Women politicians in the United Kingdom

"I would like to create a speedier and more efficient system. Careers and reputations are at stake, and it would be good to be able to inject a sense of calm and transparency into procedures."

"Everyone was muttering about Bill Clinton's philanderings before he came to visit, but once he walked into the room none of the women - or men - could get enough of him. He rather ignored me: my hair wasn't big enough."

"I'm now a committed silver surfer."

"I'm fed up with this Scottish waving of nationalism when it suits them. Alright, they're devolved, but I think they did this just to show the rest of us oh, that we are independent, we make our own decisions, and it's been very embarrassing for the rest of us. And it started me thinking along these lines, if Scotland wants to be independent, OK, be my guest, go ahead, do what you want and [Applause] please take back with you all the Scottish politicians - there's so many of them - you know - starting with Blair and Brown and Campbell, take them all back, and off you go, and go off on your own, because actually, we're all subsidising them I think, by way of benefits and all sorts of reasons, and if they want to show how independent they are, OK, thank you and goodbye."

"It is ridiculous that British troops are here in Crossmaglen. The claim is that they're in Ireland keeping the peace between the two communities. But there is only one community in South Armagh, so what the heck are they doing here?"

"I should make it clear [...] that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers."

"They say 10,000, double, treble and then think of another number. It will be golden elephants next. They have got to stop this game. It is bad governance. It's hysterica scaremongering, which is whipping people up."

"I also believe that US backing for Israeli policies of expansion of the Israeli state and oppression of the Palestinian people is the major cause of bitter division and violence in the world."

"She sounds like a mouthpiece for an old nineteenth-century colonial and Conservative government."

"Ireland is our struggle. Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed."

"You have to start from an understanding that all white people are racist."

"Ever since my colleagues and I have been in the house, there have been a series of incidents that give rise to concern. Our visitors are sometimes treated less than politely and deliberately misled … Visitors and we ourselves have been jostled. We have been challenged by attendants as to our identity in an unsubtle attempt to embarrass us. These occurrences are too frequent and have been going on for too long."

"Being an MP is the sort of job all working-class parents want for their children — clean, indoors and no heavy lifting."

"I am surprised that they chose to bring in blonde, blue-eyed girls from Finland, instead of nurses from the Caribbean who know the language and understand British culture and institutions. [...] Are Finnish girls, who may never have met a black person before, let alone touched one, best suited to nurse in multicultural Hackney?"

"On balance Mao did more good than harm."

"I’m a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children."

"I think the public sector cuts have the potential to set back race relations and black and ethnic minority communities by a generation."

"White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game."

"I put being a mother ahead of being a politician."

"Of course, sex is great. We don't have to pretend otherwise. But people shouldn't feel victimised by a pornified culture and girls shouldn't be forced to do things they don't feel comfortable with."

"There is a crisis of masculinity in Britain because of the pressures rapid economic and social change have placed on masculine identity. A generation of men are in transit and unclear of their social role. They are also under pressure to live up to pornified ideals."

"If you want people to participate and be interested, part of that is to have a political class that looks like the population as a whole."

"When I had been at primary school, I was very good at writing essays. It was a big thing. My essays were so good they would get pinned up on the wall and read out to the rest of the class"

"I want power. I suppose that's the story of my life - seeking power."

"I'm in politics to be a voice for people who don't have a voice."

"There's no question women politicians get a level of abuse online which men don't get. New media and the anonymity has unleashed a really quite violent misogyny which I didn't see when I started in politics, although consistently women always get more severe abuse in the media than men."

"I respect the result of the referendum and no-one wanted to thwart it in a perverse kind of way. But we need to be clear, this is not a Tony Benn Brexit, this is Donald Trump Brexit, and it's got a very ugly side."

"I receive racist and sexist abuse online on a daily basis. I have had rape threats, death threats, and am referred to routinely as a bitch and/or nigger, and am sent horrible images on Twitter"

"Sexism towards female MPs is sadly still commonplace"

"I do know my figures"

"I think politicians complaining about the media is like sailors complaining about the weather."

"I think that's what we were referencing when we talked about easy movement [of workers after the UK has left the EU's single market] - less bureaucracy; it's good for migrants but it's also good for business"

"The health service, they're very worried about a collapse in the number of EU migrants coming here. Social care would be in a terrible position.... finance, education. The reality is that business, the CBI, the Institute of Directors, but also health, education and social care; they say that they need these European migrants and we have to listen to them."

"I will argue for the right of the electorate to vote on any deal that is finally agreed."

"The Labour Party doesn't support a second referendum"

"We don't want to see the break-up of families from the EU in the way we currently do for non-EU families."

"In a global world, we need migration and migrants. They should not be subjected to a hostile environment."

"The disproportionate use of force is clearly discriminatory. This is not a recipe for good police-community relations."

"Migrants from outside the EU should be treated with the same fairness as EU migrants after Brexit."

"The referendum vote will be honoured and we will come out of the EU next spring"

"[We will table an amendment to reject the deal and] prevent the chaos of the UK crashing out of the EU"

"I hope ex-members will continue to work with Labour on issues like homelessness, the benefit system, the NHS and most of all fighting this Tory Brexit"

"The British people and British workers are paying a big price for chaotic Brexit"

"Another vote would be the democratic thing to do to move Brexit forward."

"[Remaining in the EU would be the] best option for the country and my constituents"

"Numbers are a polite way of expressing hostility to migration as a whole."

"To counter her argument that the "prejudice" experienced by Irish, Jewish and Traveller people is not a patch on the "racism" suffered by black people, I cannot improve on the letter from someone whose family left a city in Poland where more than 99% of Jews were exterminated for their race and whose experiences of British antisemitism includes having Nazi insignia brandished in their face. As the anonymous writer says: "To compare those experiences to the struggles of redheads is incomprehensible." Quite."

"Compare the blond Etonian [Boris Johnson] to Britain’s first black woman MP, and you see how racist and sexist 21st-century century Britain remains. No matter how great the sin, how brazen the deceit, how lethally complacent the politician, he gets to come back again and again, and fills his pockets while doing so. Abbott can't even enjoy an M&S mojito on the tube without it becoming a major scandal. She has faced racial bullying – including from within her own party – that would have broken others. Little of that is remembered, and none of it helps."

"Thanks Diane. I hope we can all agree that this debate should be about Syria not UK party politics"

"You're shadow international development secretary not an internet troll."

"images of children should only be considered pornographic if it could be proven the subject suffered"

"Not all civil servants admire strong political leadership. But if you want to change things for the better you need strong political leadership."

"He is demanding of his colleagues, but he is demanding of himself because he wants to change things for the better."

"Yes I did when I was at university 30 years ago, just for a short time."

"I am in the Labour Party because I am a feminist. I am in the Labour Party because I believe in equality."

"Hague: I'd like to congratulate the Leader of the House on being the first female Labour member ever to answer Prime Minister's Questions. She must be proud, three decades on, to be following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, who we on this side of the House and the Prime Minister so admire. Harman: Well I thank him for his congratulations but I would ask him, why is he asking the questions today? Because he is not the Shadow Leader of the House - the Shadow Leader of the House is sitting next to him! Is this the situation in the modern Conservative Party; that women should be seen but not heard? And if I may, perhaps I could offer the Shadow Leader of the House a bit of sisterly advice: she should not let him get away with it! Hague: Turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the Rt. Hon. Lady - she has had a difficult week and she had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she goes; she wears a helmet to a building site; wears Indian clothes to Indian parts of her constituency; presumably, when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she dresses as a clown. Harman: Well I would just start by saying that if I'm looking for advice on what to wear and what not to wear, the very last man I would look to for advice would be the man in the baseball cap!"

"It wouldn't be possible because there aren't enough airports for all the men who'd want to flee the country."

"Harman: Commenting on the question of Sarah Palin, I think that men in politics underestimate women in politics at their peril, and I think that - although I strongly, strongly disagree with very many of the policies she's putting forward - I think she's speaking to the fact that many women feel that they're working hard, they're bringing up their families, they've got a viewpoint on life and the political system excludes them and she has touched that nerve in America. I mean, I don't agree with her politics but I think that she has touched a nerve and I think that then places a big challenge to the Democrats to make sure that they, as a Party which has long championed equality and equality for women that they actually match them and gear up their act. David Dimbleby: You admire her? Harman: I think that she's tough, I don't agree with her politics, I wouldn't vote for her if I was in the States, but I think that she is impressive, yes. But I would rather see the Democrats getting, you know, an even more impressive woman right up at the front."

"The Labour Party is the sister Party for the Democrats and their progressive views are the ones that we are most aligned with."

"I am a very big admirer of Hillary's and I am an admirer of Obama as well."

"I don’t agree with all-male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s a thoroughly bad thing to have men-only leadership."

"While the happy couple are enjoying the thrill of the rose garden, the in-laws are saying that they are just not right for each other. We keep telling them that they cannot pay couples to stay together, and it is clear that it will take more than a three-quid-a-week tax break to keep this marriage together."

"This is a very crucial period and we have got five fantastic candidates. All of them would make excellent leaders of the Party."

"The Chancellor has delivered his first budget but it's the same old Tories; hitting hardest at those who can least afford it and breaking their promises. This is true to form for the Tories, but it includes things that the Liberal Democrats have always fought against. Surely they cannot vote for this."

"This reckless Tory Budget would not be possible without the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems denounced early cuts; now they are backing them. They denounced VAT increases; now they are voting for them. How could they support everything they fought against? How could they let down everyone who voted for them? How could they let the Tories so exploit them? Do they not see that they are just a fig leaf? The Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary is just the Chancellor's fig leaf. The Deputy Prime Minister is just the Prime Minister's fig leaf. The Lib Dems' leaders have sacrificed everything they ever stood for to ride in ministerial cars and to ride on the coat tails of the Tory Government. Twenty-two Liberal Democrat ministerial jobs have been bought at the cost of tens of thousands of other people's. The Liberal Democrats used to stand up for people's jobs, but now they only stand up for their own. Look at the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Twickenham. Mr Speaker,the House has noticed his remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from national treasure to Treasury poodle. They have no mandate for this Budget; this Budget has no legitimacy. Even if the Lib Dems will not speak up for jobs, we will. Even if they will not fight for fairness, we will, and even if they will not protest against Tory broken promises, we will."

"Although it was a very close election, I don't think it was a polarised election. It was a tough fought contest but it was not a divisive contest. Although he won by a whisker I think the party will unite behind Ed Miliband."

"Although he is disappointed, I know he will step forward and play a really important part in Labour’s future."

"Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists - and we all love the red squirrel. But there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again - Danny Alexander."

"If he votes against, that's the only principled position. If he abstains, it's a cop-out; if he votes for, it's a sell-out."

"I'm afraid you gave up the right to pontificate on social mobility when you abolished educational maintenance allowance [EMA], trebled tuition fees and betrayed a generation of young people."

"For many young people, social mobility now means a bus down to the job centre."

"Next he will be foxtrotting down to the Tory party's fundraising ball, auctioning City internships for the children of the highest bidder. Is that not the Government's idea of social mobility?"

"I'm sure nobody wants to know this, but my husband does all the cleaning - rather too much cleaning. It is too clean, the house!"

"You have been there and seen it with your own eyes [...] If I was going at 100mph, and saw the speedometer saying 100mph, it would be a bit odd, wouldn't it, if I said somebody assured me that I wasn't? Because it's what you've seen with your own eyes."

"[After an intervention by Jacob Rees-Mogg on her tweets, which he said had a "perception of bias": I] made it my business to find out whether or not it would mean that the government would not have confidence in me if I continued to chair the committee. [...] I was assured that I should continue the work that the House had mandated with the appointment that the House had put me into and so I did just that."

"Mr Johnson’s dishonesty if left unchecked would have contaminated the whole of government, allowing misleading to become commonplace and thus eroding standards which are essential for the health of our democracy. There is no impunity for wrongdoing. Even if you’re the prime minister – especially if you’re the prime minister – you must tell the truth to parliament."

"[Referring to women MPs] We're now up to 35 per cent and a lot of men find this objectionable and want to unleash misogyny. [...] The irony is that the more women you get, the more it triggers some men who whilst they can blot out of their ears a couple of women, somehow it feels like an assault on them to actually have to listen to a number of women in authority talking confidently, and they then do a backlash."

"She is one of certain, particular women who are of the opinion that they have a god-given right to be amongst the chosen."

"She is either thick or criminally disingenuous [...] Her only policy, her only raison d’être, is a particularly vacuous feminism dating from a sixth-form common room in about 1973. Were this a serious commitment and grounded in reality, one might respect her for it and even agree. But it never is grounded in reality. It is the perpetual shrieking of an idiot."

"Maybe I was naive, but I thought the whole point of being an MP was to scrutinise legislation and improve it."

"Is it a bad thing to have MPs voting for what they think is right? Isn't that Parliament working well?"

"Among the many prejudices against vegans is the belief that they are always preaching to others and trying to convert them. I do not think that is true; we are incredibly tolerant. We are always polite when others ask, “Don’t you ever get tempted by a bacon sandwich?”… In fact, most vegans I know are rather coy about explaining why they are vegan, mostly because the question tends to be asked when we are sitting a dinner table full of meat eaters, and it seems rather impolite to answer. However, seeing as we are not at a dinner party now, here is the ethical case… If people are vegetarians for ethical reasons—because they believe that killing and eating animals is wrong—they really ought to be vegan, too. The average human eats more than 11,000 animals in his or her lifetime, but millions of calves and chicks are also killed every year as “waste products” of milk and egg production."

"I don’t think that maternal and child health is a global priority. The health and welfare of mothers and their children received unprecedented international attention in 2010, but not all Governments were involved and other issues subsequently knocked this issue off the top slot. For those Governments who did make specific policy and resource commitments, the role of civil society is to work hard to get them to deliver. However, to see a truly seismic shift in the life chances of mums-to-be and their babies, Governments — rich and poor — must tackle inequality, especially gender but also income."

"Building an integrated, cost-effective, national health service that delivers quality care for all is one of the critical challenges facing anyone with a stake in global health. A mum doesn’t divide the health of her family up into different bits when she goes to a health clinic: ‘vaccines’, ‘malaria’, ‘HIV’. For her a health centre is a health centre and a nurse is a nurse. When she goes to get help, she should receive integrated care for all her family’s needs not just the one thing that centre, or health practitioner, happens to know about. We need to assign inefficient, parallel health interventions to the rubbish bin."

"It bodes well for the future that young people are thinking so intently about political issues."

"Every weekend families across Britain settle down to watch the X-factor or Britain’s Got Talent. We revel in the discovery of new talent, the chance for someone to come from nowhere and suddenly make it big based simply on their raw ability and hard work. Yet (perhaps outside the realm of music and entertainment) our society is all too often the opposite of this ideal of opportunity."

"The idea that a child living deep in poverty whose parents don’t have enough money for food or heating, books or basic things like school trips can ever have the same opportunities for development as a more fortunate child is patently absurd. But because it leads to some difficult choices many politicians choose to ignore it, essentially promising to make you an omelette without breaking any eggs."

"It’s not about creating an equal country, but it is about stopping the development of an underclass cut off from the rest of society. This focus could be a straight forward set of things like a living wage, supporting more effective pathways into work and an effective benefits system."

"If we can find the will I strongly believe we can still make Britain’s approach to talent a bit more X-factor (without Simon Cowell) and a bit less Downton Abbey."

"I have fought a really local and positive campaign full of energy and enthusiasm and I think that came across. I’m not nervous, I’m honour and humbled to be elected, I appreciate the big challenge ahead, I have two children aged two and four so I am used to the challenge."

"It was the realisation of a lifelong ambition to be the MP for my home town. It was by no means the end of a journey, but rather the beginning of a new chapter both for me and for the people of Batley and Spen."

"We now face five years of an unbridled Conservative government that is intent on swingeing cuts, further attacks on society’s most vulnerable and on our NHS. This will severely limit what can be achieved but I am determined to work tirelessly to do what I can to make sure local people are heard in Parliament and protected from the worst of what is to come."

"Many people don’t realise just what a valuable lifeline libraries can be."

"They are a lifeline for job hunters without their own computer, slimmers, walkers, discussers, knitters and natterers."

"British policy on Syria has wandered aimlessly, a deadly mix of timidity and confusion. The lack of a coherent response, not just by Britain but by the wider international community, has allowed the situation in Syria to fester into the greatest humanitarian crisis of our lifetime. … We can and should do much more to help."

"We need a robust but targeted military approach. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no war-monger. I opposed the Iraq war and worked for a decade as an Oxfam aid worker – but this isn’t Iraq. This is a humanitarian crisis."

"I don’t believe there will be a military solution to this conflict but I do believe there will be a military component to it. The vast majority of the fighting will be done by people from the region and by Syrians themselves, but that doesn’t mean that the UK shouldn’t play a role."

"I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But despite all of the dangers and difficult judgements that lie ahead, burying our head in the sand is not an option. We must face up to this crisis and do all that we can to resolve it."

"Thanks Diane. I hope we can all agree that this debate should be about Syria not UK party politics"

"The priority has been offering a service and making a difference."

"I don’t think we as a party should let China and Russia stop international action to save lives in Syria … Three times they have vetoed action in Syria, and each time the crisis has escalated and escalated."

"I always back UN action where we can find it, but I do not think it should be a limit to our help. There have been multiple UN resolutions that say [to] Assad: stop killing indiscriminately your own citizens."

"On the military side, we need to get two things right if we only talk about limited air strikes against Isil [Isis] – and I back international action against Isil – it will be counterproductive. We have to look at the conflict dynamic in Syria, and that is 75% of civilian deaths and causalities are caused by the Assad regime due to his aerial bombardment of civilians."

"This is about a deterrence effect to stop the Syrian regime targeting their own civilians. I think it would be enforceable from the Mediterranean using US French and UK military capability already out there. It would mean the aerial bombardment of Syrian civilians would stop, and it would create space for peace talks."

"The civil war in Syria is the worst humanitarian tragedy of our generation and one that our government, and the world, is failing to deal with adequately."

"I never really grew up being political or Labour. It kind of came at Cambridge where it was just a realisation that where you were born mattered. That how you spoke mattered... who you knew mattered. I didn’t really speak right or knew the right people. I spent the summers packing toothpaste at a factory working where my dad worked and everyone else had gone on a gap year! To be honest my experience at Cambridge really knocked me for about five years."

"Having gone through that experience of being in a Cambridge college, surviving it and building myself up, meant that coming here (Westminster) was a walk in the park, and a lot of the same people are here!"

"I’ve been in some horrific situations where women have been raped repeatedly in , I’ve been with child soldiers who have been given Kalashnikov and kill members of their own family in . In Afghanistan I was talking to Afghan elders who were world weary of a lack of sustained attention from their own Government and from the international community to stop problems early. That’s the thing that all of that experience gave me - if you ignore a problem it gets worse."

"If you talk to quite a lot of people around the world, whether it’s in an camp or in an emergency disaster they often say the UK is a UN Security Council member, a leading member of the European Union, a leading member of , you can make a massive difference and they want us to act."

"Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration, be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us."

"In my neck of the woods non-conformity is what we do best."

"What many of our businesses are lacking is confidence: confidence to expand; confidence to borrow; confidence to grow; and the confidence to fuel a real economic recovery that benefits everybody, offering decent jobs, paying decent wages and bridging the skills gap."

"It is time to give city and county regions the powers and resources they need to promote growth, and I will happily work with all of those who are genuinely committed to building an economic powerhouse in the north."

"Yorkshire folk are not fools."

"Many businesses in Yorkshire want the security and stability of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union, a cause I look forward to championing passionately in this place and elsewhere."

"I am Batley and Spen born and bred, and I could not be prouder of that. I am proud that I was made in Yorkshire and I am proud of the things we make in Yorkshire. Britain should be proud of that, too. I look forward to representing the great people of Batley and Spen here over the next five years."

"Every decade or so, the world is tested by a crisis so grave that it breaks the mould: one so horrific and inhumane that the response of politicians to it becomes emblematic of their generation —their moral leadership or cowardice, their resolution or incompetence. It is how history judges us."

"We must put party politics to one side and focus on what really matters—the protection of Syrian civilians."

"Please let us stop casting the humanitarian, diplomatic and military responses as mutually exclusive alternatives. They are not. If we are serious about addressing this crisis, we need to stop pretending that any one of them offers a panacea and instead weave these strands into a coherent strategy."

"Let us not be duped into believing that we need to make a choice between dealing with either Assad or Isis. On the surface, this may seem appealing, but it is not an option. There is no choice."

"No matter what our humanitarian response is to this crisis, it will never be enough. It cannot end the conflict."

"If four years of continuous vicious conflict have taught us anything, it is that the current regime is no longer capable of bringing peace and stability to Syria."

"While I do not believe that there is a purely military solution to this conflict, I do believe that there will be a military component to any viable solution."

"I believe it is time for the Government urgently to consider deterring the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilians in Syria through the willingness to consider the prudent and limited use of force."

"We owe it to everybody in our party to be honest about where we stand."

"The Tories deserved a kicking last night. With chaos and discord in our hospitals and schools, an unprecedented housing crisis and fatcats lining their pockets while life gets tougher for everybody else, it’s an outrage for David Cameron to appear on TV looking like the cat who got the cream, knowing his party is on track to win again in 2020."

"Labour is in the doldrums and we have to ask ourselves why. Why, day after day during the campaign, we failed to get a hearing. Why the voters aren’t getting the alternative vision of a fairer, stronger, more just Britain that we should be offering."

"When the voters tell us on the doorsteps that they can’t picture our leader in No 10 we have to listen. When our candidates in London and Wales ask the leader to stay away, we have a problem. When the revival we were promised in Scotland with Corbyn’s “new” politics proves to be a mirage, we have to ask what it has actually achieved."

"We both nominated Corbyn for leader last year. We have never had cause to doubt his commitment to society’s most disadvantaged and to Labour’s values – a commitment we all share. But we have come to regret that decision."

"Weak leadership, poor judgment and a mistaken sense of priorities have created distraction after distraction and stopped us getting our message across."

"Every time we flounder we just embolden them further."

"Some say we need to be more patient. What we cannot, must not do is sit back and hope for the best."

"Corbyn needs to show he’s ready to lead from the front. He and those around him must come out of their bunker, stop blaming everybody else, and show the discipline and determination to drive our message home. These elections were a terrible missed opportunity. We cannot afford any more."

"In recent years, Britain has withdrawn from the world. On Syria, on Europe, on Ukraine this government has been on the periphery: all victim of the same lack of long-term strategic thinking about British foreign policy and the absence of a moral compass. It is time for the left to revive its ethical foreign policy and carve out a new long-term narrative that puts human rights and the protection of civilians centre stage once again."

"There is much to be proud of in the left’s internationalist past. Many from our movement made the ultimate sacrifice fighting Franco’s fascism during the . We were unequivocal in our opposition to Apartheid in South Africa, led action to protect civilians in Kosovo and . And we put this country firmly on the road to fulfil our historic commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid – an act of solidarity that has seen millions more children in school and many more women surviving childbirth. However, this active internationalist approach is not inevitable. It has been, and is still, contested across the . It is threatened by an increasingly nationalist and isolationist right, by a government that has withdrawn from global leadership. And it is threatened by those on the left who might show great personal solidarity with international causes but tend to think the British state has no role to play."

"I believe the left is now in a fundamental fight about our future approach to international affairs: one where we decide whether to channel UK resources, diplomatic influence and military capability in defence of human rights and the protection of civilians; or one where we stand on the sidelines frozen by our recent failures. I believe it’s time for the left to revive its ethical foreign policy and in particular, rebuild the case for a progressive approach to humanitarian intervention."

"After the horror of 9/11 ‘interventionism’ was increasingly expressed through the paradigms of ‘security’ or ‘counter terrorism’, rather than being grounded firmly in the protection of civilians. And then Labour’s support for military action in Iraq distorted a worthy principle with such devastating impact. The legacy of Iraq – an intervention I was wholly opposed to because it was not fundamentally about protecting civilians – still hangs over us. But Labour can no longer be paralysed by Iraq. We need to learn from its many lessons without forgetting the equally important lessons of Bosnia or Rwanda."

"President Assad dropped chemical weapons on school children and the world stood by. He rained down barrel bombs and cluster munitions on hospitals and homes and we did not respond. For too long, the UK government let the crisis fester on the ‘too difficult to deal with’ pile. There was no credible strategy, nor courage or leadership – instead we had chaos and incoherence, interspersed with the occasional gesture. It’s been a masterclass in how not to do foreign policy and a shameful lesson on what happens when you ignore a crisis of this magnitude."

"Unless we act to end the slaughter of civilians in Syria by President Assad, Isis will continue to find a steady stream of recruits from the Syrian Sunni population driven to desperation and radicalisation. In this context no amount of military action against Isis will be able to eradicate them. ... As long as these attacks persist these forces will not be able to focus – as many want to – on freeing their country from the cancer of Isis."

"The left should carve out a new long-term narrative about British foreign policy: one that puts human rights and the protection of civilians centre stage again. And one that reasserts our commitment to the responsibility to protect those most at risk of mass atrocity crimes. This isn’t really about being pro or anti-military intervention. Rather it’s a call to redefine the principles that will guide the decisions we take, as well as a commitment to then honour them."

"Before I heard the news that my friend Jo Cox had died from her injuries on Thursday, I sent her a text message, it read, 'you won't see this until you're better, but I love you'. And then I sat all day hoping, praying, willing her to recover. I still can't come to terms with the fact that she didn't. The 'I love you' still stands."

"I know if she could read this now she would wince and recoil, like so many women she beat herself up constantly, thinking she was struggling to be a good enough mum or a good enough MP. She was more than good enough at both."

"I think she was very worried that the language was coarsening, that people were being driven to take more extreme positions, that people didn’t work with each other as individuals and on issues; it was all much too tribal and unthinking. And she was particularly worried – we talked about this regularly – particularly worried about the direction of, not just in the UK but globally, the direction of politics at the moment, particularly around creating division and playing on people’s worst fears rather than their best instincts. So we talked about that a lot and it was something that worried her."

"She was a politician and she had very strong political views and I believe she was killed because of those views. I think she died because of them, and she would want to stand up for those in death as much as she did in life."

"The two things that I’ve been very focused on is how do we support and protect the children and how do we make sure that something good comes out of this, ... their mother was someone who was loved by lots of people and that therefore, it’s OK to be upset and it’s OK for them to cry and to be sad about it."

"She cherished every moment … I remember so much about her but most of all I will remember that she met the world with love and both love for her children, love in her family and also love for people she didn’t know. She just approached things with a spirit, she wasn’t perfect at all you know, but she just wanted to make the world a better place, to contribute, and we love her very much."

"As a newly elected UKIP MEP, I had mixed feelings about my first visit to the European Parliament in Brussels. After all, I am visiting a parliament which I believe shouldn’t exist; however, I should, and will be there to act as the eyes and ears of the British people."

"Austerity may still be felt here in the North West but Brussels doesn’t even know the meaning of the word."

"Whilst ‘Remain’ campaigners are obviously disappointed in the result, most are taking it on the chin and yielding to the democratic process, forgoing the need to insult those who happen to have voted differently."

"As UKIP’s health spokesman at the last General Election, I can say with gladness that now we have voted to leave, our treasured NHS will now be safe from the clutches of the EU/US TTIP agreement that would have seen American drug and insurance companies elbow their way into our healthcare. I would have thought that the local Green Party would at least join me in celebrating on this issue."

"Our nation is becoming a totalitarian state and unless we rise up to defend our rights, they will be lost forever."

"I joined UKIP in 2003, when it was a party hardly anyone had heard of, but it was the start of an upward trend as we grew in importance and professionalism. In recent time I have watched the chaotic infighting and seen the growing frustration of members who feel their voices are once again being ignored as we embark on a new future for the United Kingdom. And it's this future I want to help shape by leading the party which had such a significant impact on the political scene in this country, under the leadership of Nigel Farage. My message is clear: I'm offering a real alternative to the other options of EDL-lite or diet Labour."

"I expect better from Catholic bishops. They need to understand that Ukip and the Catholic Church have so much in common. I cannot think of anyone who is a bishop or a priest who would not have the same values for people as we do."

"I am delighted to be named the first UKIP spokesman for Women and Equalities. These important issues need to be promoted without patronising tokenism, virtue-signalling and political correctness."

"Clear and decisive leadership is crucial and we shall deliver it. It is urgent that we work on projecting our party firmly and decisively with the purpose of securing our nation’s interests through Brexit and beyond."

"The result sends a clear message to the powers at Westminster that people have become completely disenfranchised with their politics, and that the politicians have become completely detached from the issues which really concern the working man and woman. I have always believed that Britain is big enough and strong enough to stand on its own two feet, and to truly thrive when freed from the shackles of EU bureaucracy. Now we have the opportunity to prove it. June 23 will go down in history as our Independence Day – and for me, it's very emotional."

"[T]he European Union is happy to suck money from member states like a giant leech, with absolutely no respect for how it is spent. Whenever more transparency is called for, they simply hide behind smoke and mirrors and fancy words, and completely ignore common sense. They show a total lack of respect to the citizens of the European Union."

"The problem with the EU is that it spends money like it is going out of fashion, when actually it’s the Euro which is going out of fashion right now, with so many countries now questioning its membership."

"[We are] absolutely united in our desire to renegotiate with Europe and to have a referendum - and to trust the British people to make up their minds"

"The people have spoken - and they have rejected a hard Brexit."

"We have to call it out...I believe in freedom of the press but everyone has a responsibility not to incite abuse and death threats."

"Somebody like Jacob, with his views on things like abortion, a man who says he's had six children and never changed a nappy, who says that even if you were to be raped by your father you wouldn't have a right to choose to have a termination - I'm sorry, but I couldn't stay in a party led by somebody like him."

"It's a very bleak day for our country. It's as stark as that. He's called the great charlatan for good reason. And he is absolutely shameless in his ability to shift his position."

"This isn't some sideshow. This is serious. We need a new political party and it's absolutely got to be done."

"The closing paragraphs of this book were written in the late summer of 1914, when the armies of every great power in Europe were being mobilised for savage, unsparing, barbarous warfare—against one another, against small and unaggressive nations, against helpless women and children, against civilisation itself. How mild, by comparison with the despatches in the daily newspapers, will seem this chronicle of women's militant struggle against political and social injustice in one small corner of Europe. Yet let it stand as it was written, with peace—so-called, and civilisation, and orderly government as the background for heroism such as the world has seldom witnessed. The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics. The militancy of women has harmed no human life save the lives of those who fought the battle of righteousness. Time alone will reveal what reward will be allotted to the women. (Foreword)"

"Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case. (Ch 1)"

"One of my earliest recollections is of a great bazaar which was held in my native city of Manchester, the object of the bazaar being to raise money to relieve the poverty of the newly emancipated negro slaves in the United States.... Young as I was—I could not have been older than five years—I knew perfectly well the meaning of the words slavery and emancipation. From infancy I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession. Broadly speaking, the propertied classes were pro-slavery, but there were many exceptions to the rule. Most of those who formed the circle of our family friends were opposed to slavery, and my father... was always a most ardent abolitionist. (Ch. 1)"

"Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was so great a favourite with my mother that she used it continually as a source of bedtime stories for our fascinated ears. Those stories, told almost fifty years ago, are as fresh in my mind to-day as events detailed in the morning's papers. Indeed they are more vivid, because they made a much deeper impression on my consciousness. I can still definitely recall the thrill I experienced every time my mother related the tale of Eliza's race for freedom over the broken ice of the Ohio River, the agonizing pursuit, and the final rescue at the hands of the determined old Quaker. Another thrilling tale was the story of a negro boy's flight from the plantation of his cruel master... throughout my childhood, whenever I rode in a train, I thought of that poor runaway slave escaping from the pursuing monster. These stories, with the bazaars and the relief funds and subscriptions of which I heard so much talk, I am sure made a permanent impression on my brain and my character. They awakened in me the two sets of sensations to which all my life I have most readily responded: first, admiration for that spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice by which alone the soul of civilisation is saved; and next after that, appreciation of the gentler spirit which is moved to mend and repair the ravages of war. (Ch. 1)"

"The rest of the story reveals one of those ghastly blunders which justice not infrequently makes. Although the shooting was done without any intent to kill, the men were tried for murder and three of them were found guilty and hanged.... I was transfixed with horror, and over me there swept the sudden conviction that that hanging was a mistake—worse, a crime. It was my awakening to one of the most terrible facts of life—that justice and judgment lie often a world apart. I relate this incident of my formative years to illustrate the fact that the impressions of childhood often have more to do with character and future conduct than heredity or education. I tell it also to show that my development into an advocate of militancy was largely a sympathetic process. I have not personally suffered from the deprivations, the bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a realisation of social injustice. My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some incomplete ideal."

"The education of the English boy, then as now, was considered a much more serious matter than the education of the English boy's sister. My parents, especially my father, discussed the question of my brothers' education as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed at all. Of course we went to a carefully selected girls' school, but beyond the facts that the head mistress was a gentlewoman and that all the pupils were girls of my own class, nobody seemed concerned. A girl's education at that time seemed to have for its prime object the art of "making home attractive"—presumably to migratory male relatives. It used to puzzle me to understand why I was under such a particular obligation to make home attractive to my brothers."

"[O]ne night when I lay in my little bed waiting for sleep to overtake me. It was a custom of my father and mother to make the round of our bedrooms every night before going themselves to bed. When they entered my room that night I was still awake, but for some reason I chose to feign slumber. My father bent over me, shielding the candle flame with his big hand. I cannot know exactly what thought was in his mind as he gazed down at me, but I heard him say, somewhat sadly, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad." My first hot impulse was to sit up in bed and protest that I didn't want to be a boy, but I lay still and heard my parents' footsteps pass on toward the next child's bed. I thought about my father's remark for many days afterward, but I think I never decided that I regretted my sex. However, it was made quite clear that men considered themselves superior to women, and that women apparently acquiesced in that belief. (Ch. 1)"

"The following year (1886) found us living in London, and, as usual, interesting ourselves with labour matters and other social movements. This year was memorable for a great strike of women working in the Bryant and May match factories. I threw myself into this strike with enthusiasm, working with the girls and with some women of prominence, among these the celebrated Mrs. Annie Besant. The strike was a successful one, the girls winning substantial improvements in their working conditions. (Ch. 2)"

"It was a time of tremendous unrest, of labour agitations, of strikes and lockouts. It was a time also when a most stupid reactionary spirit seemed to take possession of the Government and the authorities. The Salvation Army, the Socialists, the trade-unionists—in fact, all bodies holding outdoor meetings—were made special objects of attack. As a protest against this policy a Law and Liberty League was formed in London, and an immense Free Speech meeting was held in Trafalgar Square... I was present at this meeting, which resulted in a bloody riot between the police and the populace. The Trafalgar Square Riot is historic, and to it Mr. John Burns owes, in large part, his subsequent rise to political eminence. Both John Burns and Cunningham Graham served prison sentences for the part they played in the riot, but they gained fame, and they did much to establish the right of free speech for English men. English women are still contending for that right."

"The first time I went into the place I was horrified to see little girls seven and eight years old on their knees scrubbing the cold stones of the long corridors ... bronchitis was epidemic among them most of the time ... I found that there were pregnant women in that workhouse, scrubbing floors, doing the hardest kind of work, almost until their babies came into the world ... Of course the babies are very badly protected ... These poor, unprotected mothers and their babies I am sure were potent factors in my education as a militant. (Book I, Ch. 2)"

"The campaign of 1907 began with a Women's Parliament, called together on February 13th in Caxton Hall, to consider the provisions of the King's speech, which had been read in the national Parliament on the opening day of the session, February 12th. The King's speech, as I have explained, is the official announcement of the Government's programme for the session. When our Women's Parliament met at three o'clock on the afternoon of the thirteenth we knew that the Government meant to do nothing for women during the session ahead.... I presided over the women's meeting, which was marked with a fervency and a determination of spirit at that time altogether unprecedented. A resolution expressing indignation that woman suffrage should have been omitted from the King's speech, and calling upon the House of Commons to give immediate facilities to such a measure, was moved and carried. A motion to send the resolution from the hall to the Prime Minister was also carried. The slogan, "Rise up, women," was cried from the platform, the answering shout coming back as from one woman, "Now!" With copies of the resolution in their hands, the chosen deputation hurried forth into the February dusk, ready for Parliament or prison, as the fates decreed. (Book II, Ch. 1)"

"Fate did not leave them very long in doubt. The Government, it appeared, had decided that not again should their sacred halls of Parliament be desecrated by women asking for the vote, and orders had been given that would henceforth prevent women from reaching even the outer precincts of the House of Commons. So when our deputation of women arrived in the neighbourhood of Westminster Abbey they found themselves opposed by a solid line of police, who, at a sharp order from their chief, began to stride through and through the ranks of the procession, trying to turn the women back. Bravely the women rallied and pressed forward a little farther. Suddenly a body of mounted police came riding up at a smart trot, and for the next five hours or more, a struggle, quite indescribable for brutality and ruthlessness, went on. (Book II, Ch. 1)"

"The horsemen rode directly into the procession, scattering the women right and left. But still the women would not turn back. Again and again they returned, only to fly again and again from the merciless hoofs. Some of the women left the streets for the pavements, but even there the horsemen pursued them, pressing them so close to walls and railings that they were obliged to retreat temporarily to avoid being crushed. Other strategists took refuge in doorways, but they were dragged out by the foot police and were thrown directly in front of the horses. Still the women fought to reach the House of Commons with their resolution. They fought until their clothes were torn, their bodies bruised, and the last ounce of their strength exhausted. Fifteen of them did actually fight their way through those hundreds on hundreds of police, foot and mounted, as far as the Strangers' Lobby of the House. Here they attempted to hold a meeting, and were arrested. Outside, many more women were taken into custody. It was ten o'clock before the last arrest was made, and the square cleared of the crowds. After that the mounted men continued to guard the approaches to the House of Commons until the House rose at midnight. (Book II, Ch. 1)"

"We women have presented larger petitions in support of our enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform; we have succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have inherited from generations of our foremothers. We have broken through that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told that we could not have that representation for our taxes that men have won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob have been incited to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the safeguards which Cabinet Ministers enjoy. We have been driven to do this; we are determined to go on with this agitation because we feel in honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our duty to make the world a better place for women than it is to-day. (Book II, Ch. 3)"

"I want to call attention to the self-restraint which was shown by our followers on the night of the 13th, after we had been arrested. Our rule has always been to be patient, exercise self-restraint, show our so-called superiors that we are not hysterical; to use no violence, but rather to offer ourselves to the violence of others. (Book II, Ch. 3)"

"That is all I have to say to you, sir. We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers. (Book II, Ch. 3)"

"My first act on reaching Holloway was to demand that the Governor be sent for. When he came I told him that the Suffragettes had resolved that they would no longer submit to being treated as ordinary law-breakers. In the course of our trial two Cabinet Ministers had admitted that we were political offenders, and therefore we should henceforth refuse to be searched or to undress in the presence of the wardresses. For myself I claimed the right, and I hoped the others would do likewise, to speak to my friends during exercise, or whenever I came in contact with them. The Governor, after reflection, yielded to the first two demands, but said that he would have to consult the Home Office before permitting us to break the rule of silence. We were accordingly allowed to change our clothing privately, and, as a further concession, were placed in adjoining cells. This was little advantage to me, however, since within a few days I was removed to a hospital cell, suffering from the illness which prison life always inflicts on me. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"I soon had the joy of seeing my daughter and the other brave comrades, and walking with them in the dismal courtyard of the prison. Single file we walked, at a distance of three or four feet from one another, back and forth under the stony eyes of the wardresses. The rough flags of the pavement hurt our feet, shod in heavy, shapeless prison boots. The autumn days were cold and cheerless, and we shivered violently under our scanty cloaks. But of all our hardships the ceaseless silence of our lives was worst. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"At the end of the second week I decided I would no longer endure it. That afternoon at exercise I suddenly called my daughter by name and bade her stand still until I came up to her. Of course she stopped, and when I reached her side we linked arms and began to talk in low tones. A wardress ran up to us, saying: "I shall listen to everything you say." I replied: "You are welcome to do that, but I shall insist on my right to speak to my daughter." Another wardress had hastily left the yard, and now she returned with a large number of wardresses. They seized me and quickly removed me to my cell, while the other suffrage prisoners cheered my action at the top of their voices. For their "mutiny" they got three days' solitary confinement, and I, for mine, a much more severe punishment. Unrepentant, I told the Governor that, in spite of any punishment he might impose on me, I would never again submit to the silence rule. To forbid a mother to speak to her daughter was infamous. For this I was characterised as a "dangerous criminal" and was sent into solitary confinement, without exercise or chapel, while a wardress was stationed constantly at my cell door to see that I communicated with no one. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"It was two weeks before I saw any of my friends again, and meantime the health of Mrs. Drummond had been so seriously impaired that she was released for hospital treatment. My daughter also, I learned, was ill, and in desperation I made application to the Board of Visiting Magistrates to be allowed to see her. After a long conference, during which I was made to wait outside in the corridor, the magistrates returned a refusal, saying that I might renew my application in a month... My anxiety sent me to bed ill again, but, although I did not know it, relief was already on its way. I had told the visiting magistrates that I would wait until public opinion got within those walls, and this happened sooner than I had dared to hope. Mrs. Drummond, as soon as she was able to appear in public, and the other suffrage prisoners, as they were released, spread broadcast the story of our mutiny, and of a subsequent one led by Miss Wallace Dunlop, which sent a large number of women into solitary confinement. The Suffragettes marched by thousands to Holloway, thronging the approaches to the prison street. Round and round the prison they marched, singing the Women's Marseillaise and cheering. Faintly the sound came to our ears, infinitely lightening our burden of pain and loneliness. The following week they came again, so we afterwards learned, but this time the police turned them back long before they reached the confines of the prison. (Book II, Ch. 4)"

"I called upon the women of the meeting to join me in this new militancy, and I reminded them anew that the women who were fighting in the Suffragette army had a great mission, the greatest mission the world has ever known—the freeing of one-half the human race, and through that freedom the saving of the other half. I said to them: "Be militant each in your own way. Those of you who can express your militancy by going to the House of Commons and refusing to leave without satisfaction, as we did in the early days—do so. Those of you who can express militancy by facing party mobs at Cabinet Ministers' meetings, when you remind them of their[ falseness to principle—do so. Those of you who can express your militancy by joining us in our anti-Government by-election policy—do so. Those of you who can break windows—break them. Those of you who can still further attack the secret idol of property, so as to make the Government realise that property is as greatly endangered by women's suffrage as it was by the Chartists of old—do so. And my last word is to the Government: I incite this meeting to rebellion. (Book III, Ch. 3)"

"I say to the Government: You have not dared to take the leaders of Ulster for their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare, but if you dare I tell you this, that so long as those who incited to armed rebellion and the destruction of human life in Ulster are at liberty, you will not keep me in prison. So long as men rebels—and voters—are at liberty, we will not remain in prison, first division or no first division." (Book III, Ch. 3)"

"I ask my readers, some of whom no doubt will be shocked and displeased at these words of mine that I have so frankly set down, to put themselves in the place of those women who for years had given their lives entirely and unstintingly to the work of securing political freedom for women; who had converted so great a proportion of the electorate that, had the House of Commons been a free body, we should have won that freedom years before; who had seen their freedom withheld from them through treachery and misuse of power. I ask you to consider that we had used, in our agitation, only peaceful means until we saw clearly that peaceful means were absolutely of no avail, and then for years we had used only the mildest militancy, until we were taunted by Cabinet Ministers, and told that we should never get the vote until we employed the same violence that men had used in their agitation for suffrage. After that we had used stronger militancy, but even that, by comparison with the militancy of men in labour disputes, could not possibly be counted as violent. (Book III, Ch. 3)"

"Our battles are practically over, we confidently believe. For the present at least our arms are grounded, for directly the threat of foreign war descended on our nation we declared a complete truce from militancy. What will come out of this European war—so terrible in its effects on the women who had no voice in averting it—so baneful in the suffering it must necessarily bring on innocent children—no human being can calculate. But one thing is reasonably certain, and that is that the Cabinet changes which will necessarily result from warfare will make future militancy on the part of women unnecessary. No future Government will repeat the mistakes and the brutality of the Asquith Ministry. None will be willing to undertake the impossible task of crushing or even delaying the march of women towards their rightful heritage of political liberty and social and industrial freedom. (Book III, Ch. 9)"

"(Do you credit Mrs. Pankhurst with having trained you in the militant tactics you subsequently introduced into the American campaign?) AP: That wasn’t the way the movement was, you know. Nobody was being trained. We were just going in and doing the simplest little things that we were asked to do. You see, the movement was very small in England, and small in this country, and small everywhere, I suppose. So I got to know Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel, quite well. I had, of course, a great veneration and admiration for Mrs. Pankhurst, but I wouldn’t say that I was very much trained by her."

"The militant English suffrage leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, came to see me in Connecticut and scolded me soundly for lending my name, energy and work to a "man's party." She had the narrow feminist idea, which I never accepted, of working for women alone. She felt that women should not work for any political party until they got the vote."

"Emmeline Pankhurst, whose advocacy of such militant tactics as hunger strikes probably hastened passage of the British women's vote, claims in her memoirs to have met Anthony and been greatly influenced by hearing her speak."

"There has been no other woman like Emmeline Pankhurst. She was beautiful; her pale face, with its delicate square jaw and rounded temples, recalled the pansy by its shape and a kind of velvety bloom on the expression. She dressed her taut little body with a cross between the elegance of a Frenchwoman and the neatness of a nun. She was courageous; small and fragile and no longer young, she put herself in the way of horses' hooves, she stood up on platforms under a rain of missiles, she sat in the darkness of underground jails and hunger-struck, and when they let her out because she had starved herself within touching distance of death, she rested only for a day or two and then clambered back on to the platforms, she staggered back under the horses' hooves."

"Our proposal that the age of consent be reduced is based on the belief that neither the police nor the criminal courts should have the power to intervene in a consenting sexual activity between two young people. It is clearly the case that a number of young people are capable of consenting to sexual activity and already do so."

"Any suggestion that I supported or condoned the vile crimes of child abusers is completely untrue. When Jack Dromey, as NCCL chairman in 1976, vigorously opposed PIE at the NCCL AGM, he did so with the full support of the Executive Committee and myself as general secretary. As the NCCL archives demonstrate, I consistently distinguished between consenting relationships between homosexual men, on the one hand, and the abuse of children on the other. NCCL in the 1970s, along with many others, was naive and wrong to accept PIE's claim to be a 'campaigning and counselling organisation' that 'does not promote unlawful acts'. As General Secretary then, I take responsibility for the mistakes we made. I got it wrong on PIE and I apologise for having done so. I should have urged the Executive Committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL's integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers and I deeply regret not having done so. ..."

"We must finally see an end to cruel and inhumane conversion therapies, which have been allowed to spread fear and hatred in our society for far too long."

"There was one incident when I wore plain fishnets to parliament. I received so many overly sexual, misogynistic comments that I took the tights off and threw them in the bin and never wore fishnets again. I spoke to a more senior female MP. She told me to ignore it saying, ‘it’s all banter’. She told equivalent stories women MPs have been through. There were lots of stories of MPs looking up their skirt. The parliamentary environment needs to change."

"The good thing is now post-Me Too movement, we are not putting up with it. Some of the men have not moved forward. They still think it is acceptable to be sexist and misogynistic. When I was a whip, an MP was talking about me having a real whip in the tea room in parliament. It happened more than once. It became very uncomfortable and embarrassing for me. Parliament was designed for men only and there is still that prevailing attitude that this is a man’s place and the women are just window dressing and there is that entitlement to belittle women."

"I believe that Brent, South is a shining example of integration at its best. Brent, South deserves a chance to prosper, a chance to benefit from opportunities and a chance for my constituents to live independently."

"I am proud to represent the Labour party, which established the minimum wage, which some Opposition parties could not find time to support."

"I am proud to represent the Labour party, which has pledged to end the equal pay gap. My constituency has more women living in it than men—52 per cent.—and equal pay has a direct effect on economic stability and business prosperity, and a direct correlation with child poverty. If we are serious about tackling those issues, the gap must be closed, and soon. I am confident that I will be working hard with my Government to ensure that that will be achieved."

"This is modern, progressive politics reflecting our society."

"I am proud to be a GMB member and a former officer. I strive to ensure that my contributions continue to aid the historic constructive working relations between the Labour party and the trade union movement. The Warwick agreement, which was referred to in our manifesto, is another historic agreement which only the Labour party could achieve."

"I promised the youth that they would have a voice through me. We must encourage our youth, listen to them and help them to resolve youth issues. After all, they are our future. Guess what—not all youth are yobs, and not all yobs are youth. Furthermore, youths are victims of antisocial behaviour, more than any other group in our society. I will campaign and lobby extremely hard for my constituents in Brent, South to further their concerns and to put forward the case for social justice in Brent, South, the UK and worldwide."

"The barriers to a two-state solution are well known. As a strong friend of Israel, I admit freely, but with great regret, that these include the expansion of settlements on the west bank. Settlement building is wrong. It threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state—the case for which is unarguable. It does immense damage to Israel’s standing in the world, and, over time, it will put at risk that which is most precious about Israel’s character: its Jewish and democratic character. However, as Secretary of State Kerry stated clearly, this is not to say “that the settlements are the whole or even the primary cause of this conflict.”There is also the incitement tolerated, and, in many cases, perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority. I am talking about the payment of “salaries” to those convicted of terrorist offences, and the naming of schools, streets and sports tournaments after so-called martyrs, thereby glorifying their violence. Then there is the greatest barrier of all: the rejectionist, anti-Semitic ideology of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, which denies Israel’s very right to exist, and the terrorism that inevitably flows from it."

"I think that now is exactly the wrong time to have a pause. What we have seen this week reinforces the need to make sure we have active communities trying to stop people becoming radicalised. I do recognise what Baroness Warsi said about needing to make more of an effort to sell [Prevent] to communities. We need to do better there to show that this is a safeguarding initiative, it's about protecting young people."

"Leaving the EU is harder than a lot of people thought it was going to be"

"Even when you spoke to Boris in person, you never knew who you’d be addressing but when he gets home and takes off the mask, which version remains? The caricatured orator or the caring statesman. Does he even know? Or is he, like Janus, actually both versions equally, and happy to choose the mask that suits that day’s audience best?"

"The details of wasted money spent on the Garden Bridge project is the final confirmation of the utter folly of the project. The Garden Bridge Trust have squandered public money in a way no responsible charity should have behaved. No charity needs to spend £160,000 on a website or over £400,000 on a gala dinner."

"We despise everything Tommy Robinson stands for. His values are not our values and they are not Wales' values."

"When it comes to a no-deal Brexit, we need to stop talking in terms of the hypothetical and theoretical, and start talking with candour about real and damaging consequences it would bring. It would be catastrophic."

"While it is clear that the UK needs a plan to defeat extremism and fundamentalism in all its forms and identities, I fear that the current UKIP leadership believes the best way to do that is to incubate and cultivate a rival fundamentalism"

"A discriminatory and shameful piece of legislation that was imposed on Scotland by Westminster will today be repealed by the Scottish parliament ahead of other parts of the UK. That says something about the state of Scotland that we can all be proud of."

"If I am elected, there may be an opportunity to change the tone for the better."

"I have opposed Trident and nuclear weapons for all of my political life - I even joined CND before becoming a member of the SNP."

"I believe both Scotland and the UK should stay in the EU. Scotland benefits from being part of the EU, and the EU benefits from having Scotland a part of it. No SNP parliamentarian has expressed a desire to campaign for the out campaign - though they are not prevented from doing so. I am determined to make the positive case for continued membership in a reformed EU."

"While I do not agree with the decision on the EU reached by people in England and Wales, I do respect it. I hope the new PM will show the same respect for the decision reached by the Scottish people."

"Independence is not about the isolationism that characterises Brexit."

"Scotland’s 62% vote to remain in the EU counted for nothing. Far from being an equal partner at Westminster, Scotland’s voice is listened to only if it chimes with that of the UK majority; if it does not, we are outvoted and ignored."

"The President of the United States telling elected politicians – or any other Americans for that matter – to ‘go back’ to other countries is not OK, and diplomatic politeness should not stop us saying so, loudly and clearly."

"He looks to me as if he is somebody who has no real sense of principal or conviction or real view of what's right for the future for the country. His only objective throughout his entire adult life, it seems, has been to get into Number 10 and be prime minister. Now the focus is on him."

"I have profound concerns about the prospect of his premiership and it would be hypocritical not to be frank about these."

"I'm happy to work with anybody, male or female, to try to stop Brexit"

"There was this assumption that I took a hard-nosed decision to prioritise a career over children. Women should not be judged for the reasons they have or don't have children."

"[The SNP will] work with anybody at Westminster to try to stop Brexit, and avert the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit."

"Shutting down parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit - which will do untold and lasting damage to the country against the wishes of MPs - is not democracy, it is dictatorship."

"Today will go down in history as a dark one indeed for UK democracy."

"We've backed a second EU referendum, which gives people the opportunity to stop Brexit in its tracks and reverse the decision that was taken. I would also support a General Election, which would give people the opportunity to do that. And of course I want to give Scotland the opportunity of choosing our own future through independence through which we can try to fashion a future that has Scotland as part of the European Union and broader international community."

"I'm against any form of Brexit, I want to stop Brexit, but in particular a no-deal Brexit I think will be catastrophic for our economy, society, for a long time to come"

"While disappointed by it, I respect ruling of @UKSupremeCourt – it doesn't make law, only interprets it. A law that doesn't allow Scotland to choose our own future without Westminster consent exposes as myth any notion of the UK as a voluntary partnership & makes case for Indy. Scottish democracy will not be denied. Today’s ruling blocks one route to Scotland’s voice being heard on independence – but in a democracy our voice cannot and will not be silenced."

"So if this was just a question of my ability or my resilience to get through the latest period of pressure I wouldn’t be standing here today, but it's not. This decision comes from a deeper and longer-term assessment. I know it may seem sudden, but I have been wrestling with it, albeit with oscillating levels of intensity for some weeks. Essentially, I've been trying to answer two questions: is carrying on right for me? And more importantly, is me carrying on right for the country, for my party and for the independence cause I have devoted my life to?"

"In many parts of the world, politicians can no longer claim that they do not have the social mandate for taking the climate crisis seriously: citizens are clearly calling for a strong government response, with high levels of public concern about climate change and wide-ranging support for policies to cut emissions. In recognition of this, some senior politicians have actively encouraged citizen activism that pushes them to do more, for example Angela Merkel when she was Chancellor asking young Germans to 'pile on the pressure', and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon acknowledging that 'our feet do need to be held to the fire'."

"For years, Sturgeon’s personal power has masked any fissures in her party, leaving them unaddressed and widening. Her reliance on a tight circle of advisers, and the premium placed on loyalty from elected representatives, leaves her trapped in an echo chamber. With no possibility of an alternative party reaching government, the SNP is deprived of the democratic check of strong opposition. Charities and lobbyists, dependent on the party and the government for funding and contracts, tell Sturgeon what she wants to hear—even if public opinion is not with her. Inside the SNP, none of her ministers has anything approaching her public profile."

"Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland: A place where an equalities officer feels free to declare in public how much he wants to beat up non-compliant women."

"It may infuriate Nicola Sturgeon, but it seems that JK Rowling's political judgment is superior: the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will be Sturgeon's poll tax. Sturgeon is not in control of this. She allied herself with zealots, ignored public anxieties, denied biology, produced a bill that most can see is deeply flawed, rejected sensible amendments such as barring sex offenders from self-identification, and cannot hide from the people that predatory males, if the bill becomes law, can manipulate it to invade women’s safe spaces. The recent rapist case will not be the only one that will haunt her."

"The government is turning lives upside down by callously playing hard ball over Brexit and it needs to take its responsibilities far more seriously"

"How can the will of the people be undermined by a vote of the people?"

"At a moment when we need a leader with courage and integrity, we get a pompous clown."

"In my experience, women tend to be less tribal, they tend to find it easier to establish trust more quickly"

"The Leave campaign claimed Brexit would save the NHS. But Home Office plans to end freedom of movement will do the opposite. 65,000 EU citizens work in our NHS. It couldn't cope without them."

"The rainforest is being sacrificed on the altar of free trade with Europe"

"We would be kidding ourselves if we put our trust in Brazil’s right-wing, pro-business president Jair Bolsonaro to protect it."

"We will block what is nothing less than a coup."

"Extinction Rebellion are carrying a message we all need to hear. They won’t be silenced by a police crackdown, nor should they be in a free democratic society."

"Ultimately, that speech was a dark moment in British politics. Democracy is indeed under threat from extremists. The problem is, they're running the government itself."

"Social media is becoming, amongst a certain group of people, a tool to use against MPs and Government. One of the things people don’t understand when they try to engage with me on social media, is when you’re an MP every communication is confidential."

"I have lost confidence in the Brexit policy of the Prime Minister and have therefore written to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee asking for a vote to take place over her Leadership."

"We could lead the world in environmentally-responsible exploitation of vital seabed minerals. We have the engineers, the marine scientists, the ecologists, the finance industry. We have the offshore oil and gas expertise. We have high, respected environmental standards. ... A little push now means vast rewards in a few years’ time."

"I am very happy to stand again and look at the area where people stood thousands of years ago. I congratulate those who made this excavation. It is a great work"

"Capital punishment [could] serve as a deterrent. I do not think we have enough deterrents in this country for criminals – let’s not forget that murders, rapists and criminals of that nature choose to commit the crimes that they commit."

"While my actions were meant with the best of intentions, my actions also fell below the standards of transparency and openness that I have promoted and advocated. I offer a fulsome apology to you and to the government for what has happened and offer my resignation."

"There is still time to go back to Brussels and get a better deal."

"We must seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity offered by the end of free movement"

"I want them [criminals] to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences."

"The Conservative Party is the party of law and order. Full stop. The defence of our nation, defence of our streets and law and order are at the heart of our values."

"Modern policing must of course be visible policing and that means community policing, localised policing and having police visibility that police officers are empowered to do their jobs. For too long we’ve had our police forces, police officers tied up with regulation and bureaucracy. I want them to feel free to get on and do their jobs, I want them to know that we will support them."

"I'm sorry if people feel that there have been failings."

"What happened to these children remains one of the biggest stains on our country’s conscience."

"It's a stronger strain of the virus in the sense that it's more transmittable, it's a bouncy virus."

"[H]ow can a handful of Members of Parliament in a committee, you know, really be that objective in light of some of the individual comments that have been made. I don’t want to name people but, you know, it is a fact, the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability ... I think there is a culture of collusion quite frankly involved here."

"He [Boris Johnson] led the world in supporting Ukraine and defending our values, he got Brexit done, and he secured successes for the Conservative Party not seen since Margaret Thatcher. Boris is a political titan whose legacy will stand the test of time."

"Being a person of colour does not automatically make you an authority on all forms of racism. We write to you as Black Asian and Ethnic Minority Labour MPs to highlight our dismay at the way you used your heritage and experiences of racism to gaslight the very real racism faced by Black people and communities across the UK."

"[In the late 1960s] When I was here as a very young person, people would not have had any problem about saying to your face certain words that we now consider to be offensive. It was much more pervasive, that sort of attitude. You couldn't even get on a bus without somehow encountering something that made you recoil...Things appear to have transformed [but] then we have new rules about detention of refugees and asylum-seekers that are so mean they seem to me to be almost criminal. And these are argued for and protected by the government. This doesn't seem to me to be a big advance to the way earlier people were treated....The curious thing, of course, is the person presiding over this is herself somebody who would have come here, or her parents would have come here, to confront those attitudes themselves."

"["What would he say to her if she were here now?"] I would say, "Maybe a little more compassion might not be a bad thing." But I don’t want to get into a dialogue with Priti Patel, really."

"I felt a creeping anxiety that campaigners are being used, forced to play a bit part in Priti Patel’s nightmare vision of an ever more polarised, ever more angry nation. She proposes a vile policy, so people shout at her. She tries to do something illegal and judges oppose her. She characterises opponents as a mob and we sit down in the road. No wonder some of us feel as if we are being forced to fulfil a direction set by the government. It provides the plot, we are just the reaction shot. The government is pushing those who care about refugees – or about other, no less urgent issues – into a position of permanent protest."

"If the government has any courage, it will punish those at the top of failed banks. Accountability is critical in every area of human endeavour – there has to be a penalty for failure otherwise it's only a matter of time before the economic pain our banks have caused to so many innocent businesses and home owners is forgotten."

"The absolute, top priority ... is to get our economy going again, and nowhere more so than in the very small business sector."

"I envisage there being absolutely no regulation whatsoever—no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights—for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground, in order to give them a chance."

"I wholeheartedly believe that same-sex couples have as valid a relationship with their partner as do heterosexuals. I also believe that in the eyes of the state we all deserve to be treated equally"

"But as I say, sterling has really not moved since the prime minister announced the starting gun for the referendum. So my best expectation, with my 30 years of financial experience, is that there will not be an economic impact."

"What is so weird about Tony [Blair] is that when he is speaking, it's almost hypnotic – you start to just accept what he is saying, and like Mowgli when he was being hypnotised by Kaa the python in Jungle Book, you have to kick yourself out of it."

"the UK cannot be trapped in a permanent customs arrangement"

"We are clear we won't be delaying Article 50. We won't be revoking it."

"I think it is right that government should have passed legislation that requires that relationships and sex education is taught in schools, but at the same time, I also agree that it is right that parents should be able to choose the moment at which their children become exposed to that information"

"I do not believe that we will be a truly sovereign United Kingdom through the deal that is now proposed"

"There will be no second referendums on my watch - not on Scottish independence and not on EU membership."

"You can’t block no deal. You can’t put into law that you can’t leave without a deal."

"In all circumstances we are leaving the European Union on 31 October"

"Yesterday’s motion gave us the opportunity to send the opposite message to the world … that, while Saudi Arabia will remain a valued strategic, security and economic ally in the years to come, our support for their forces in Yemen must be suspended until the alleged violations of international humanitarian law in that conflict have been fully and independently investigated. And until the children of Yemen have received the humanitarian aid that they so desperately need."

"The communities who stand to lose out most from Brexit must be looked after first,"

"We cannot turn the clock back and run the Brexit vote again. We have been given our instructions by the British people and we must act on them."

"We need to leave the European Union but it is good for our economy - they're our biggest market - that we stay as close as we can"

"We have to negotiate a new agreement. That, we think, is likely to be a customs union that will look pretty much like the current customs union."

"[A new agreement is needed] that we think is likely to be a customs union that will look pretty much like the current customs union."

"I think anybody who has looked into this issue has seen that it is quite clear that there is no other place that we can go than to remain in a customs union with the European Union - nothing else makes sense."

"Britain has disappeared into the Brexit black hole"

"It is quite clear that the government of Venezuela is, on the face of it, responsible for human rights abuses and it does not have a plan to get themselves out of the situation they are currently in."

"[Under a Labour government, there would be] no indulgence of human rights abuses because they are committed by less powerful countries, or by countries who call themselves 'socialist' but who, by their actions, betray every socialist ideal."

"We've got to a stage where we feel that any deal is so controversial and may well be so far from what people voted for when they voted to leave, that we think that it is probably appropriate… that we say to the people, 'Is this what you wanted?' We just want to check. Because if it isn't, then let's stay."

"Frankly, it’s a shame and a disgrace that the Equality and Human Rights Commission have been brought in to look at the Labour party, but they have. And I think we should now welcome it, open our doors up and say to them, right we have been trying to improve our processes, clearly it’s still not working, can you help us?"

"Are we going to celebrate a Labour version of Brexit? No. We must have the Labour Party this week saying no to Brexit and we must lead the campaign to remain."

"[Labour must] lead the campaign to remain"

"Let's be clear: this was always going to be the Brexit election, the first genuine single-issue election in 119 years. Back then, in 1900, the Tories were cynically capitalising on their early success in the Boer war to try to win another thumping majority over the Liberals. It was also Labour's very first election, and we went into it with noble domestic ambitions far distant from the South African veldt."

"And if you're a Labour voter seized with gloom – or a Tory gleaming with complacency – just remember that in 1906, six years after the last single-issue election, the Liberal opposition won a majority of 124, with the Tories losing 246 seats. Why? Because the Tories were totally divided over trade policy and because their "single issue" of the Boer war had turned into a disaster. Will history repeat itself now as the Tories grapple with the reality of "getting Brexit done"? Well, history has a tendency to do that."

"The Labour Party hate the concept of Englishness. They have done for a very long time. New Labour can't even stand the concept of patriotism. They think the flag somehow is unpleasant, backward-looking and nasty. People like Emily Thornberry would rather we had that blue flag with 12 stars on it that comes to us from Brussels."

"I think all of us agree what we don't want Britain to be: anti-competitive with more laws made overseas and with people travelling here for the benefits on offer rather than to pay their way. But we also don't want our children to inherit a Britain cut off from the world, where their prospects are limited and their opportunities end at our shores."

"From safeguarding parental leave to tackling discrimination in the workplace and bringing an end to violence against women and girls, our EU membership is critical in helping protect and further the rights of women around Britain. A vote to leave would put all of this at risk."

"It's clear, that if Britain leaves Europe it will be young people who suffer the most, left in limbo while we struggle to find and then negotiate an alternative model. In doing so we risk that lost generation becoming a reality."

"If parents and grandparents vote to leave, they'll be voting to gamble with their children and grandchildren's future. At a time when people are rightly concerned about inter-generational fairness, the most unfair decision that the older generation could make would be to take Britain out of Europe and damage the ability of young people to get on in life."

"We would have been better off if we had stayed, but that is what democracy is all about and the British people have been clear and I will accept that decision."

"It's incumbent on politicians to make the case that it is not for blaming immigrants about jobs and housing. Actually, it is up to us to provide the solutions and support to people."

"Seriously? Our two most senior female politicians are judged for their legs not what they said #appallingsexism"

"Of course one of the things the last couple of years has shown is that making predictions about British politics or international politics is incredibly difficult at the moment. But I think the Conservative party - having started on the Brexit road - really is going to own the negotiations, is going to own the shape of Brexit. That is clearly going to be something that will be, if not the issue of the election, will be something that we will be standing on that record in terms of the party going into the next election."

"As a constituency Member of Parliament, I receive a barrage of views on both sides of the EU debate all the time, so I am very conscious, even if it may not be my own personal position, of what other people in the country and my constituency are thinking."

"It's going to happen, we are going to leave the European Union"

"All this sabre-rattling this weekend is not coming from the section of the party that I represent. It is coming from the pro-Brexit section of the party. And it is deeply unhelpful."

"[The UK is being asked to experiment with a new trade policy without any idea of its costs. That is not a manifestation of democracy, it is a tyranny, a distortion of the referendum result and MPs should call it out."

"A Canada-style deal would take years to negotiate and might not give the kind of access its supporters hoped for"

"[Having to choose between deal and no-deal] appears to be an attempt by the executive to frustrate our sovereign Parliament"

"We asked the people to decide, they decided... that means we can't come up with something else in Parliament"

"I stayed in cabinet and fought to try and get a deal and to try and build a consensus, both in my party and but also in Parliament. What we have learnt though is if you are trying to get that objective, you can't take no deal off the table."

"In recent days, in my discussions that I have had with people on the EU side of the negotiating table, I am really optimistic and I think they understand they have to move on some things. I voted to Leave and I still remain optimistic that we can get a good deal for the UK."

"First of all, let me address the comments the honourable lady makes about my facial expressions: my resting face is that of a bulldog chewing a wasp, and people shouldn’t read too much into that."

"It is, of course, a mystery why a workaholic with no social life and four cats is not a massive draw."

"What happened was completely wrong and the prime minister has rightly apologised for that, apologised to veterans but also to all of us, because he was representing all of us. I'm from Portsmouth, I have also been defence secretary and my wish is, at the end of this week, is that all of our veterans feel completely treasured."

"It seems there is no good in the world that they cannot somehow attribute to the EU and no imagined disaster they cannot predict if we vote leave,"

"[Brexit is] our opportunity to take back control of a whole area of democratic decisions"

"It is entirely unacceptable that in 2019 women and girls are still paying more than men for basic products, such as razors and deodorant. Products marketed at women are on average considerably more expensive than those marketed at men. Often the only difference is the colour, yet this unfair price gap will have a significant financial impact on a woman over the course of her life. My bill would remove this outdated and sexist tax on women once and for all."

"I continue to believe that the best opportunity we have to advance our socialist objectives lies in forging the closest possible links with our fellow socialists and trade unions across the Channel."

"We are seeing the increase of unemployment throughout the industrial world, and it is a problem for which we still have no real answer."

"There are other reasons to be worried. One is the increasingly anti-parliamentarian rhetoric in which Benn engages. When he speaks about the primacy of the activists, he virtually parrots Lenin. He speaks a language which despises the ordinary party worker, again Lenin-like. The supremacy of party and activist is a central Leninist tenet, and Shirley believes she has read more Lenin and Marx than Benn has. She thinks he does not really know what he is saying. Also, that he is to some extent being used by people much harder than he is: Maynard-type, Richardson-type, Militant sympathisers."

"There can be a Fascism of the Left as well as Fascism of the Right."

"We are going to fight to save the party and by God we think we can. We are going to start fighting for a Labour Party worthy of the name."

"David has had the idea that the voters to try and win are defecting Tories... I personally have always held that we must try to replace the Labour Party."

"There was a feeling of tremendous dedication in the air, a feeling that we didn't care what happened, this is the way we were going to vote, we were going to put our names on the line... I think it was the beginning of the ultimate split in the Labour Party into an SDP and a Labour Party, and that was, when I look back on it, really where it all began."

"Bill and I were much more of the Labour ethos than probably David or Roy were... It seemed much more a whole life that was going and I guess that we were more reluctant to face the fact that probably the Labour Party was by that time irrecoverable."

"Recently I was in Berwick Street, Soho, where I often work, when a man said to me outside a studio: "I'll never forgive you for what you did to our grammar schools." The man looked extremely respectable and I said to him: "What did you say?" And he said: "I'll never forgive you for what you did to our grammar schools, and neither will my wife." I was suddenly very irritated with him: "What are you talking about, you silly bugger, what have I done to grammar schools?" My aggression obviously startled him, for he looked at me rather more carefully, cleared his throat and said, "I do beg your pardon, I thought you were Shirley Williams," and he went off muttering."

"Shirley is, without doubt, the most reactionary person I know."

"Shirley is surrounded by a beatific light that shields her from the harm and criticism which would be heaped on ordinary people."

"I...thought it a good idea to run through my speech with her, which I did, and she said it was more or less all right... She merely asked for a change at the end where I referred to a possible revival of Liberal and Social Democratic Britain. She said, 'Couldn't you use small letters and leave out the "and" – "liberal social democratic Britain"?' Thinking that if Paris was worth a Mass, Shirley was certainly worth an 'and' (and a lower case) I decided to do so, after which we rang off on terms of great amity. She said she was sure we would all be together in six months or so."

"A safer Anguilla when we all work together."

"As a nation, we have moved forward substantially in the past 40 years (since the 1982 Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina) and it is right that we celebrate how, in exercising our liberty, we have built a prosperous and peaceful country - one which has not simply survived, but thrived."

"We cannot discriminate. We must not, and we must strive to ensure equality."

"Her Majesty's reign and her devotion to public service remains an inspiration to many Islanders."

"On a cold February morning in 1968, a young man, not yet 21, stepped off a plane at Heathrow airport, nervously folding away his one-way ticket from Kenya. He had no family, no friends and was clutching only his most valuable possession, his British passport. His homeland was in political turmoil. Kenya had kicked him out for being British. My father never returned. He made his life here in Britain, starting on the shop floor of a paint factory. My mother, recruited by the NHS in Mauritius as a girl of 18, passed her 45th year of service last year. My family had nothing but hopes and dedication. They were so proud to be British and so proud to make our country even better. If I succeed in making some small contribution during my time in this place, it will reflect only a fraction of my gratitude to this country for the abundance of education, culture and traditions that have made Britain great, for the tolerance and fellowship of the British people, and for the opportunity and liberty that we all enjoy."

"[On her parent's arrival in the UK] My father came to the UK to escape the Kenyan Asian crisis in 1968. His arrival probably saved his life. My mother was recruited in Mauritius as a girl of 18, and she has just passed her 45th year of service as a nurse. More passionate patriots cannot be imagined. It is clear that immigration has brought huge benefits to this country. We have a proud tradition of offering refuge, opportunity and a better life to those who take the risk of leaving their homeland."

"I get a lot of abuse. I get trolled, Twitter has a very strong left wing bias [...] Actually for me, my barometer, it's got to this point where if I get trolled and I provoke a bad response on Twitter I know I'm doing the right thing. Twitter is a sewer of left-wing bile and there's very little sensible, moderate voices either way actually get drowned out. The extreme left pile on is often a consequence of sound conservative values."

"Let's be clear about what is really going on here: the British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast and which party is not. Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone. Many of them facilitated by criminal gangs, some of them actual members of criminal gangs. So let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress. The whole country knows that is not true. It’s only the honourable members opposite who pretend otherwise. We need to be straight with the public. The system is broken. Illegal migration is out of control and too many people are interested in playing political parlour games, covering up the truth than solving the problem."

"[On her parents] They owe everything to this country and they have taught me a deep and profound love of Britain and British people. Their tolerance, their generosity, their decency, their fair play. That also means that we must not shy away from saying there is a problem. There is a huge problem that we have right now when it comes to illegal migration, the scale of which we have not known before. I won’t apologise for the language that I have used to demonstrate the scale of the problem. I see my job as being honest with the British people and honest for the British people. I’m not going to shy away from difficult truths nor am I going to conceal what is the reality that we are all watching."

"I condemn the appalling disorder in Knowsley last night. The alleged behaviour of some asylum seekers is never an excuse for violence and intimidation. Thank you to @merseypolice officers for keeping everyone safe."

"I want to put something on the record, it's perfectly respectable for a child of immigrants like me to say I'm deeply grateful to live here, to say that immigration has been overwhelmingly good for Great Britain but that we've had too much of it in recent years. And to say that uncontrolled and illegal migration is simply bad. Yet, despite our reasonable concerns we've raised on several occasions, I am subject to the most grotesque slurs for saying simple truths about the impact of unlimited and illegal immigration. The worst among them poisoned by the extreme ideology of identity politics suggests that a person's skin colour should dictate their political views. I will not be hectored by out of touch lefties or anyone for that matter. I won't be patronised on what appropriate views for someone of my background can hold. I will not back down when faced with spurious accusations of bigotry. When such smears seep into the discourse of this chamber, as they did last week, accusations that this government's policies, policies backed by the majority of the British people, are bigoted, are xenophobic, are dog whistles to racists, it is irresponsible and frankly beneath the dignity of this place. Politicians of all stripes should know better and they should choose their words carefully."

"Those prognosticators of doom who said that Brexit would be an economic catastrophe for the UK – not only were they wrong, they demonstrated a profound ignorance of the British people when they attributed their legitimate desire to regain our national sovereignty as some mix of stupidity and xenophobia."

"People like my Rt Hon Friend the Member for North East Somerset and Douglas Murray express mainstream, insightful and perfectly decent political views. People may disagree with them, but in no way are they extremists."

"I'm here in America to talk about a critical and shared global challenge: uncontrolled and illegal migration [...] It is an existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the west."

"[Claiming the threshold of the Refugee Convention had been lowered for asylum seekers] Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right that we offer sanctuary. But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if, in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, and fearful of discrimination in your country of origin is sufficient to qualify for protection."

"Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades. Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society. And, in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society."

"If cultural change is too rapid and too big, then what was already there is diluted. Eventually it will disappear."

"It is no betrayal of my parents' story to say that immigration must be controlled."

"I'm afraid we do see many instances where people purport to be gay when they're not actually gay, but in order to get special treatment. It's not the way our asylum system should work/"

"The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice."

"What I want to stop, and what the law abiding majority wants us to stop, is those who cause nuisance and distress to other people by pitching tents in public spaces, aggressively begging, stealing, taking drugs, littering, and blighting our communities."

"Now as we approach a particularly significant weekend in the life of our nation, one which calls for respect and commemoration, the hate marchers — a phrase I do not resile from — intend to use Armistice Day to parade through London in yet another show of strength."

"The answer must be: even-handedly. Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters."

"Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law?"

"The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now. They have bullied the Labour Party, they have bullied our institutions, and now they have bullied our country into submission."

"[T]o regain control of our borders properly and faithfully to the British people we do need to ultimately leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Judging from my conversations with him [Rishi Sunak], he never agreed with me on the proposition that I just set out."

"[On the Conservative's electoral rival, Reform UK] We need to, in the future, to find some way to work together because there shouldn’t be big differences between us. [...] I would welcome Nigel [Farage] into the Conservative party. There's not much difference really between him and many of the policies that we stand for. We are a broad church, we should be a welcoming party and an inclusive party and if someone is supportive of the party, that's a precondition and they want Conservatives to get elected then they should be welcomed."

"Our problem is us. Our problem is that the liberal Conservatives who trashed the Tory party think it was everyone’s fault but their own. My party governed as liberals and we were defeated as liberals. But seemingly, as ever, it is Conservatives who are to blame."

"We were slaughtered. Shellacked. Given a good hiding. Kicked while we were on the ground. Headbutted by reality."

"If we don't recover the voters we deliberately, and arrogantly, spurned, we will turn the Conservative Party into the 21st century version of the 20th century Liberal Party. And we can do better than being a collection of fanatical, irrelevant, centrist cranks, who make it our business to insult our should-be voters for not being as smug and self-righteous as we are."

"If we keep disagreeing with Reform on many and fundamental things, we won't get those votes back. We have no God-given right to them. Any Tory leader who rejects Reform voters, doubles down on the disastrous decisions the last cabinet let Rishi Sunak make."

"What Donald Trump has taught us is that politics is not for the faint of heart. It demands conviction, clarity and a willingness to take risks. For Trump, the fight has never been about personal gain or elite approval – it has been about the people."

"I have been wondering what, if anything, might persuade Suella Braverman that her rhetoric and strategy to slash immigration might conceivably have gone too far. Nigel Farage staging an intervention? Tommy Robinson calling for a "cooling-off period"? A social media post by Donald Trump urging the home secretary to "take it easy over there in Scotland"?"

"On Monday, at the "National Conservative" conference in London, she declared that net annual migration to the UK must be reduced as a matter of urgency, lest Britons become irrevocably "dependent" on foreign labour and start "forgetting how to do things for ourselves"."

"[M]uch about Braverman is startling. She is the Home Secretary who was sacked for leaking a government document, but reinstated six days later; the former attorney general who condoned the government’s breaking of international law; the erstwhile barrister who wants to curb the power of the judiciary; the daughter of first-generation immigrants who wants to slash both legal and illegal immigration. At October’s Conservative Party conference, she fantasised about a Telegraph front page showing a deportation plane taking off for Rwanda. "That’s my dream," she said. "That’s my obsession." Braverman is a Brexit "ultra". She defends the empire. She deplores "cultural Marxism", net-zero targets, the police "policing pronouns on Twitter" and "Benefit Street culture". Last month she blamed the disruption caused by climate protestors on "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati"."

"[Following Braverman's removal as Home Secretary] Being a forceful personality or associated with a particular wing of the party does not stop you being a successful senior minister. But persistently making statements from which your colleagues feel compelled to back away certainly does. Braverman ruined many good arguments with language that did not sit well with the need for a home secretary to encourage calm, good order and an appreciation throughout the country that we have to understand the views of others."

"If he fired her there would be a big row, there would be a lot of fireworks. But ultimately, prime ministers tend to win those encounters because the Home Secretary will suddenly become a backbencher. And then she’ll quickly lose her purchase - think of Priti Patel. No disrespect to Priti, but she's not as powerful a voice on the backbenches as she was as Home Secretary."

"My clearest recollection of our Home Secretary’s legal acumen came from day one as an MP [in 2015]. We had a presentation from IPSA UK. Her question to IPSA concerned whether a speeding ticket occurred during the course of parliamentary duties could be claimed on expenses [...] Rather embarrassed, the representative from IPSA said no. [...] Thank goodness our Nation has been blessed with such a fine Attorney General and Home Secretary."

"I roundly told her to fuck off .... She fucked off. People said to me they had always wanted to say that to her, and I don’t know why they don’t as the opportunity presents itself every other minute."

"I would do anything that I felt was going to make the Labour party win the general election because if I don't have that attitude then all I’m doing is colluding with the Tories. If that means making Jeremy better, I'll roll my sleeves up. If that's not going to happen – and I've said [this] to him and to his staff to their faces: 'The day that ... you are hurting us more than you are helping us, I won't knife you in the back, I’ll knife you in the front.'"

"I am, however, still dubious about the need for an international men's day in and of itself. For me it is up there with needing a white history month, or able body action day. Men are celebrated, elevated and awarded every day of the week on every day of the year. Being a man is its own reward. You hit the jackpot when you are born a boy child. Yes within your group things are tough for all sorts of reasons. None of them are because you are a man. You might be a poor man, a sick man, a marginalised minority ethnic man. Brother, I'm with you. I'll carry your banner, sing your song of freedom, I'll even carry your coats and make the sandwiches."

"One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people’s hands. Nothing changes. It is awful to hear people on the doorstep saying: "You politicians are all in it for yourselves." But that's nowhere near as bad as hearing that people feel they have no one to represent them. That's the disaster, not the fact that I have to weather a Twitter storm."

"Assange has, for seven years, evaded accusations of sexual violence in Sweden."

"The trouble is that many of those who like what Assange did with WikiLeaks are willing to look the other way about the accusations against him. The same people who would march for women's rights wearing pussy hats and waving banners about what a sexist pig Trump is are not feminist allies when their gods are found to be fallible. Platitudes about how we should never say women are lying when they come forward about rape suddenly don't fit any more and now women are making up sexual violence as part of an American conspiracy."

"All the talk about rebuilding the economy post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-austerity, is always about diggers [...] I mean, do something to make sure everyone gets to play with the digger. What have they done to get more women signed up to digger courses? Make sure I can control a digger."

"[Referring to domestic violence.] It took until the third [statement during the first lockdown] for the prime minister to even mention it. And the first penny that reached the frontline was five months after the crisis started. It’s not for the want of people like me, in the beginning, being like "we should think about this". When Covid-19 was still just a thing in China, we were talking about rising rates of domestic abuse that were being reported by Chinese charities."

"We punish mothers for falling prey, rather than see how we can help them be the best moms that they can be and support them. We treat people terribly – we tell people that it's their fault that they're victims and that they're going to have their children removed because they haven't protected them."

"Reading out the list of names of women killed by men compiled by the femicide census as I do every year on International Women's Day will, no matter what I do in the future, never be rivalled by anything else in my political life. It is the thing most strangers approach me about when I am out and about. I've been told so many times that I read out the name of someone's daughter, sister, friend or mother. It catches me off guard whenever this happens. I'm struck by the honour that families feel to see their loved one's name exists forever on the public record; a roll call akin to that of fallen soldiers."

"[M]aking women as important as bins."

"In the Johnson and [[Dominic Cummings|[Dominic] Cummings]] era of government, it was often assumed that anything that happened in Westminster was a group of political geniuses playing 3D chess and laying traps for the Labour Party (or opponents from within the government) to fall in to. It did sometimes feel true, although it was my experience that it was more by accident than design. I think it might be fair to say that they were playing 2D chess with quite some skill – until they weren't. Liz Truss, it would seem, cannot even play 1D chess. In fact, I am not sure her particular operation could be compared to the shape-sorting toys a one-year-old can master."

"I have seen again and again how women's lives are considered a niche issue rather than the main event. If there are no powerful women in the room, it will continue to happen. I can already hear the rebuttal that Liz Truss was a woman and she was dreadful, but that argument only holds if you think that Liz Truss is the embodiment of all women and her failure belongs to us all. Liz Truss didn't fail because she was a woman, she failed because she was a right-wing ideologue who was unfit for the job. I can see plenty of those left around the cabinet table so they can't be too fussed about that."

"You get low-level sexism all the time. I've defended other women in the chamber. I know women who work for me, certainly Black women, have found Westminster to be oppressive. Lots of men shush me because I'm quite rowdy. I get lots of comments like "calm down, the honourable lady acts with her heart". In the post-Me Too world, you get joking comments like "am I allowed to ask you to pass the milk?" or "I don't know if I'm allowed to say this to me, but you look lovely". ... Quite a lot of Tory men treat me like I'm some sort of exotic bird. People act like I'm either a pain or something to be marvelled at. You can see sometimes in meetings, women are asked to do things like get the tea. The expectation of them being stupid and annoying is quite common – that is very irritating. There is a power imbalance, there is an element of impunity."

"The Russell Brand exposé by the Sunday Times and Dispatches for Channel 4 would have not long ago been overwhelmingly applauded as thorough, well-sourced and sensitively managed journalism. Instead, we have seen the exact reason why women don't speak up."

"This week has been one of the toughest weeks in politics since I entered parliament. I have tried to do everything that I could to make it so that this was not the outcome, but it is with a heavy heart that I will be leaving my post in the shadow Home Office team. On this occasion I must vote with my constituents, my head, and my heart which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine. I can see no route where the current military action does anything but put at risk the hope of peace and security for anyone in the region now and in the future."

"[Entering the elevator in Portcullis House] My husband's a lift engineer and he always takes the stairs."

"My only ambition in politics is to halve the levels of violence experienced by women and girls in a decade. Despite two women dying every week there is still no strategy or target around femicide. We live in a patriarchy still. It is 2024 but all our institutions are based on a 1950s, or 1850s or even 1750s ideal that doesn’t work for women"

"[To pro-Palestinian hecklers] I will carry on with my speech. I understand that a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence."

"[The UK is] in desperate need and our politics [is] in even greater need of cleaning up and I thank everyone in this room for making a really good spectacle of proving that for me."

"[The vandalising of cars used by Phillips' team were filmed for social media postings] The reason they're filming is to drive content, to incite more intimidation [...] In my constituency, the humiliation was by men, to women. And they wish to drive content ... that's what our politics has become - humiliation. Content-driven grift."

"She compares activist-journalist Owen Jones and Novara Media writers to noisy, overexcited children who have had too much sugar – "Who cares what they think, frankly.""

"But what mattered most to [[w:Karen Ingala Smith|[Karen] Ingala Smith]] were women’s names, not numbers. So in 2016 she was delighted when the Labour MP Jess Phillips – who’d previously worked for Women's Aid – asked to read them out on International Women's Day. Now this roll call of more than 120 stolen lives, recited to a hushed House of Commons, has become an annual commemoration. "Dead women is a thing we’ve all just accepted as part of our daily lives," Phillips said last year, when among the names was Sarah Everard. The list not only put male violence in the national spotlight but, says Ingala Smith, "Family after family have said how important it is to hear their loved one’s name read out in parliament, and know it is recorded in Hansard for ever.""

"In 2018, she wrote an op-ed for the Sun addressing the "problem [of] British Pakistani men raping white girls", in reference to the Rotherham grooming-gang scandal. She was subsequently accused of being Islamophobic and was forced to quit the shadow cabinet. Given the treatment of Champion, you can see why many in the public eye opt, in the interests of self-preservation, to describe Pakistani grooming-gang members as "Asian" – if indeed they talk about the issue at all."

"Cryer said that it is because they do not want arranged marriages with “very young girls from their village” in Pakistan that Muslim men "look for very young girls through this organised sex ring that we are seeing in Keighley." She does not explain what part of "Asian culture" would lead the parents to want their sons to marry “very young girls” from Pakistan, nor why this should lead to "organised" rings of men who seek to exploit "very young", non-Muslim girls near Bradford, and get them addicted to drugs and alcohol and then turn them into prostitutes. Ann Cryer left it up to the population of Britain to assume that Hindu and Sikh and Buddhist men were also doing this, as these activities were supposedly part of “Asian culture”, rather than men from one specific religious group..."

"But the quotations of contemporaneous reports of what Cryer actually said in 2003 show that in claiming that it was to do with "Asian culture" rather than religion, she had led the public to believe the problems were nothing to do with Islam. Since Islam comes from Arabia rather than Asia, and since Asia has many religions and cultures other than those of Muslims, the public was led to believe that what was happening in Bradford involved criminal grooming gangs of many different religions. But Cryer was talking to Muslim leaders in order to get the grooming gangs to stop; there was apparently no need for her to talk to Hindu or Sikh leaders to get their youths to stop grooming young white girls. Thus, even at the time, Cryer should have been able to perceive the difference between Muslim culture and Asian culture."

"We are aware of no evidence showing that Ann Cryer spoke out about the activities of the grooming gangs before August 22 2003, when Channel 4 News disclosed the existence of the 18-month investigation into the grooming gangs by Bradford Council and West Yorkshire Police, although surely as the MP she must have known about such a major investigation into their activities. Perhaps she had known about this investigation, but had chosen to remain silent, as the previous year she came under criticism from left-wing Muslims for "damaging race relations", when she stated that "Asian gangs" in her constituency were out of control."

"It is for the Prime Minister]] to decide whether he expressed himself appropriately in the Commons. It is up to him as to whether he wants to annoy 51% of the population."

"This year, the Tory party has given us five Education Secretaries, four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers, two leadership coups—[Interruption.] And, Mr Speaker, the partridge has had to sell the pear tree to pay the gas bill. [Laughter.] Is it not the case that, after a year of Tory chaos, incompetence and self-indulgence, the best Christmas present the Prime Minister could give to the British people is a general election?"

"The recognition of the sanctity of treaties is surely the most vital of all British interests. But in signing the Covenant we pledged ourselves to do more than defend British interests. We undertook to uphold a common law of honour and good faith among nations. It is true that some signatories have since left the League, but in spite of their defection we have remained, and our obligations, backed by our signed word, remain with us... I believe that war can be prevented now if every nation still within the League is prepared to carry out its obligations. War is inevitable sooner or later if this cold-blooded experiment in international anarchy is successfully carried through before a watching world. It is an example which some will not be slow to follow, and Europe may be their playground instead of Africa."

"After the war I was one of those who thought, who hoped, who believed that Force had had its day, that Armies and Navies and Air Forces would dwindle away and disappear – discarded like broken toys that men had outgrown. But to-day – look at the world. To-day we see a world which has put back the clock, a world which is reeling backwards away from law, away from freedom, back to the triumph of the aggression of Italy – and the agony of its victim. In that struggle the public opinion of the whole civilized world was solidly ranged against the aggressor. What was the use? Public opinion proved powerless against poison gas. And I think the lessons we have learned from these defeats of law is that it is no good passing judgement unless you are ready to enforce it. It is no good giving a great moral lead if it is to be followed by a rapid physical scuttle. Justice cannot rule this world armed with the scales alone – in her other hand she must hold a sword. Unless we, the free democracies of the world, who are still loyal members of the League, are prepared to stand together and to take the same risks for Justice, Peace and Freedom as others are prepared to take for the fruits of aggression – then our cause is lost – and the Gangsters will inherit the earth."

"We meet in a very dark hour. The events of the last 3 weeks have shattered what remained of that new world-order which some of us have hoped & worked & striven to build for 20 years. They have done more. They have broken a great & honourable tradition of English foreign policy to which this country has adhered through changing Governments & changing parties for centuries. The keystone of that policy has been the refusal to truckle to the strong at the expense of the weak. We have consistently thrown the whole weight of our power behind justice for the weak – against the domination of any single power. This policy which the smaller states of Europe have owed their freedom & their existence has been renounced to-day. When the Prime Minister signed the Munich Agreement he renounced for us all claims to moral leadership. We ceased to be the trustee of a standard of justice & decency in international relationships. We made our formal submission to the rule of Force – & that rule with the acquiescence & sanction of our Government is the only rule that runs in Europe to-day. All this is hailed as a triumph by its supporters. I do not believe that any Peace worthy of the name can be built upon an act of flagrant injustice backed by Force."

"I am one of millions who watching the martyrdom of Hungary and listening yesterday to the transmission of her agonized appeals for help (immediately followed by the description of our "successful bombing" of Egyptian "targets") have felt a humiliation, shame, and anger which are beyond expression. At a moment when our moral authority and leadership are most direly needed to meet this brutal assault on freedom we find ourselves bereft of both by our own Government's action. For the first time in our history our country has been reduced to moral impotence. We cannot order Soviet Russia to obey the edict of the United Nations which we ourselves have defied, nor to withdraw her tanks and guns from Hungary while we are bombing and invading Egypt. To-day we are standing in the dock with Russia. Like us she claims to be conducting a "police action." We have coined a phrase which has already become part of the currency of aggression. Never in my life-time has our name stood so low in the eyes of the world. Never have we stood so ingloriously alone. Our proud tradition has been tragically tarnished. We can restore it only by repudiating as a nation that which has been done in our name but without our consent—by changing our Government or its leadership."

"The political activities of Henry Asquith's daughter, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, are of course well-known. Her father—old, supplanted in power, his Party broken up, his authority flouted, even his long-faithful constituency estranged—found in his daughter a champion redoubtable even in the first rank of Party orators. The Liberal masses in the weakness and disarray of the Coalition period saw with enthusiasm a gleaming figure, capable of dealing with the gravest questions and the largest issues with passion, eloquence and mordant wit. In the two or three years when her father's need required it, she displayed force and talent equalled by no woman in British politics. One wildfire sentence from a speech in 1922 will suffice. Lloyd George's Government, accused of disturbing and warlike tendencies, had fallen. Bonar Law appealed for a mandate of ‘Tranquillity.’ "We have to choose," said the young lady to an immense audience, "between one man suffering from St. Vitus's Dance and another from Sleeping Sickness." It must have been the greatest of human joys for Henry Asquith in his dusk to find this wonderful being he had called into the world, armed, vigilant and active at his side. His children are his best memorial, and their lives recount and revive his qualities."

"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver."

"She was like an extinct volcano, her former violent self burnt out ... What she had fought for had not really come into being; maybe nothing on earth could have brought it into being, so romantic and heroic was it."

"...condemned to death, Pardoned, drags out lonely years Conspiring among the ignorant."

"Armed for the battle, kneel we before thee / Bless Thou our banners, God of the Brave"

"Hogwarts gone wrong."

"What the police have said, literally, is: "If we recorded it, we will have to do something about it." And you think, yes, that’s absolutely the point."

"We now need the data to know the extent of what is happening, and what we are hearing from police who are doing it is that it transforms the way they deal with violence against women, because it makes the link between misogyny and violence."

"[W]e know from police trials that classifying misogyny as a hate crime can encourage women to come forward, about domestic abuse, rape, forced marriages – there are lots of examples of how it can make a difference. All the evidence shows that this can make a difference. For comparison, there is a requirement to say if skin colour is a reason for why someone has been targeted. There are so many crimes that women have internalised. We have asked women to find ways of coping rather than asking the police to intervene and stop it."

"Why do we think motherhood should be about sacrifice in some way – that every mother should be a martyr? I don’t want to be a martyr – I just want to be a good mum and a good MP."

"Do I think some women were born with penises? Yes [...] But they are now women and I respect that."

"JK Rowling doesn't support self-identification whereas I do. Of course biological sex is real – it’s just not the end of the conversation. I am somebody who would say that a trans woman is an adult human female. I would say that you and I were adult human females. ... [O]ne of the things that happens to trans women is that they are oppressed because the patriarchy goes, "Oh well you’re a woman, right that's it, let's pick you apart". So it's right for me to stand with my trans sisters and say: "Let's fight these battles together"."

"[Tominey: "Describing as 'bonkers' the need for two doctors to decide whether someone is a woman or not [gender dysphoria], as the law currently requires, [Creasy] adds":] That brings up all sorts of questions about what is a woman in terms of gender – what does it mean to live as a woman? I wear flat shoes, I’ve got terrible bunions, is someone going to tell me that living as a woman means you have to wear high heels for two years? Do I want to live in a world where we’re policing everyone who goes into a toilet? No. Do I recognise that there are very real concerns about refuges and safe spaces? Yes."

"Watching this I am concerned that the prime minister thinks homeless means "doesn't have a country pile at the moment"."

"[W]e should all welcome the protection from sex-based harassment in a public bill. It echoes the way that hate crime legislation penalises those who target certain groups based on their identity, by using an existing offence used to prosecute harassment – from the Public Order Act 1986 – and applying a harsher sentence to those whose motivation is shown to be about the sex or perceived sex of their victim. It is the first time the statute book will recognise how misogyny drives crimes against women. Yet, as ever, nothing is straightforward. Public order offences allow the accused to claim a defence that they thought their behaviour was "reasonable", even if no one else would. This contrasts with other legislation that also covers harassment in English law, and only allows a defendant to claim their behaviour is reasonable if others would agree; that they "ought to know" if their conduct was unacceptable. Without changing this element of the forthcoming public harassment bill to be consistent with how harassment operates elsewhere, this new law – while well-intentioned – risks giving perpetrators the opportunity to claim "she just can’t take a compliment" as an actual defence to a criminal offence."

""[D]on't feed the trolls" misses the point: if someone is obsessing about you to the point they are seeking out those around you, ignoring them won't disrupt their behaviour before it causes more damage."

"Now that the parliamentary security team requests the details of your daily travel plans – when you'll be visiting your local supermarket, or the pub – it's hard not to feel that something has gone very wrong. Indeed, my local council records me as a safeguarding risk to my own children because of the threats I face as an MP."

"They don’t threaten criticise, yell or exert their physical strength in increasingly frightening ways. Not at the start. Not when they think you're sweet, funny and gorgeous. Not when they turn up to your third date with chocolates, then jewellery."

"You learn that "I’ll always look after you" and "You’re mine for life" can sound menacing, are used as a warning over and over again."

"In a strange city his face changes in a way you are starting to know and dread. In a way that tells you, you need to stay calm, silent and very careful. You read a city guide … mentally packing a day full of fun. But he seems to have another agenda. He doesn’t want you to leave the room. He’s paid a lot of money and you need to pay him your full attention. You are expected to do as you are told. You know for certain what that means, so you do, exactly what you are told. It’s when the ring is on your finger that the mask can start to slip and the promises sound increasingly like threats."

"Those patterns continue: reward, punishment, promises of happy ever after, alternating with abject rage, menace, silent treatment and coercive control."

"It was just a big load of scary noise, this giant person. When you’re bullied your brain starts to shut down. It’s protecting yourself. And you can’t think of the words; you’re not eloquent. I would misspeak, stutter, and he would exploit that."

"He was totally withdrawing from me, to let me know that I was not to be spoken to, and I wasn’t to talk to him, or be touched, or anything, and that was really hurtful. But it was always my fault, always, always, always, without question. And that got established from day one, even when he was still trying to woo me and charm me. [At the end of an argument.] He’d come up to me very earnestly, very sincerely, and say to me, "Are you going to be my good girl, now?""

"His tempers were very violent. I knew I had to be careful. There was always an underlying threat. He would drive incredibly aggressively, yelling at me when I was trapped in the car. That was scary stuff. Because the feelings are violent, the violence is there in the room with you. The raising of a fist or the hand is the next logical step. He didn’t hit me. He did other things that made me realise he was in control."

"It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women."

"I don’t talk about trans rights because I think it’s not my place to talk about trans rights. Trans people have got some great organisations and they’re very good at representing their rights, and that is just as it should be. Trans rights are the same rights as everyone else, but what concerns me is that there is a slight conflict in some cases between trans rights and women’s rights. Women’s rights are why I came to Parliament, and why I’m sitting here, because women are now visible in Parliament. I grew up in a very strong feminist household, and what really concerns me are the rights of women to have privacy and space, and the necessity to be in women’s refuge – not shared with someone with a male body."

"[On the possibility misgendering might become a hate crime.] Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to Parliament any time soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I'm not calling Eddie Izzard a woman."

"LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference [...] The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly."

"There are some women who get involved and want to be seen to be very woke ... but mostly it is men, and the same men that have trolled me ever since I got elected. So it looks like, feels like and smells like misogyny, and this is just the latest cause they have latched on to ... The fact that I am blonde — they call me a bimbo. The fact that I don’t like antisemitism. There is always something, but it is always the same people who attack me."

"For the first time in my life, having been an ambassador for a gender-balanced 50:50 parliament, I would hesitate to encourage other women to come into politics [...] I would have to really think about what I was asking them to do, and putting people into this position when they are going to be on the front line of some pretty shitty abuse."

"Being shouted down in the chamber by Labour men who clearly don't want women to speak up for our rights to single-sex spaces. How very progressive."

"Many of us know that self-identifying as a woman does not make a person a biological woman who shares our lived experience. But for obvious reasons, these views are not voiced outside of closed rooms or private and secret WhatsApp groups. Even there, the most senior MPs often do not post a single word; they know exactly what’s at stake and not many of them want to be me. So for now, they mostly remain silent."

"Is it starting to look like Labour has a women problem? It certainly is for the 7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration and had a stall at last year’s party conference refused. It is for Lesbian Labour, who were also stopped from exhibiting at last year’s conference. It is for Dr Karen Ingala Smith, the formidable feminist campaigner who compiles a list of women killed in the UK each year which is then read out in parliament by Jess Phillips every International Women’s Day, and who had her membership rejected after she made a few gender-critical joke tweets featuring kittens."

"We're watching not only those white men that run things having the safe seats, giving themselves the safe seats, but then they're the ones that get to judge whether or not we get to be candidates. So that's incredibly uncomfortable for me to watch from a so-called progressive party. It needs cleaning up, it needs tackling. It was the same under Jeremy Corbyn's faction and time, it's exactly the same under Keir Starmer."

"Today I have made the extremely difficult decision not to attend local hustings events during this general election campaign. Hustings are usually an enjoyable and interesting part of any political campaign, but sadly the actions of a few fixated individuals have now made my attendance impossible. The constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation from certain people - having built up over a number of years and being pursued with a new vigour during this election - is now affecting my sense of security and wellbeing. The result is that I feel unable to be focused on giving a clear presentation of the Labour Party's manifesto commitments."

"Most backbenchers I'm friends with are women and most of us refer to the men that surround him [Keir Starmer], the young men, as 'the lads' and it's very clear that the lads are in charge. They have now got their Downing Street passes. They are the same lads who were briefing against me in the papers and other prominent female MPs."

"The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale [...] I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party."

"Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister."

"Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for — why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment?"

"As prime minister, your managerial style and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long 14 years to be mandated by the British public to return to power. Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear."

"How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?"

"The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed,” she said. “I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.”"

"[In March 2023, Duffield] dared to like a tweet by the writer Graham Linehan, who was responding to a tweet by Eddie Izzard claiming that, had he lived in Nazi Germany, "I'd have been murdered for it". Linehan – and rightly, so in my view – retorted with a sarcastic, "Ah, yes, the Nazis, famously bigoted against straight white men with blonde hair." You might well think Izzard was wrong to make that comparison to Nazi Germany in trying to score points in the gender war. But remarkably, in Labour land, it is Duffield who is being investigated."

"In the interests of full transparency, I should say that Rosie Duffield's a friend of mine. We'd probably have been friends no matter where or how we'd met, but we found each other as part of a group of women fighting to retain women's rights."

"It seems Rosie has received literally no support from [Keir] Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life. But she fights on ... because she feels she has no choice. Like me, she believes the stakes are too high to walk away."

"We then went to a smaller town, Sant Andreu de la Barca, to a health centre, and when we arrived the Guardia Civil had just left. They had broken down the door of the health centre and attacked people with batons. There were a lot of older people crying ... We spoke to a local councillor who said that when the Guardia Civil came to take the ballot boxes, he asked them for a warrant, and they just pushed him out of the way."

"In my view, it would be perfectly simple to have stronger safeguards in this Bill without causing any detriments to genuine trans people who wanted to get a gender recognition certificate. In holding this view, I'm not going against my party policy. The Scottish National Party has never voted for self-ID as a policy at conference and it wasn't in our manifesto. What it did promise to do was make the process of gender recognition easier for trans people which I support. What I don't support is opening it up to just anyone with minimal safeguards."

"In my case, I was kicked off the SNP frontbench for speaking up for women's rights and for lesbian rights. And I've also received rape and death threats, as is a matter of public record. I've had no public support from my political party, despite those rape and death threats. So, I think many parliamentarians are just trying to keep out of this debate because they’re afraid to speak up."

"Anyone who hasn't noticed the violent misogyny of many so-called trans rights activists hasn't been paying attention. Women like me, JK Rowling, Rosie Duffield and others who have been on the receiving end of rape and death threats know this all too well. Signs such as those we saw on Saturday threatening murderous violence against any other group would cause outrage, but they are commonplace at such demonstrations. I'd like to see the leaders of the parties of all parliamentarians present on Saturday squarely condemn what occurred."

"To many people, it will look like this convicted rapist has gamed the system in order to try and garner sympathy, and to end up in a women's prison. And I think a lot of people will be shocked by that. So I think we should be talking about these cases. And women in prison are very vulnerable. Many women in prison have themselves been abused, and have suffered injuries over the years. ... But the point about human rights is that they're universal, and they apply to everyone. So I'm very concerned about the safety of women prisoners, with whom a convicted rapist has been placed. And under Scots law, the crime of rape can only be committed by somebody with a penis, and that's a man. And I think we should call out what's happened here."

"It should not be possible for venues or their staff to no-platform lesbians or feminists who believe that sex is an immutable biological fact just because of our sexuality or our beliefs. [...] That sort of discrimination is unlawful and I'm sure most people would agree it's not acceptable"

"[Advocating for the protection of free speech from "the heckler's veto"] The failure to do so and the actions of some political figures in fostering an intolerant and hateful climate where small groups of activists now decide who can speak and what can be discussed needs to be called out. What does it say about the Fringe and Edinburgh, the home of the enlightenment, when an elected Edinburgh politician can’t be asked questions on stage in the city they represent?"

"I was one of a number of members elected on a manifesto to deliver better transparency and scrutiny over the party's finances and governance. I'm sad to say we failed to do that, and it wasn't for the want of trying. I just regret it's come to this. I would like those who stood in the way of reform back in 2020-21 to reflect on what they've done."

"I've always argued that the way to win a referendum was to persuade people who voted no in 2014 of the merits of our case. The SNP needs to discuss both how we convince people to the cause of independence and also how we actually win our independence. We need to put the sovereignty of the Scottish people back to the front and centre of our debate."

"[Colleagues response to her participation in a LGB Alliance conference] They demanded I had the whip removed if I spoke at the conference and really whipped up an atmosphere, very unpleasant, and, to use someone else's words, toxic atmosphere against me within the Westminster group."

"I have been very upset. I've sat in my office in Westminster on many occasions and cried because of the really awful atmosphere that I had to work in. I have no doubt that the hatred that is directed towards me as a lesbian and as a feminist is homophobic and lesbophobic."

"[Cherry was concerned about the] absence of tailored defences for women who hold the view that sex is immutable and who wish to speak plainly about this."

"I have little doubt that this new law will be weaponised by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still, criminalise women who do not share their beliefs. A cursory look at social media shows that some of these activists already have one high profile woman in Scotland in their sights. Experience shows that working class women will also be targeted. There is no right not be offended but the muddled discourse about these issues currently in the public domain does not make that clear."

"If Nicola Sturgeon had devoted half the energy that she devoted to calling lifelong feminists like me a transphobe and devoted half that energy to governing well then the SNP would not be facing a rout this evening."

"A political party that allows male members to harass and abuse female members, including elected parliamentarians, without any censure whatsoever is not progressive. Those who run the SNP and indeed the Scottish Greens, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats need to understand that men who abuse women and threaten violence against them often act on those threats. The conviction of former SNP branch equalities officer Cameron Downing for serious sexual assaults has underlined this eternal truth. This man was feted by some within the SNP despite repeatedly threatening extreme violence to feminists. The deafening silence since his conviction is shameful."

"I'm glad to hear that Mridul Wadhwa is no longer the CEO of Rape Crisis Edinburgh but the appalling culture over which this man who identifies as a woman presided goes much deeper. This should not be an end of the matter. Others need to consider their position."

"Cherry has repeatedly expressed her conviction that independence can only succeed when its adherents address the aspirations and fears of Scotland’s pro-UK majority. What needs to be done to reassure those who voted No in 2014 – or a substantial number of them – that there is something in the independence offer for them, too?"

"It is a great injustice when we ignore God's plan for women... His plan clearly states that, specifically within the Church, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man"."

"Now, I admit that often I don’t understand the "whys" of God’s plans. Maybe it's because I don’t know myself as well as He does. He knows the exact number of hairs on my head. I don't. Or, maybe it's because I'm not God and never will be, and so I don’t quite grasp his reasoning. Maybe it's because I am ambitious, young and female. I have a degree from Cambridge University, worked in politics and I'm now employed on one of the best fast-track schemes in the business world. Education, hard work, and stewarding our talents within the parameters of Scripture are commended in God’s Word."

"I think for me, Angela Merkel is the example I would follow, I would have voted, as a matter of conscience, along the lines of mainstream teaching in most major religions that marriage is between a man and a woman. But I would have respected and defended the democratic choice that was made. It is a legal right now and I am a servant of democracy, I am not a dictator."

"[On having children outside marriage.] It's entirely up to them. It's something that I would seek to avoid for me personally. But it doesn't fuss me, it doesn't put me up nor down. The choices that other people make is [up to them]. In terms of my faith, my faith would say that sex is for marriage and that's the approach that I would practice. [...] For me, it would be wrong according to my faith, but for you I have no idea what your faith is. So, in a free society you can do what you want."

"A rapist cannot be a woman and therefore my straight answer would be that Isla Bryson is a man."

"[Asked if SNP colleagues withdrawal of support following her expression of socially conservative opinions about same-sex marriage had affected her campaign.] Absolutely not [...] We have a large party membership, most of whom are not on Twitter, and I understand that people have very strong views on these matters. I think the public are longing for politicians to answer straight questions with straight answers and that's certainly what I tried to do in the media yesterday. That doesn't necessarily allow for much nuance."

"[On same-sex marriage.] My position on these matters is I will defend to the hilt everybody's right in a pluralistic and tolerant society to live and to love free of harassment and fear. And in the same way I hope that others can be afforded the rights of people of faith to practice fairly mainstream teaching. And that is the nuance that we need to capture on equal marriage. Equal marriages is a legal right, and as a servant of democracy, rather than a dictator, I absolutely respect and defend that democratic right."

"If we’re saying that public office, or at least high public office is barred to people of a particular faith, or people who have a faith but can leave that faith, as there are strict elements of that faith, then it is getting into dangerous territory."

"The primary calling is to be in the dirt of reality [...] Where do you see Christ historically? You see Him, not in some sort of cathedral or some elevated ivory tower; you see Him in the midst of vulnerable, under-represented, underprivileged people. That's what politics is, theoretically. So therefore, there is a natural home in the midst of the underprivileged, under-represented, voiceless people. You then go from there into parliament, to try and make good law that serves those people, and that's where, quite rightly, there's a democratic debate."

"I support same sex marriage and like anyone I'm disappointed when anyone disagrees with me. But if you’re asking me to condemn someone for their religious views you've failed to understand the basic responsibilities of being minister for equality. [...] I actually admire her for not being dishonest. It'd be very easy for her to tell lies, just so that she could win that election, and she's not doing that, and I think that that's something that people need to take into account."

"I do think that those people who are withdrawing support from her, I'd ask "why did you support her in the first place"? Because I don't think what she's saying is new, and I think it shows a level of unseriousness of many people who engage in political activity and commentary, where they don't take things seriously in terms of "why am I supporting this person"?"

"[After Forbes said she would have voted against same-sex marriage in the Scottish parliament if she had been a MSP in 2014] In practice, I think you couldn't get elected leader of the Conservative Party now, with the view that she has, so try getting elected leader of a more left-wing party with that view, that's the difficulty that she’s got."

"[Forbes is] entitled to her view [but same-sex marriage] has become part of the culture of the country around the United Kingdom over the last ten years."

"My focus is on how we deliver for patients and I appreciate I may not be the role model, but I am sure that the Chief Medical Officer and others will continue to be role models in that regard and I will do my best as well. I will probably get all sorts of comments, Nick, but nevertheless, on a more serious matter, I have been a patient of the NHS too and have had some brilliant experiences and I have had some experiences where it could have been better. My focus is on patients and that is what I will be making sure the department focuses on too."

"It's important to make sure that we cherish the specialisms that we have in this country. A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce and tomatoes and similar, but I'm conscious that consumers want a year-round choice and that is what our supermarkets, food producers and growers around the world try to satisfy."

"I'm frankly fed up with the right to roam campaign. The only things that have rights to roam are farmers, their pigs and cattle."

"To my dismay, for all the talk about the values of equality, diversity and respect at last week's NUS conference, in practice nothing could be further from the truth, in relation to anti-semitism. A leaflet was readily available on the GUPS stalls at the conference for two days. The text was the typical anti-semitic work; the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Once again, complaints were met with unacceptable delays and silence. Many people claim that being anti-Israel/Zionist isn't being anti-semitic. But why does hatred of Israel lead them to turn a blind eye to the Protocols on a GUPS pamphlet? Furthermore, while the UJS has always preached a two-state solution and peace, time and time again we see others reject it. This is evident in the attack on a UJS peace stall at the European Social Forum. University authorities are also dismissive of these issues - look at the Israeli boycot motions put to this month's Association of University Teachers conference."

"I think the insensitivity surrounding all parties' approach to asylum and immigration has a lot to say for the rise in not only anti-Semitism but any form of racism directed at immigrants. All parties have been responsible for not dealing with the issue in an appropriate manner."

"I have to be very careful what I say here. I'm disappointed by the fact that they are playing to other parties' policies in order to discuss it all. Whereas the Labour Party in the past have been so strong and so active in combating and standing up for themselves, I'm surprised that on this particular issue, it's unfortunate that it's been played into."

"While I accuse no one of anti-Semitism, this year NUS has been a bystander to Jew-hatred [...] In the past three days, at the heart of our democratic union, to my horror, I have seen the events of the year replayed."

"Only active government can shape markets, create new ones, and create green growth. Individuals and businesses cannot do it alone: they need a government by their side. That's why the Labour government introduced the Climate Change Act in 2008 to enshrine carbon targets in law, and to move Britain from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. We planned to achieve 40% low-carbon electricity by 2020, and to create 400,000 new jobs in green businesses. This government inherited a range of green initiatives, such as the green investment bank, which they've watered-down, or punted into the long grass. The Tory-led government's blinkered focus on the deficit means they are not making the right strategic decisions for now or for the next generation. Their promised green economy road map will appear many months after the publication of their energy bill."

"[Being asked if she was someone's aide at a climate change conference] I'm nobody’s aide! I find a lot of people say, you know, "When do we get to meet the MP?" And, er, no, I am the MP."

"[On abusive Twitter posts] Online hate needs to be taken as seriously as offline hate – but it isn’t. Twitter’s response isn't good enough. It has a responsibility to do more to protect its users. The site is letting me and many others down who have been the subject of lots of hate ... It could start by proactively banning racist words which aren't allowed to printed in newspapers or broadcast on TV that could never be used in a positive way – such as kike – a derogative and anti-Semitic term for describing a Jew."

"[On receiving a vast number of hate messages on Twitter.] It’s personal and sometimes very extreme in its nature. Sometimes it's pornographic, sometimes violent, often very misogynistic. At its peak, there were 2,500 tweets. Some people who were shown just one message couldn’t believe it, so to receive thousands is difficult."

"[On the categories of antisemitic abuse she was receiving] First, there are people who say it’s all a smear and accuse me of "faux anti-semite outrage" and "bullshit of the highest order". This attack has come even after Jeremy has acknowledged in the strongest terms that the mural was anti-semitic. Second, there are those who say the mural is "absolutely true" and that they support it, that "global banks are ripping everyone off because they are run by Jews". The third strand is to accuse me of having "two masters", that I'm "Tel Aviv’s servant" and a "paid-up Israeli lobby operative" as well as being an MP. It’s anti-semitism of the worst kind, suggesting I'm a traitor to my country. They call me "Judas", "a venal piece of detritus", a "Zionazi" and an "absolute parasite", telling me to get out of the country or go back to Israel. The last strand are the messages from people who tell me to "f*** off", resign, call me "another red Tory that needs deselecting" and make physical threats."

"Over 40 Labour MPs and peers joined the demo against antisemitism. Every one of us did so because we are anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigners, and will always challenge all forms of racism, no matter where they appear. We protested, and will do again if we must. Protest forms an important part of our Labour tradition. So does dissent and disagreement. We should always "dare to be a Daniel" and speak out against the prevailing winds. No Labour MP should ever be cowed by the Labour machine into silence, against the voice of our own conscience. As a Jew, I defend my right to speak at rallies against antisemitism. Mr Loach, in calling for Labour MPs to be expunged from the party, undermines Labour’s local election campaigns across the country."

"[On deciding to openly challenge Jeremy Corbyn] It was the Friday before the Monday of the Enough Is Enough demonstration outside Parliament. I hadn't actually seen it [the mural] before then, despite it being discussed on blogs and written about in the JC before. But I didn't get a proper response [from Mr Corbyn], then there was the fight to get the party to adopt the IHRA definition in full, which even at the last moment there was an attempt to undermine. Then there was what became known as the 'summer of antisemitism' - all the connections Jeremy had made, his statements of July, August and September - it really has got worse. More recently, two weeks in a row at the meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, we had a motion that was unanimously supported by party colleagues calling on the leadership to release the information about antisemitism cases - and we were held with utter contempt. This has been something the leadership has sought to dismiss and turn a blind eye to every step of the way. That is why I have come to the conclusion the party is institutionally antisemitic. I said 'Enough is Enough' and I challenged it from within. Now I mean Enough IS Enough."

"The volume and toxicity of stuff thats come from the left for daring to speak out, for daring to address this, because it's so incongruous with the values that I'm supposed to share with people on the left around anti-Semitism. People believe that there is a place for anti-Semitism on the left, that's what I found particularly challenging and difficult over in particular this past year. Not that it hasn't occurred at all before but it's certainly been given oxygen and I only have to reflect on what I've seen and the volume of it and from those accounts that use the hashtag #JC4PM in their biography."

"I'm glad that I left the Labour party [...] Everything that has happened since then proves that I was right to leave. The great party that I joined is a shell of its former self."

"The abuse didn't stop when I left the Labour party. I have a threshold for how bad it is. If I take a screenshot of something it's pretty bad. Just in the last few days I've taken quite a number of screenshots. They have all come from the left."

"[When asked who was responsible for continuing issue of antisemitism in the Labour Party] I sat in meetings with Jeremy Corbyn. Ultimately the leader is responsible and must take responsibility."

"The last local constituency meeting I attended was so awful, so toxic, there was no humanity in the room. [...]I went into detail about the threats I'd been subjected to — messages handed in to my office saying I was going to get stabbed and raped and have acid thrown on me. I was categorically committed to Labour. I worked seven days a week, true to the values that led me into politics, but because I would not commit to Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister that night, I was dead to them. I thought, "I just cannot be part of this any more.""

"Why do people with antisemitic views think today's Labour party is the right place for them? And why are so many people on the left still averting their eyes? The exit from the party of the Liverpool MP Luciana Berger is a case in point, bluntly summed up by the leftwing Jewish journalist Rachel Shabi: "A Jewish MP left Labour because of the tide of antisemitism directed at her and I don’t think the terrible significance of this has sunk in for chunks of the left.""

"It is almost four years to the day since you left our Labour Party. I say 'our' deliberately. You left because you were forced out by intimidation, thuggery and racism. Yours was a principled and brave move. But it was one you should never have been forced to take. That day will forever be a stain on Labour's history. I don’t need to explain to you the litany of failures that left you — a Labour MP with a huge future ahead of you — no longer feeling welcome in your own party. Instead, I want to once again apologise."

"What you experienced was intolerable and unacceptable. The abuse you suffered was disgusting. You were left isolated and exposed. Shamefully, those who should have defended you stood by. The Labour Party — our party — has always prided itself on being a party of equality, collectivism, solidarity and anti-racism. But during those dark days we were none of those things. Before you were forced out of the party, you were an outstanding member of parliament ... Both the Labour Party and British politics are poorer places without you. I would be honoured to work alongside you in continuing to build a Labour Party we can be proud of again — a Labour Party that can win again."

"Now the government, quite rightly, pays for me – through taxpayer's money – to be able live in London whilst I serve my constituents. My housing is subsidised by the taxpayer. Now the Chancellor [then George Osborne] in his budget said, "It is not fair that families earning over £40,000 in London should have their rents paid for by other working people." But it is ok so long as you're an MP? In this budget the Chancellor also abolished any housing benefit for anyone below the age of 21. So we are now in the ridiculous situation whereby, because I am an MP, not only am I the youngest, but I am also the only 2o-year-old in the whole of the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing."

"I had people wanting me to write an autobiography: I was born. I went to school. I left. I fried a fish. And now I’m an MP. They were offering me a four-book deal!"

"I know I'm not going to become comfortable in Westminster because I'm fundamentally uncomfortable there. I don't want to be there. I don't want to make decisions there."

"You talk shite, hen."

"So after spending weeks running down the clock telling us the EU will never reconsider the backstop, the Prime Minister is now going to head back to Brussels to ask them to reconsider the backstop."

"Just seen a stag do floating down the Thames. As their boat went past, they began pointing at Parliament chanting, 'you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you're doing...' Probably the most accurate commentary yet."

"Anybody ever watch Gilmore Girls? Mind when Paris built herself a fort in the newsroom of the paper so nobody could talk to her? That's the Prime Minister."

"You sound if I head to bed, Sajid Javid? Absolutely shattered."

"Ooo I'm back to being a ned this week, what a buzz. I'm sure it'll be back to a middle class liar with a fake accent next week though."

"We have the lowest pensions in Europe, the lowest sick pay, we pretend the minimum wage is a living wage when it’s not. We miss our own economic targets time and time again. We’re happy to break international law. We are turning into a country where words hold no value and over the last 12 years I fear we are sleepwalking closer and closer to the f-word and I know everyone is scared to say it for fear of sounding over the top or being accused of going too far. But I say this with all sincerity, when I say the f-word, I’m talking about facism. Fascism wrapped in red, white and blue."

"I've been challenged going into female toilets before, course I have. Are you kidding? I'm the sort of person who can deal with it, but there was one time I didn't even have to and it was one of the most powerful things I've experienced. There was a woman beside me who said [to the person questioning me] "Who the hell do you think you are, who are you to police this?" That is exactly what I needed in that situation, I didn’t have power, but the woman beside me did. In this debate, I'm the person with the power and I'm not leaving trans people behind."

"In recent days, footage has emerged of the former chancellor and the former chair of the 1922 committee offering their services for £60,000. On top of that, the former health secretary offered his wisdom for £10,000 a day. Can I ask the Deputy Prime Minister, when he is inevitably booted out of office, what will his going rate be?"

"The Deputy Prime Minister, I thank him for his kind words and we did join this place at the same time and I'm pretty sure we'll be leaving at the same time."

"Being trans is not something to be feared. It’s just an aspect of a human being, the same way being gay is just an aspect of who I am. [...] The only place as far as I’m concerned that my sex matters, as opposed to my gender, is in a medical setting. That's between me and a doctor."

"I'm a woman, I'm a lesbian, nobody's cancelling me and I want trans people to be able to live with dignity and happiness and for newspapers and politicians to leave them the hell alone."

"If you are a human being, you are not an intellectual debate and nor should you be made to be one."

"Once upon a time intellectuals made great prolific statements about race, saying "I think you'll find the statistics show more BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) people, crime goes up". They might have been an intellectual, but they were also a racist. The vast majority of people don’t know a lot about the trans community, and why should they? They are less than one per cent of the population."

"Folk don't recognise the difference between being unfairly cancelled and being held accountable, those are two very different things. Criticising someone for what they said in public, in front of an audience, that's criticism - that's not anyone attacking you or denying you because you're a lesbian or whatever. It's nonsense. There are definite bad actors at play, radicalising people who are vulnerable, radicalising people who are too online, and using this small community as a wedge issue to create chaos."

"Some of the arguments I’ve seen by people who are gender critical, if you start picking away at it, are some of the most misogynistic arguments. Some of the worst abuse I've experienced is from women because they don't see me as feminine enough and doing things a woman should do. People bang on about single sex spaces, but I've had more grief in women's toilets in the past five years than I have had in my life, and it's because I'm not as feminine as 50-year-old Karen expects me to be. That is not a good basis for progress."

"I've genuinely never worried about a career. [...] I can see how politicians game play – it's a long game of chess for many of them. For me, it's either right or wrong, sensible or stupid."

"[On her home life, she married her female partner in 2022] the rampant feminist that she is, cannot wait to have a housewife."

"It is obvious that the Unionist Party is quite prepared to set Catholic against Protestant in this country rather than give the reforms which would in fact mean there would be an end to sectarianism."

"It's not that women get written out of history - they never get written in"

"What did I dream about at Boots? Well, the big ambition was to get onto the cosmetics, but I never made it...""

"Yet trans activists have succeeded in campaigning for biological males who identify as female to be allowed into women’s sports, women’s hospital wards and women’s prisons, even when these trans women still have intact male genitalia. This is not acceptable, and presents a serious threat to women’s safety, as well as our sex-based rights."

"As a woman, I fully understand the threats to dignity and safety that the Bill poses, because it will change the social contract. In this country, we recognise that in toilets, changing rooms and public spaces, there are areas where only women are allowed. In a restaurant recently, I had an experience where a man dressed as a woman walked into the toilets where I was on my own. He stood behind me and stared at me in the mirror, looking me in the eye. I have no idea whether he intended me any harm, but my evolved instinct as a woman was to be frightened, because unlike in almost any other species, women are far less powerful than men and we cannot defend ourselves. [Interruption.] No, it is a fact. The difference in strength between men and women is phenomenal, which is why we have separate sex categories for sport. Women are evolved to be wary of men in intimate spaces, which is why we have single-sex spaces and why they must continue to exist for the safety and privacy of women. The Bill threatens that social contract."

"[On gender ideology] If there's one place where a woman should be able to speak up about these issues, that should be parliament."

"The problem with this point of view represented by those who subscribe to gender ideology is that they don't respond to rational debate with counterarguments. They respond to it with cries of 'bigots', or cries of trying to silence people who express an opposite point of view. That's what is so frustrating."

"[On a lack of "hope for the future" discouraging the young from becoming parents] That hope is sadly diminishing in so many of our young people today, because liberal individualism has proven to be completely powerless to resist the cultural Marxism that is systematically destroying our children’s souls. When culture, schools and universities openly teach that our country is racist, our heroes are villains, humanity is killing the Earth, you are what you desire, diversity is theology, boundaries are tyranny and self-restraint is oppression, is it any wonder that mental health conditions, self-harm and suicide, and epidemic levels of anxiety and confusion characterise the emerging generation? We must end the indoctrination of our children with destructive and narcissistic ideologies, instead protecting childhood, training children in the timeless virtues and teaching them how to love our country."

"For children are not an economic burden. They are not a threat to personal autonomy or a lifestyle choice. Children are a joy and a blessing, they are the symptom and the cause of a society that has hope. Our children are the reason that we seek to rebuild a nation whose future is prosperous, safe and free."

"I think ... I'm uncomfortable ... I believe every human being is equal before God. That's my faith position. I don't think we can get away from the fact that abortion is taking human life. There are obviously balances of rights, and I'm not an absolutist at all."

"[On motherhood] Some young people are led to believe it's all drudgery [...] 'It’s a noose around your neck.' But most people don't regret having children. We don't talk openly enough as a society about what's great about being a mum or a dad. We talk about what's great about a career, and that's fine. But we should talk about other fulfilling things in life."

"Perhaps we could ask the Church of England to return to their day job and marry people for free."

"We have got a problem in this country with knowing what the problem is but not being able to do anything about it."

"What does it even mean to "undermine British values" when there is no consensus — and certainly no legal definition — of what those values are?"

"Some people think that gender critical views are 'extreme'. I think decriminalising abortion to birth is 'extreme'. Opposition politicians think the current government is 'extreme'."

"If 'extremist' views are illegal, then the person who defines 'extremism' has the power to curtail free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom of association. This is the path to authoritarianism."

"If Britain is to reverse its decline, we would do well to follow the example of countries like Hungary. Of course, high profile policies like building giant border fences would not translate directly into the British context, but we can learn from the principles behind them."

"Then there is the crucial issue of the Irish border. If, in any deal, Northern Ireland is to be treated differently from the rest of the UK then anyone who believes in the Union could not possibly support that deal. No doubt there will be some flowery EU-speak designed to hide the true intention and we will be told that as it is never intended to be needed then we shouldn’t worry."

"While I understand that Ireland was quite shocked at our decision to Leave, so much of the controversy over the border has been manufactured by it to try to keep Northern Ireland bound by EU regulations and different from the rest of the UK."

"I’m pro-union, I’ll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU."

"I don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to see that the Irish Government and the European Union have been from day one working closely on tactics particularly relating to the border question."

"I thought our Shadow Foreign Secretary saying she would be campaigning for Remain is quite shocking and goes 100% against our manifesto. More and more people are feeling more confirmed in their views that politicians say one thing in their manifestos and then change their view."

"I'm actually going to be voting in Northern Ireland and unfortunately the Labour Party is so anti-democratic in Northern Ireland that they allow people to join but they don't put up candidates. [...] So I'll be voting for a pro-union candidate in Northern Ireland."

"I'm pro-union. I would not dream of voting for Sinn Fein, I wouldn't dream of voting for the SDLP."

"[The vote for the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election was] what we needed for stability because now the European Union knows that we're not going to revoke Article 50. We're not going to have a second referendum. We're going to get out, and they will have to change their attitude, too, to the negotiations. And we will get, I hope, within the next year a good free trade deal with the European Union. And of course, then we will be discussing with the United States to get an even closer relationship with you as well."

"We can be a successful independent country like the United States, working, cooperating with the rest of the world."

"I think we all kind of know how we got here, that Northern Ireland was sacrificed because it could have been that we weren’t going to get Brexit at all."

"I personally couldn't vote for the Withdrawal Agreement because of Northern Ireland but I could understand many of my colleagues in the Leave campaign because they have to do it."

"There are people in Northern Ireland, leading politicians, who say, and it's true, that Northern Ireland has now become a form of colony. The EU’s first kind of colony."

"If Stormont goes back with the present Windsor Framework, they in fact would be almost like what happened during the war with the Vichy government, where all those [w:Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)|MLAs]] [Members of the Legislative Assembly] would be collaborators with a kind of colonial government."

"Taking foreign laws from a foreign legislature, governing much of our economy in Northern Ireland and keeping us in a foreign customs code whereby GB, Great Britain, our country, where our capital is, becomes a third country, becomes our foreign country – it’s just not acceptable."

"[On Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK] I don't think anyone from a pro-union background should fear Keir Starmer becoming the next prime minister of the United Kingdom."

"[[w:Flag of Ireland|[T]he tricolour]] is not my flag ... I genuinely don't feel Irish. Is there something wrong with that?"

"I was always very cynical about the European Union."

"I don't fit into a mould."

"Kate Hoey is an asset to the Labour Party. She has been a brave and principled fighter for what she believes, and yesterday’s announcement, though understandable, is regrettable. I wish her well."

"It was a terrible decision and I would like to say I was not involved in that [...] Because there weren't a lot of women in the room making these decisions – we were on the pink bus, which tells you everything you need to know about how valued women were in terms of making the decisions. But it's a big lesson there in terms of chasing celebrities for political points."

"Being so casual and cynical about being happy to lose the Muslim vote plays into a wider darker narrative which Labour doesn't want to fuel, because it's not who we are."

"We live in a multiracial society, we're very, very comfortable with that because if were weren't we wouldn't have the prime minister, we wouldn't have the home secretary or business secretary that we have. But we have to be very careful about how we explain and express immigration policies so that people aren't getting echoes of things that are less palatable."

"It wasn't until predators started exploiting the loopholes that we are having to tighten this. It is the behaviour of people who are choosing to exploit rights given to transgender people — because the definition is very loose — that we are now having to look at what we can do in order to protect women and children who are the most vulnerable in those single-sex spaces. It is not easy, the ideal situation would have been if the predators had not chosen to exploit this loophole. [Badenoch "insisted she was not saying transgender people were predators."] But there are more people who are predators than there are people who are trans."

"[Predators exploitation of loopholes] We see it with men exposing themselves in bathrooms. We see it with people trying to access single-sex spaces such as women's prisons when they have been convicted for violence against women, and their victims are being forced to refer to them with female pronouns. That is not right. So we have to make sure that we can sweep all that away and when we do, life will get better for transgender people."

"The law is confused because times have changed and words in law are being re-interpreted to meanings quite different from what legislators intended. Clarification is required. Not just to protect the privacy and dignity of women and girls, but also to protect those people with gender dysphoria for whom the law was set up to protect. These transpeople were going about their lives in peace, until predators started exploiting loopholes in the law by calling themselves trans with no evidence beyond their self-identification. Sex and gender, terms once used interchangeably in the law, now mean different things with significant implications. This is being exploited by all sorts of activist organisations, most notably Stonewall for their own agenda. That is why we are today pledging that, if we form a government [[w:2024 United Kingdom general election|after the [general] election]], we will clarify that sex in the law means biological sex and not new, redefined meanings of the word. The protection of women and girls' spaces is too important to allow the confusion to continue."

"I will not shut up. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls. A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can't see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end. Tennant is one of Labours celebrity supporters. This is an early example of what life will be like if they win."

"Culture is more than cuisine or clothes. It's also customs which may be at odds with British values. We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here."

"I would be congratulating Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think what they did was extraordinary. Israel is showing that it has moral clarity in dealing with its enemies and the enemies of the West as well. [...] Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, and I think that being able to remove the leader of Hezbollah, as they did, will create more peace in the Middle East."

"[On civil servants] There's about 5-10% of them who are very, very bad. You know, should-be-in-prison bad. [...] Leaking official secrets, undermining their ministers … agitating. I had some of it in my department, usually union-led, but most of them actually want to do a good job. And the good ones are very frustrated by the bad ones."

"[About planned changes within her party:] It's not going to happen overnight. I get lots of criticizm of 'You haven't changed anything!' You know, it's been four weeks I think, I have four and a half years to do this, maybe a bit less, but there is a plan. But you have to do things systematically and properly. I'm a systems analyst, I don't rush into things. And I think this is the biggest challenge for people: Having an engineer and a systems analyst in charge rather than a politician or a lawyer who just talks, talks, talks. I'm not somebody who starts with the rethoric."

"One of the reasons I don't like the term 'woke' is because I think it disguises just how bad this stuff is. This is civilization ending philosophy, where really bad ideas are being smuggled in under the guise of civil rights and so on."

"How do you know what an authoritative source is when everyone is trying to make the news rather than report the news? That's the new thing it our age. A lot of media doesn't want to observe and report. It wants to influence. It wants to be on the pitch rather than reporting."

"The middle-class now has changed. It has become a lot more bureaucratic and we are producing more and more people from universities who are going into a bureaucratic job rather than a genuine producing job where you're adding value. And that, I think, is why the growth is reducing at the same time as we're facing increased competition from other countries that are not spending a lot of time on bureaucracy. The EU is the classing of this genre; It's all about pumping out regulation."

"What's decompressing, what’s that? ["Does she break for lunch?"] What's a lunch break? Lunch is for wimps. I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time. There's no time… Sometimes I will get a steak ... I'm not a sandwich person, I don’t think sandwiches are a real food, it's what you have for breakfast. [...] I will not touch bread if it's moist."

"I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba]. That's what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where the Islamism is, those were our ethnic enemies and yet you end up being lumped in with those people."

"Well, take a look at President Trump. He's shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems, but it's the second time around when you really know how to fix them. And it starts by telling the truth."

"[I]n the United Kingdom, my party is starting the largest renewal of policy and ideas in a generation. ... If we get this right, we stand at the dawn of a new conservative century with so much opportunity and possibility. If we throw this opportunity away because of anger or self-doubt or weakness [o]ur country and all of western civilisation will be lost. And that is why we, the next generation of conservatives, must lead the world back from the precipice."

"Parliament needs to be able to decide who comes into the country, for how long, and who needs to leave, and that does include travel bans.>br />On a country-specific basis it's much tougher, it's often more vague. But I think there are scenarios where that is viable. That doesn't mean that I agree with what Donald Trump has done, I haven't actually seen the list of countries that he’s banned people from. I'm much more focused on (...) what’s happening here."

"He is catching arrows rather than stopping the archer."

"[On Robert Jenrick's defection to Reform UK] I realised he wasn't just leaving because he was unhappy, he wanted to burn the Conservative Party to the ground. That is what Reform wants, not to hold Labour to account or transform this country for the better, but to destroy our party. I am never going to let that happen."

"Reform is the party of traitors. You can’t trust them. Nigel Farage is doing my spring cleaning."

"[T]hey are a flash in the pan if I have anything to do with it. We cannot have people running our country who lie and lie and lie so easily, deceive their colleagues and people around them. We need to have honest people and that is what I am doing."

"They can't get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry [...] When I knock on doors I say to people, 'are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many, many - eight out of 10 of the white families - say 'yes'. That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not."

"What has happened in Barking and Dagenham is the most rapid transformation of a community we have ever witnessed. Nowhere else has changed so fast. When I arrived in 1994, it was a predominantly white, working class area. Now, go through the middle of Barking and you could be in Camden or Brixton. That is the key thing that has created the environment the BNP has sought to exploit. ["Mrs Hodge claimed the anger is not down to racism"] It is a fear of change. It is gobsmacking change."

"At this moment of grave danger, we simply cannot allow the party to flounder, become utterly irrelevant to the political debate and disintegrate into a second-rate pressure group. Make no mistake — unless we listen to our voters, our party faces political oblivion."

"I am a secular, immigrant Jew. I have never been active in the Jewish community; my two marriages were to non-Jews. I have visited Israel a number of times and have been a vocal critic of successive Israeli governments on many counts. But I am a Jew. My grandmother and my uncle were murdered by Hitler and many cousins and other relatives were slaughtered in the gas chambers. Indeed, my grandfather was one of six siblings; we are the only surviving line left and that was because my parents were in Egypt when the war broke out. I joined the Labour party to fight racism. In the 1960s the Labour party was the natural home for Jews. To find myself 50 years later, in 2018, confronting antisemitism in my own party is completely and utterly awful."

"Within the Labour Party, we now have a culture which sadly has become embedded, which was allowed to drift from the fringes of the Labour Party into the heart of the party, which enables people to express anti-Semitism. Probably my talking to you this morning will fill my Twitter with abusive tweets which are basically anti-Semitic."

"The terrible truth is that [Mr Corbyn] constantly makes himself the centre of the argument. What we need to root out is anti-Semitism, and for as long as he is one of the individuals who refuses to accept the extent of anti-Semitism in the party, who constantly says that people like me have been politically motivated and are attacking him personally instead of attacking the anti-Semitism that he expressly tolerates, and has allowed to spread right through the party - that's really the problem."

"[T]he government proposes to outsource the registration of companies to the professionals working in this space, like accountants, lawyers and company service providers. While most professionals act with integrity, it is people in these very jobs who have been responsible for creating the web of opaque corporate structures that obscure illicit financial flows. So why does the government refuse to put in place robust systems to regulate, check and discipline the professionals involved so that the few bad apples can be eliminated?"

"It was only because of his actions and his words that I came to the decision in 2018; this man was an antisemite and a racist."

"[After the 2019 general election] Had Corbyn won then, I think things would have been different; I couldn't have stayed in the party."

"[Is Labour never having a female leader "shameful"?] Yes. [...] Oh, it’s horrible. There’s still sexism, which is why you can never take your foot off the accelerator."

"Kishinev. Babi Yar. Munich. The sites of Jewish massacres throughout history. Now there is another place that will for ever be associated with the slaughter of innocent Jews: Kfar Aza. Kibbutz Kfar Aza was home to about 800 people and was established in 1951 by Jewish refugees from Morocco and Egypt (where I was born and from which my family escaped in 1949). Like so many kibbutzim, its founders were idealists, living communally on a model with socialist foundations. Its name – literally meaning "Gaza Village" – reflects its location, just over three miles from the city of Gaza."

"On Saturday, the worst nightmares of the people of Kfar Aza were realised. A barrage of rockets sent men, women and children into their safe rooms. Then hundreds of Hamas terrorists breached the security barrier. A group of them, fully armed, went from house to house in Kfar Aza, searching for Jews to slaughter. People were burned alive in their homes and cars. Babies and young children were killed and mutilated. Others were dragged into Gaza as hostages. These heinous crimes are unspeakable, and yet we must speak them. The world must know what happened to the people of Kfar Aza."

"[T]wo of my granddaughters are of secondary school age, so they go to a single-sex girls secondary school. And because it's single-sex, there's a very large Muslim population there. The school originally put up some sort of display where they had an Israeli flag and a Palestinian flag. Good stuff. But the Muslim girls tore down the Israeli flag and replaced it with another Palestinian flag. So, only two Palestinian flags. The girls came home — they live next door to me — and they said, "We're not going to tell anybody we're Jewish." So then we had a bit of a discussion about that. They went back the next day and the one who is — she's just 12 — some of these Muslim girls came up to her and said: "Are you Jewish?" So she says, "Yes". So they said, "Which side are you on?" Terrible. So she sort of said, "I’m not on either side," and then they started poking her with a Palestinian flag."

"We as a nation should understand that how we treat those who escape from persecution and genocide is central to our reputation as a country that boasts a humanitarian approach to genocide and the Holocaust."

"Told by leading Government politicians that they pose an "existential threat" to the West's way of life, that they are part of a "hurricane" of mass migration, that MPs feel "besieged by asylum seekers", and that asylum seekers are "invading" Britain. We should reflect on what we say and what we do today before we exercise any moral entitlement to condemn the atrocities of the past. The language we use today matters."

"Are you the man from the Socialist Society?"

"It's as if they're saying that Neil without my ideological fanaticism wouldn't have the courage of his convictions. [...] They can't imagine a relationship of partnership. There has to be one person forcing an opinion on the other."

"[On Margaret Thatcher, then the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom] I can only think of one thing she has done for women [...] and that is to prove that being a woman is not an electoral liability."

"[Speaking in Buka, Papua New Guinea after flying from the Solomon Islands] As we were taking off, the militia were at the end of the runway, firing at us."

"I heard a noise, but didn't know it was gunfire."

"This relentless Rwanda obsession, every day, the rows, the demands to be more extreme, to defy human rights law and international responsibilities… it’s such sinister madness. The govt has lost it. Eaten up with their own failure. Becoming ever more fascist in their uselessness."

"Or does the Prime Minister's advice to women simply consist of following her example and finding herself a wealthy husband?"

"What is this National Marriage Week? [...] I don't know why my colleagues are suddenly so fond of the word."

"[Primarolo was married to her second husband] [So] you could say I'm into the institution. When I was a single mother my son happily described our family as me, him, our dog and our cats."

"[On her earlier membership of the Campaign Group of left-wing MPs] I was hell-raising. I'm not saying I haven't made my mistakes but I don't regret anything: it's all been part of my learning curve."

"If I were a politician who said, I've never learnt anything and I don't look around me and see that circumstances change [...] then people would say, this person does not deserve to be a Member of Parliament. How can you be responsive to people and allow your own politics and ideas to develop if you don't take on change."

"We used to go in the chamber and sit next to each other when one of us spoke to support the speaking member, because the catcalls across the chamber were designed, as they always are, to undermine you and put you off."

"[On dealing with sexism from male MPs] One of our colleagues from the northern group had complained about Mo [Mowlam]'s swearing, and he was in the tea room when we got there. So she said: "Oh, it's all right, I won't swear today. But you need to understand the real problems I'm having with my period." I've never seen anybody run faster out of the tea rooms."

"It is [[George Galloway|[George] Galloway]] that is bankrupt of meaning: rape is when a woman does not consent. Because she is, for example, asleep and unconscious. Sexual consent is not football; you can’t buy a season ticket."

"Why do male politicians get this so wrong? Unfortunately, the answer is simple: because they believe what they are saying. Galloway, [[Todd Akin|[Todd] Akin]] and [[Craig Murray|[Craig] Murray]] represent the tip of an iceberg of resentment and base sexism."

"All too often, the media pretends that feminism’s work is done. This week shows us what so many male politicians really think about consent, and sex, and the rights of a woman to withhold it, or attach conditions to it. There is a long way to go."

"I still like to be underestimated because it gives me an edge. It gives me a bit of stealth."

"On things like law and order I am quite hardline. I am like, shoot your terrorists and ask questions second."

"I want you to beat down the door of the criminals and sort them out and antagonise them. That’s what I say to my local police … three o’clock in the morning and antagonise them."

"I guess you could say that, moving from banking, I am one of the few people entering politics to be going to a more popular profession."

"Until this government's formation just over a year ago, every generation of women has enjoyed greater opportunity. My great-grandmother was a cockle picker on the south coast of Wales, my grandmother worked in shoe factories, and my mother is a primary school teacher. But this expectation that women of the next generation will do better than the one before is now fundamentally threatened."

"Unless you take swift action in the wake of a financial crisis the problems stick around for 10 to 20 years."

"The real cause of what is happening now is a terrorist attack. If Britain or any other country was attacked by terrorists, we would believe, and rightly so, that we have every right to defend ourselves, to get back hostages and to protect our citizens. Israel is no different. It has every right to defend itself. [...] Of course, it has to abide by international rules of engagement."

"I want to see a Palestinian state existing alongside a safe and secure Israel and what frustrates me so much is that what Hamas has done over the last few days has set back the cause of peace that I am so desperate to see in the Middle East and that people across Labour are desperate to see in the Middle East. But terrorism is not the way to get there and I am appalled by what we have seen."

"I also know that many of you have concerns closer to home, about the antisemitism, the anti-Zionism and the anti-Israeli feeling that is allowed to flourish in some communities in Britain. And so we stand alongside you here at home as well and will ensure that the police do everything within their powers to hold responsible anybody who behaves in that way here at home. And we stand in solidarity with the Jewish community here in Britain, not just today but every single day."

"“I feel like in many ways, I’m standing on their shoulders… I believe the biggest impact that I can make to the lives of ordinary women, women who go out to work, is to close the gender pay gap once and for all.”"

"“I’m not going to let [critics] stop me from doing what this government’s got a mandate to do, and that is to grow the economy, to make working people better off.”"

"“In too many areas, regulation still acts as a boot on the neck of businesses, choking off the enterprise and innovation that is the lifeblood of growth.”"

"“The global economy has become more uncertain … The increased global uncertainty has had two consequences. First, on our public finances. And second, on the economy.”"

"“These fiscal rules are non-negotiable. They are the embodiment of this government’s unwavering commitment to bring stability to our economy.”"

"“We are renewing Britain. But I know that too many people in too many parts of our country are yet to feel it. This government’s task, my task as Chancellor and the purpose of this spending review is to change that.”"

"“This is going to be the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury that this country has ever seen.”"

"“We have seen global economic uncertainty play out in the last week. But leadership is not about ducking these challenges, it is about rising to them. The economic headwinds that we face are a reminder that we should – indeed, we must – go further and faster in our plan to kick-start economic growth.”"

"“Growth … is now our national mission.”"

"“This government was given a mandate. To restore stability to our country, and to begin a decade of national renewal. … To deliver that investment we must restore economic stability and turn the page on the last 14 years"

"“The government will change its self-imposed debt rules in order to free up billions for infrastructure spending … so that we can grow our economy and bring jobs and growth to Britain.”"

"“The most recent GDP … are very positive … That is good news and does show we are beginning to turn the corner.”"

"“Without growth, we cannot cut hospital waiting lists or put more police on the streets. … Without growth, we cannot meet our climate goals… or give the next generation the opportunities that they need to thrive.”"

"“I’m confident that our plans, far from increasing poverty, will actually result in more people having fulfilling work, paying a decent wage to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.”"

"“Today I am taking immediate action to fix Britain’s economic foundations. … By growing our economy we can rebuild Britain and make every part of the country better off.”"

"“That is why we on this side of the house are serious about taking the action needed to grow our economy. Backing the builders, not the blockers.”"

"The deputy head teacher, Mr Hurst, who was a very fierce character, sent a message to me in class and said he wanted to see me in his office immediately. He said he'd got the list of students who'd signed up for this trip to Oxford [University] and my name wasn't on it, and he expected my name to be on it by the end of the day. The year that I went to Oxford there were six of us that went to Oxford or Cambridge from my state school, which was the best they'd ever achieved."

"Before I was an MP I managed a women's refuge, so I know more than most how important it is that women, especially those who have experienced male violence, sexual violence and trauma, are able to access safe therapeutic spaces, and alongside that, that we make sure that everyone in our society is treated with dignity and respect."

"I speak for the government on this matter, and I can be crystal clear with you that we welcome the ruling."

"I think it is important and welcome that the supreme court have put beyond doubt that providers can make sure that is done on the basis of biological sex [...] I do believe it is important that when women have experienced male violence they are able to heal, that they are able to access the therapeutic support that is required. What they have said consistently, and what campaigners have worked for over many decades, is to ensure that that provision does exist and can be single-sex. And the ruling has made that clear, and made it clear beyond any doubt."

"I believe fundamentally in people's right to self-ID. [...] I think that crimes that are recorded should be recorded as that person wishes, having gone through that process, received support and self-identified. I think trans women are women, I think trans men are men, so I think they should be accommodated in a prison of their choosing."

"No, I don't. I care deeply about safe spaces for women. I know from personal experience there is a generation of women who fought very hard to create and protect safe spaces, that it matters. Where you have women who want to have a genuine debate about how better to protect them, it's a very welcome debate. But that has to start with the recognition that trans men are men, trans women are women and that they exist."

"This is Schindler's List time. These women were in mortal danger. They were running courts on things like domestic violence and child marriage and many of them locked up [the] Taliban. As soon as [the] Taliban came back they had to flee."

"[On the situation for women in Afghanistan after the 2020–2021 U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan] They were not allowed to leave home without a male escort. They were not allowed to go to work. They were not allowed to continue with their education. Their sex became the limitation on what they could do or be. This is true for all women and girls in Afghanistan under the Taliban reign."

"I have still got women sending me the most tragic, terrible text messages and phoning me at all hours, saying "please help me, I am hiding in my basement, I didn't get on your planes in 2021 because my mother was dying, I couldn't leave at the time, but now they are after me.""

"Sometimes they are Afghanis who have worked for us. Sometimes they are Afghanis of a particular minority called the Hazara, who get slaughtered as soon as the Taliban look at them."

"Her fearlessness in the face of grave danger made her one of the few international journalists whom human rights activists and lawyers held in awe."

"We owed her a debt of gratitude for helping the West reach a far better understanding of the emerging landscape in post-Soviet Russia and for shining a clearer light on the true nature of the occupation of Chechnya, a brutal conflict wilfully misprepresented as Russia's private front in the war on terror. No democracy is worthy of the name if freedom of the press is curtailed or writers and journalists are crushed; yet here was a writer who – at great personal risk – defied state intimidation to speak truth to power."

"As this collection of her writings shows, the reach of her journalism extended far beyond coverage of individual cataclysmic events. She frequently lifted the veil on more systematic inhumanity which did not attract as much international interest. Her tenacious investigations involved dogged correspondence and days sitting in court."

"Anna painted a haunting portrait of Putin's Russia, a country governed by an administration which bore many of the hallmarks of Stalin's; here was a land whose own secret services suppressed civil liberties and where fear stalked universities, newsrooms and every corridor in which democracy might have flourished."

"I remember taking leave of her the night of the award [PEN] and asking whether she might not think of leaving Russia, at least temporarily. She held my hand, smiling, and said, 'Exile is not for me. That way they win'."

"Amendments that could have prevented those on the sex offenders register from obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC) and strengthened the law on single sex prison allocation were voted down or withdrawn."

"Violent sex offenders have no place in the women's estate. Women's single-sex spaces for privacy, safety or therapeutic purposes are enshrined in the Equality Act 2010. These important protections will be impossible to uphold when anyone can decide they are a woman and have a GRC to prove their legal status."

"There’s an idea that I wanted to put to you. It’s not my idea but the group that came up with it have said that we should be using it in the campaign. And it’s the idea of a ‘readiness thermometer’. I don’t know if anyone’s seen that idea yet. So, the idea is you can have an actual installation which is a readiness thermometer. We could put it up in Glasgow or in Edinburgh, and it can be outside and it has a dial on it that moves. So when we’ve made all the plans for the currency for instance, or we’ve set up how we’re going to do something to do with defence, or whatever it is, that dial will move and it will inch forward. And the media can look at it, everyone can look at it, and it builds that confidence with the public so that when we get up to the 100 per cent, everybody in Scotland knows we’ve solved all these problems."

"I think it’s welcome, I’m disappointed that unfortunately the Scottish Government has got itself into this mess to begin with, it didn’t have to do that."

"But what I will say, whilst this legislation, which is deeply unpopular with the Scottish public, is blocked for now, what I would like to see is that this legislation is withdrawn and I would like to see the Scottish Government say they will never implement this bill."

"The Minister for Equalities must now report to parliament on what steps will be taken to ensure those at the government-funded Rape Crisis Scotland, who presided over the unlawful introduction of males within their single-sex service, are accountable for their part in this damaging dereliction of duty to service users."

"If you even think for one second, you cannot possibly drive prostitution underground. If you had a lot of women in underground cellars with a locked door, how would the punters get to them?"

"David T. C. Davies [then Conservative MP for Monmouth]: I hear what the hon. Lady is saying. May I bluntly ask her whether she would be happy sharing a changing room with somebody who was born male and had a male body?"

"Layla Moran: I believe that women are women, so if that person was a trans woman, I absolutely would. I just do not see the issue. As for whether they have a beard, which was one of the hon. Gentleman’s earlier comments, I dare say that some women have beards. There are all sorts of reasons why our bodies react differently to hormones. There are many forms of the human body. I see someone in their soul and as a person. I do not really care whether they have a male body."

"[A] woman is a gender, it is a way to self-identify and there are lots of genders. There is male and that is biological. There is female, which is also biological. A woman is a gender identity which is more akin to being a man. Those are the opposites and then there is also non-binary, which is people who don't identify with either."

"Trump has clearly not spoken to a single Palestinian about this plan. Gaza is our land. Palestine is our home. Peace cannot come at the cost of our country. I urge the UK and the whole international community to resist him. Recognise Palestine now, before it's too late."

"All of the evidence tells us that the cause of violence against women and girls is predatory and abusive men, not trans people. We must not conflate the two. There is no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour."

"I would also like to take this opportunity to restate that this support for trans rights does not in any way conflict with our work and commitment to protect women from discrimination and advance women’s rights and equality."

"We took all of the factors in the round, around what the case and what the prospects of the case would be, as well as all the other considerations and the impact indeed on the trans community. So, we’ve made that decision for all of the reasons that we have set out. [...] The point here is that Scotland's democratic institution overwhelmingly supported a piece of legislation that is within devolved competence. And because the UK Government and the secretary of state for Scotland didn't like it, he thought he could ride roughshod over the democratic wishes of this parliament."

"I think I listened to all the arguments when taking forward the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. It was clearly a polarising debate, but fundamentally at the heart of it is making the lives of trans people just that bit better."

"I have never said any of the concerns are not truly held. I met with a number of women’s organisations and heard their concerns, but I don’t think there is any evidence to show trying to make the lives of trans people that bit better was going to impact on women and girls. The safety issues come from predatory men."

"Alas, for our towns and cities. Monstrous carbuncles of concrete have erupted in gentle Georgian Squares."

"As the only woman in the race to be Mayor, I will offer something unique. I have worked as a NHS Health Visitor, led local government and I have brought people together to get things done."

"Past battles and political Punch and Judy shows are not for me. I will build a bridge to the brilliant future we all have- the right leader at the right time doing the right things. That leader is me."

"We have a proud and remarkable history. Home to world class engineering and the hard sweat of workers who built the Industrial Revolution of the past. We have the expertise, passion and talent to be world leaders in the fourth Industrial Revolution of hi-tech, digital and new skilled jobs."

"My campaign is unashamedly forward thinking and ambitious. So, let me tell you what the North of Tyne area will be like after I have been Mayor for five years. We will be the home of more and better jobs. We will be the home of Educational Excellence. We will be the home of thriving businesses. We will be the home of Better local Transport. We will be the home of Ambition."

"I will bring out the best in people , business and communities. I will appoint a Town Centre Tsar with real powers and money to make sure our town centres thrive despite on-line competition."

"I will create a Community Champion for Voluntary and Charity organisations - they bring out the best in us all. Companies and communities need to be partners to address the challengers we face."

"I will have a respected Business Ambassador working with me to promote our area and bring in new business through creating my Enterprise Areas and Business Zones. My plan will offer companies the opportunity to relocate from around the world and the UK, promoting all that is best about our people and place. I will also help our existing businesses thrive"

"Education and skills will improve massively. I will get a deal with government to allow our schools and teachers to offer world class learning. I will develop a North of Tyne curriculum fit for the needs of the future. There will be a link between the classroom and the work place. I will learn from the best to make us even better."

"I will not support congestion charging. Newcastle’s plans will kill off the city. I will demand better investment in transport and I want to bring in a one stop travel Oyster Card -like London, for North of Tyne."

"Brexit concerns business. I will offer support packages, and will lead Britain’s first Brexit Boost Area. Open for business to the world."

"My Tourism Tsar will boost visitors."

"I will bring a new generation of Council Housing. World class homes and local companies to build them. Homes with Ambition."

"Coun Nick Forbes got it right when he said about the Mayoral Election, ”This is no time for a novice”. I agree with Nick."

"This is a fun and educational activity book for teaching our precious children certain key scriptures in the Bible. Although there is no substitute for reading God’s Word daily, this book encourages children and parents to interact together through catchy memory hooks, beautiful illustrations, activity pages, interactive questions, and more. Your children will enjoy this book so much, they won’t even realize they are learning!"

"Perched precariously on the brink of adulthood, it's little wonder that teenagers wobble occasionally. All that love staff to deal with, exam stress and rails over what you can and can't wear. It's a nightmare. Yet the teenage years are also the stuff of dreams. The first kiss romance, your whole future blank canvas on which to paint your destiny. You just have to learn to ride the hormone fuelled rollercoasters with both hands in the air screaming "Whoopeeeee!""

"The daughter of a white witch presents a colorful collection of charms, rituals, and incantations to conjure up the creative power of young would-be witches and addresses an array of teenage interests, from an obsessive first crush to the woes of final exams."

"In 1998, when my first born was 18 months old I exhibited some new work – A Boy’s Eye View. I was exploring notions of scale, reality, emotion, perception and perspective to try to understand how a young child makes sense of the world they find themselves inhabiting. Another 18 months on, Stanley was diagnosed as autistic and those images I’d made suddenly became incredibly poignant. I had been making work about him and his life as an autistic person, without realising it. The concepts that I’d grappled with were very much part of his life."

"I was always struck by the frequent comment ‘he looks fine to me, you’d never know’. It made me realise that the invisibility of autism was going to be the biggest challenge for him to be accepted for who he was, and to be able to live his life happily, without judgement."

"There were an incredible amount of text books about autism, which were really only being read by people already with a vested interest in studying or understanding this little known (at the time), complex condition. I wanted to create something quite different in the awareness, understanding and acceptance of autism. I wanted to create a new visual language, a book that would be able to reach ‘under the skin’ and allow others outside of the autism community, to get a feeling about what it might feel like to be autistic"

"I also wanted to give voice to autistic adults and so I interviewed and included their words of their experiences of being autistic, alongside the images."

"The book (62 images and quotes) sold 1,200 copies and was ordered from every continent in the world"

"There is truth in the tale of the Ugly Duckling. If you are a swan and unrecognised as such, living with a duck family, that thinks you are a duck, expects you to behave like a duck, and at times might coerce you to be more like a duck – you have a problem… You will have poor self-esteem and the need to isolate yourself at the same time that you try not to be isolated. Indeed, if things get bad enough, you will eventually decide that further attempts at communication will only bring on more trouble, so you stop trying to communicate."

"Sometimes the pphysical mannerisms of someone who’s autistic, cause others to perceive us as ‘shifty’ or ‘trouble’. Many people like me find that as adults we can’t buy something in a shop without being followed around by a security guard, which is ironic given that we are typically painstakingly law-abiding."

"Cheese & Onion, Salt & Vinegar, Ready Salted."

"When someone is walking towards me smiling, I have no understanding of whether they are happy, pleased to see me, or laughing at me”."

"I love objects that are shiny, glittery, colourful. Anything that has a strong sensory input. I consider them my friends."

"I have a bond with objects because they give me what I want and I give them a purpose in return. They make me happy”. Paul"

"I am a documentary photographer from London, making images and stories about family, disability/difference and community. I also have a particular interest in making work about the environment and our relationship with the natural world. I have had a number of documentary story commissions for Guardian Weekend magazine amongst others and also had work exhibited in galleries and festivals in the UK and across Europe including the National Museum of Photography and TV, the National Portrait Gallery. Also in Frankfurt, Paris, Bratislava, Landskrona (Sweden) and Lishui (China)."

"I published Understanding Stanley – Looking through Autism in 2014, a highly personal, long term project about my eldest son, reviewed extensively in international press and on Photomonitor and Firecracker. It was widely praised both within and outside the autism community, for bringing a new and up to date understanding about autism to a wider audience. I have recently completed a commission from the Wellcome Collection, extending a 4 year project about autistic women."

"Another long term project A Peculiar Convenience, a tragi-comedic study of our cultural relationship with the natural world, was included in Val Williams’ show New Natural History (1999). I have continued with the work and it was more recently awarded as winner at the Urbanautica International Awards 2020. In 2021 fifteen images from A Peculiar Convenience, were shown in a group show of 13 international artists – un/natural, curated by Format’s Louise Fedotov-Clements and Niamh Treacy at the Lishui Photography Festival in China."

"I remember when I was at college, at some do or another, people were passing round the bottle and I was – like everyone else – swigging out of it. And somebody was saying: ‘Oh no no no, you’re not somebody who should ever be seen swigging out of a bottle.’ It was the same sort of reaction,” she says, with a hint of satisfaction. There is a stubborn streak in Beckett, a dogged refusal to be pigeonholed or cowed, that has underpinned an extraordinary half-century in politics."

"We meet on what neither of us knows will be the eve of the announcement of a snap general election. She decided, years ago, that she would retire at the next election, not because she was slowing down (at 81, she is as sharp as ever), but because Leo was. They always came as a package – he shelved his political ambitions to support hers, even attending her Whitehall meetings as an adviser – and she planned to spend her retirement looking after him, but he died in December 2021. Carrying on alone hasn’t always been easy."

"There’s nobody there when you go home, which is the experience of everybody who is widowed,” she says. “It’s there not being anyone to do the zip up or catch that awkward necklace – and I’m starting to get a bit of rheumatism in my hands."

"My immediate response was that we must make sure that there’s no pressure on him to go – we must protect him, shield him, make sure he’s got through it, because I was confident that he could be got through it and carry on."

"I knew that most of my shadow cabinet colleagues didn’t support me at all, and probably most of the PLP [parliamentary Labour party].” Why not? “I think some of them probably thought I shouldn’t have been deputy anyway, a mere woman"

"I remember one of my north‑east colleagues saying firmly in the tearoom one afternoon that there wasn’t a woman in the parliamentary party who was fit to be in the shadow cabinet"

"I don’t remember minding. I remember thinking it was all a bit sad that those were his views. I probably thought it was a bit unfair – but, you know, life is unfair."

"He said to me: ‘You don’t do intimidation, do you, Margaret?’ And I hadn’t thought about it – haven’t thought about it since, really – but I sort of knew what he meant."

"I was an engineering apprentice when there were 20 of us [women] out of 2,000 – and I was the only woman on my course for a part of it. You would just get used to how bitchy men are."

"Just because you get married doesn’t mean you don’t need to work."

"Every winter that I remember in my childhood, he was gravely ill and seemed to be nearly dying."

"I was positive that the Labour party had much too much sense to elect him"

"I thought that he ought to be able to see that he wasn’t suitable, he wasn’t up to the job. He wasn’t rude, but it had no effect."

"you had a discussion in shadow cabinet, John would always genuinely want to hear everybody’s point of view. Tony and Gordon not so much, especially if someone was long-winded and not pertinent"

"I always resented the people who wrote in and said to new, young women MPs: ‘You ought to be campaigning on X or Y because that’s what a woman politician should do"

"must be my greatest achievement, because so many people who had nothing to do with it tell me it was their greatest achievement"

"He said: ‘There’s a simple rule of thumb: if you can’t stop the story, especially if it’s untrue, then the chances are that there’s somebody on your side briefing it.’ And I pretty soon discovered that there was – one of my most admired colleagues"

"I think probably we could have done more to help people to understand what was happening, and why, and that that would have laid a bit of foundation. Whereas support for what was being done was being taken for granted"

"What people overlook is the impact – not in the sense of: ‘You’ve rejected what we said, how dare you?’ but having to join the euro, having to be in Schengen, not having all the concessions that we had won through successive governments."

"I never expected that I would ever in my life think: ‘I wonder if there’s somewhere better to live.’ I have thought it once or twice in the last couple of years, which to me is extraordinary."

"It’s this having your own facts. I’ve always believed in evidence-based policymaking, but if the evidence isn’t acceptable no matter how strong it is, that’s uncharted waters. Quite frightening waters."

"But I’m under no illusions whatsoever that there will be a big screaming queue outside Keir’s door if we win."

"Superficially, he is a black man. He went to Eton, I think; he went to a very expensive prep school, all the way through, the top schools in the country. If you hear him on the Today programme, you wouldn't know he is black."

"Horrific details of systematic child abuse in Oxford. Resonance w cases in Rochdale, Rotherham & elsewhere. Issues need wider inquiry now."

"I don't think that anyone is suggesting that the fact that he has carved them in stone means that, you know, he's absolutely, you know, not going break them or anything like that."

"Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Yeah, OK, let's get that dog whistle out."

"Life is not fair. Once you're OK with that, you can move on."

"I'm a faithful woman; I do a lot of praying. Everything happens for a reason."

"To see the things my son has to deal with in his life, it isn't something I would want anyone to have to deal with, but he handles it with a lot of strength and always stays positive. He's gone through a lot, and what he's been through, so have we."

"My goals were to expand my commitment to public service, continue to be a role model for girls and young women, and increase the access and opportunities for every citizen to live their best lives."

"I believed then, as I do now, that public service is a calling rooted in service to one another."

"Leadership understands that true success requires a strong team, where every member contributes their portion."

"Family is so important. We don’t pick and choose who our parents happen to be, but I was very fortunate, and my siblings were quite fortunate, to be able to be in a household where faith was important, that we understood values. You wanted to be a person of integrity. You realized how important your name happens to be."

"I was not looking to be an elected official. That was never a goal of a career, but I always knew that I had leadership skills, and I always wanted to help people."

"I am very excited that I am now the longest-serving woman on City Council. I think that’s an accomplishment in itself, and hopefully girls will be able to see that they could be an elected official."

"If you’re going to change the trajectory of a Black girl’s life in our community, then we need to understand what is the current quality of life of our girls."

"So I did what most people never do at a really senior level, was I just thought you know what, it's time to take some time off"

"I was really focused on making sure we could have as many family-friendly policies as we could, because I had the experience of being a mum, having to come back [to work] and knowing how it made some of the new mums feel,”"

"Employers should consider giving furlough to parents – normally women – who are on the brink of burn out. People are telling me they are on the brink of quitting and if we aren’t careful when all of this is over it will be like the 1950s in terms of women’s careers”."

"My view was if we do that we will encourage more women to come back and more women to be more senior, and stay with us through their career, and it worked"

"If you haven’t got a job that is flexible in terms of the hours you can do through the day, or a company that isn’t flexible, then some women won’t be able to work during this three month period [of lockdown].”"

"You get to a stage where you say 'I've done my piece. I've grown quite a lot of shareholder value, I've done enough. And actually it needs to be a little bit more about me now.'”"