — because I really couldn't give a toss and, you know, I really loathed him. He didn't stand for anything, he had no principles, he had no integrity, he lied through his teeth and he brings everybody down with him. Is there anybody who's had any relationship with Johnson — in any sense of the word — who hasn't ended up in the gutter?"

"We have to hope that the Johnson era is going to come to be perceived in the years ahead as a sort of dreadful aberration, as something that the British people realised was a disaster, and that the Conservative Party now has the courage to realise was disaster and to send Boris Johnson back where he belongs to the music halls [...] He is a brilliant journalist. He's a brilliant entertainer. He had no place in British public life."

"[H]is inner emptiness made it imperative for him always to be the centre of attention, craving affirmation and breaking truth and convention to achieve it."

"The damage that Johnson has done to the country is beyond measure. Has any prime minister done so much harm? Covid-19 was the most serious crisis to hit Britain since the Second World War. He ran the government as if he were the wayward manager of an amateur theatre company, full of histrionics, changes of mind and cliques."

"Much as Boris is not prone to getting really cross, nor using particularly strong language, this was one [time] where he really flipped. At our morning meeting, with a small gang of us, he just launched into a violent attack on Emmanuel Macron. And basically saying: "He’s a four-letter word that begins with 'c'’, he's a weirdo, he's Putin's lickspittle, we need to go studs up on this one" – a rugby term that basically means gloves off - "we need an orgy of frog-bashing, I’m going to have to punch his lights out"... Pretty strong stuff."

"[In 1964 or 1965] There was her baby, Alexander, a few months old, lying naked on a bath mat, kicking his feet in the air, round, pink and fat, with a remarkable shock of electrically bright blond hair. As I gazed at him, I didn't find that baby at all appealing, too pink and too noisy."

"That baby on the bath mat, who so decisively put me off the idea of teen motherhood, grew up to be the most disgraced prime minister under his ludicrously changed name of Boris: he looks much the same."

"As for Boris Johnson, I look back with a morbid incredulity at what that baby grew up to be. It’s a not particularly good joke to surprise people with the fact that I am one of the many women to have seen him naked."

"He can continue to cause damage to the party as he has done so conspicuously in recent years, because he retains a following in the country. That will be exploited by his friends in the popular press. But his real legacy is Brexit, the biggest historic mistake this country has made in peacetime."

"He's not a Tory, he’s somebody who used the Tory party ... he attacks what he calls the Westminster elite but he is so Westminster elite at heart - he’s wealthy, socially liberal, believes in animal rights, carbon net zero - he is not some Lee Anderson."

"[T]he interesting thing about him is that he has persecution mania. And people with persecution mania think that it's all a conspiracy and everybody's out to get them - that isn’t the case. The fact is with Boris he arouses ... such uncontrollable irritation that you just want him to go away. He brings everything on himself, he's not this victim."

"Carrie Johnson, in the caption of an Instagram post with a picture of her holding the newborn, joked: "Welcome to the world Frank Alfred Odysseus Johnson born 5th July at 9.15am. (Can you guess which name my husband chose?!)" The former prime minister Boris Johnson is keen to be thought of as a scholar of the classics. In Greek mythology, Odysseus leaves behind his wife and child to seek adventure, encountering many other women along the way."

"You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else."

"There is now a desperate need for a London-wide left caucus of those interested in the GLC and local councils so that we can compare and discuss what is happening in each borough."

"I feel a degree of regret that Marshall did not push on and say 'Abolish the GLC', because I think it would be a major saving and would have released massive resources for more productive use."

"The H-block protest is part of the struggle to bring about a free, united Ireland. They have my support, and they have the support of the majority of the Labour Party rank and file. I have been consistently in favour of withdrawal from Ireland and to get away from the idea that it is some sort of campaign against terrorism. It is in fact the last colonial war."

"I can't think of a more appalling contrast between this wedding beanfeast and what is happening in Ireland."

"Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything."

"Nobody supports what happened last Saturday in London. But what about stopping it happening? As long as we are in Ireland, people will be letting off bombs in London. I can see that we are a colonial power holding down a colony. For the rest of the time violence will recur again and again as long as we are in Ireland. People in Northern Ireland see themselves as subject peoples. If they were just criminals or psychopaths they could be crushed. But they have a motive force which they think is good."

"What Britain has done for the Irish nation is, although is spread over 800 years, worse than what Hitler did to the Jews. The difference is that one was compacted into a short period of time"

"He asked to see me again. I think he wants me for my body."

"The next election will bring an influx of over 120 new MPs who will be overwhelmingly on the Left."

"There are other people whose fear is if you bring down South Africa there will be a communist regime takeover - and that's a risk I'm prepared to see. I would much rather see South Africa under a communist regime than under the present one if that's the choice I'm faced with."

"I take a much more pragmatic view than many people on the Left about working with Neil Kinnock. Kinnock represents the best vehicle possible for achieving socialism now."

"Nothing could have been greater than the pride of serving this city. I do not believe — I am sure I speak for my colleagues on all sides — nothing else that happens to us in our lives will be as rewarding and fulfilling as the years that we have spent in this building."

"What a squalid and irresponsible little profession it is. Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you from a great height."

"The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges."

"If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It"

"I'm not in favour of the army, I'm in favour of replacing it with armed workers' brigades to defend the factories."

"I urge everybody to stay inside the Labour Party and fight to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. There must now be a serious question over whether Frank can hope to beat Steven Norris on May 4 when Londoners will widely perceive the Labour nomination to have been stolen. The lesson of Wales is that our voters will not be taken for granted. A Labour campaign that was dead in the water from day one will limp on to polling day and never allow us to get on to the real issues that matter to Londoners, such as transport, unemployment and crime. In the interests of uniting the Labour party, I hope Frank Dobson will consider his position over the next few days. He must decide whether he is willing to accept this tainted result or stand down in the interests of Labour and London. Over the last six months Londoners have had to listen to politicians. Now it is time for politicians to listen to Londoners, and I shall be saying nothing further until I have had a chance to listen to Londoners."

"The IMF and World Bank are still appalling, and now the World Trade Organisation too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the international financial system. Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War II. But at least Hitler was mad."

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago..."

"Only some ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster."

"George Bush is just about everything that is repellent in politics... You have got this super-patriotic hawk who was a coward when his country was actually involved in a war and has the most venal and corrupt administration since President Harding in the 20s. He is not a legitimate president... This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown."

"Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."

"The American agenda is sweeping everything before it, and although it's not perfect, the EU is better on environmental issues. It's a less rapacious form of capitalism."

"I just long for the day I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lampposts and that they've got a proper government that represents the people of Saudi Arabia."

"When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot."

"Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it ... Ken Livingstone: Oh, how awful for you. Finegold: How did tonight go? Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment? Finegold: How did tonight go? Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment? Finegold: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you? Livingstone: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal? Finegold: No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal. Livingstone: Ah … right. Finegold: I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go? Livingstone: Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you? Finegold: Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go? Livingstone: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags. Finegold: "How did tonight go?" Livingstone: It's reactionary bigots ... Finegold: I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job. Livingstone: … and who supported fascism. Finegold: I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment. Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that isn't ... Finegold: I'm only asking for a comment. Livingstone: … that had a record of supporting fascism. Finegold: You've accused me ..."

"It may very well be offensive, and that is a matter of personal judgment, but it was not racist. I have been through several media firestorms and I have taken the view that if I made a mistake I apologise. But I am not going to apologise if I don't think I have done anything wrong. It would be easy to buy off media pressure by lying but I am not going to do it."

"When reporters say to me I'm only doing this because it's my job... that's the same abdication of moral responsibility at the thin end of the wedge that in its most extreme and horrific version ends up with others being prepared to stand as a concentration camp guard. You are responsible for your own choices in this life. I have always been, so are reporters."

"Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history — the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity. Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism."

"To avoid manufactured misunderstandings, the policies of Israeli governments are not analogous to Nazism. They do not aim at the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews."

"Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres."

"All racist and anti-semitic attacks must be stamped out. However, the reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims — and they are the primary targets of the extreme right. For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments — not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral. They are also fuelling anger and violence across the world. For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong — but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners."

"You can't expect to work for the Daily Mail group and have the rest of society treat with you respect as a useful member of society, because you are not."

"I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners — black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old — indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for caste, for religion or whatever. That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it is just indiscriminate attempt at mass murder — and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other."

"Finally, I wish to speak, through you, directly to those who came to London today to take life. I know that you personally do not fear to give your own life in exchange for taking others — that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you do fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society, and I can show you why you will fail. In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations, and even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

"In this city 300 languages are spoken and the people that speak them live side by side in harmony. This city typifies what I believe is the future of the human race and a future where we grow together and we share and we learn from each other."

"I want finally to thank Londoners for their solidarity. There are some places in the world where such an incident would have unleashed internal strife and physical violence. London has stood together, we haven’t had any problems of the sort you might see in other parts of the world and I think it says everything about what is right about this city."

"If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that. This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you chose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential. That, I think, is our strength and that is what the bombers seek to destroy. They fear that freedom, they fear a world in which the individual makes their own life choices and their own moral value judgements and that is what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail."

"Perhaps if they're not happy here they can go back to Iran and try their luck with ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach."

"It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook."

"One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era."

"To take such generous contracts and screw them up so dramatically must suggest that these are the most probably the worst business people ever assembled in one place to run anything. … the civil servants were taken to the cleaners and on the face of it you still end up with a £750 million overspend based on your mismanagement of them. I think they should be sacked, hung drawn and quartered, thrown out of the country and the whole thing (the London Underground) returned to public ownership. I saw that they (Metronet management) wanted to talk to the Mayor about this — wasting their breath sunshine! — they can go out and raise the money amongst their shareholders who came here to get their snout in the trough — they screwed it up; they are not getting any of our money!"

"I think Londoners find it bizarre that ten weeks after the allegations in the Evening Standard, you haven't questioned Lee [Jasper]. All these questions about Lee — he can come down from his office now and answer them, and you sanctimonious hypocrites are dragging this out so the lies can carry on in the Standard, you're not talking about Lee coming here 'till March. Bring him here today. Ask him your questions. Let Londoners see the answers. You're dragging this out for electoral purposes. Sanctimonious hypocrites, every one of you."

"I am not in favour of any parental choice in education. You will go to your local school."

"When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

"One of the things that Chávez did when he came to power, he didn’t kill all the oligarchs. There was about 200 families who controlled about 80% of the wealth in Venezuela. He allowed them to live, to carry on. I suspect a lot of them are using their power and control over imports and exports to make it difficult and to undermine Maduro."

"Ken is the man that we all need Ken is the leader of the GLC!"

"We look to the left and to the right And we need help but nobody's in sight Where is the man that we all need Tell him he's to come and rescue me."

"[The former Labour Party general secretary, Margaret McDonagh had died a few days before] Take her most controversial political battle. She helped exclude Ken Livingstone from the Labour candidacy for London mayor in 2000. As general secretary she took most of the blame for it. He won as an independent and she was accused of being "a control freak". At the time this was seen as a grotesque political error. I saw it differently then. And I do now. Livingstone shouldn't have been the Labour candidate for anything and it was worth losing, and enduring the political attacks, to assert that."

"First of all, I've never heard of the fellow. Second, I'm not going to dignify it with a response."

""One day the world will know that #RedKen was right"."

"Today Livingstone said that Hitler supported Zionism. Most people know that Zionism was in fact a response to antisemitism; most people know that Hitler wasn't in the business of responding to antisemitism but was himself the greatest antisemite of all time. Livingstone smears Jews, at least those who refuse to identify as anti-Zionist, by saying that they're like Nazis. He encourages people on the left and in the student movement to relate to Jews as though they were Nazis; unless they disavow Israel. Antisemitism? No, not at all. Just criticism. ... The Livingstone Formulation is named after Ken Livingstone. ... [It] conflates anything allegedly antisemitic, in this case repeatedly insulting a Jewish reporter by comparing him to a Nazi, into the category of legitimate criticism of Israel. Secondly, it goes further than accusing people who raise the issue of antisemitism of being wrong; it accuses them of being wrong on purpose; of crying wolf, of playing the antisemitism card. It alleges an intent, often a collective intent and so a conspiracy, to mobilise Jewish victim-power for illegitimate purposes."

"When the Labour Herald printed a foully anti-semitic cartoon Mr Kenneth Livingstone, boss of the GLC, not only defended its publication, but said that the only thing he regretted about it was that it did not go far enough."

"You're a disgusting racist, you're rewriting history. A Nazi apologist. A Nazi apologist. You're a disgusting Nazi apologist, Livingstone."

"I think you've lost it, Mr Livingstone ... What are you on at the moment? You certainly shouldn't be on Labour’s national executive."

"He has every right to his own view but not to express it when he is mayor of this city."

"I know one thing... Ken Livingstone is a folk hero."

"[Pigeons are] rats with wings."

"George Floyd's awful brutal death is what we should be talking about and addressing the racism, the discrimination and the inequalities black people face in my city, in our country and around the world. It's really important nobody's under any mistaken impression that it is acceptable to be abusive or violent towards police officers or even journalists."

"My wife and children can't open the door because they never know who is going to be behind it. I can't spontaneously decide to go see my mum, I've got to let the police know. I want to go back to normality; I miss it. I miss just being able to go out to the corner shop without police protection. I certainly hope I won't need protection for the rest of my life."

"Boston is among an increasing number of municipalities, universities, and private foundations that have announced plans to divest from fossil fuels. In late October, ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, Auckland, New Zealand; Copenhagen, Denmark; Glasgow, Scotland; Paris; Rio de Janeiro; and Seattle announced commitments to divest from fossil fuel companies and increase investments to make cities more sustainable. Also last month, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott signed a bill that requires the city’s three pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Those are in addition to divestment commitments made last year by Berlin; Bristol, England; Cape Town, South Africa; Durban, South Africa; London; Los Angeles; Milan; New Orleans; New York City; Oslo; Norway; Pittsburgh; and Vancouver, Canada. “Cities are at the forefront of tackling the climate emergency and there is real momentum to move investments away from fossil fuels and toward climate solutions,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is chair-elect of C40 Cities, a network of mayors working to confront climate change, said in a statement. “I will continue to encourage more cities to join the movement, and urge national governments and private finance institutions to mobilize more finance to invest directly in cities to support a green and fair recovery.”"