Politicians From England

"We just didn't understand that they [the Islamists] were not just anti-Western but on a different plane altogether and this is still not widely understood in the UK... We can be as nice as pie to them but that's not the issue. They are on a mission that has taken them outside anything we can say, a mission to destroy completely our way of life... Because they think it's 'just a few extremists,' they are continuing to track the threat of big spectacular attacks, looking for example at transfers of materials for bombs, whereas what they should be looking at is what's going on inside people's heads."

"What we've seen today is a deliberate act of levelling down. I don't believe we can proceed through this pandemic by grinding people down. We need to carry them with us, not crush their spirit."

"[on seeking permission to stand as an MP in 2026] It brings with it a poison we should not let enter our city-region. I see this by-election as the frontline of that fight for the Manchester Way and feel I owe it to a city which has given me so much to lead it from the front, despite the risks involved. With your permission to stand, I would run a hopeful and unifying campaign with broad appeal to voters, focusing on the positivity around what we have achieved, whilst at the same time being honest about the alienation people feel from politics."

"First, a police force which has consistently put protecting itself above protecting people harmed by Hillsborough. Second, collusion between that force and complicit print media. Third, a flawed judicial system that gives the upper hand to those in authority over and above ordinary people. Shamefully, the cover-up continued in this Warrington courtroom. Millions of pounds of public money were spent re-telling discredited lies."

"Yesterday Andy Burnham sought such permission from the NEC to stand in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election, which would have led to a mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester.The NEC has decided not to grant Andy Burnham permission to stand. The NEC believes that causing an unnecessary election for the position of Greater Manchester mayor would have a substantial and disproportionate impact on party campaign resources before the local elections and elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd in MayAlthough the party would be confident of retaining the mayoralty, the NEC could not put Labour’s control of Greater Manchester at any riskAndy Burnham is doing a great job as mayor of Greater Manchester. We believe it is in the best interests of the party to avoid an unnecessary mayoral election."

"The Dominion of the Sea, as it is an ancient and undoubted right of the Crown of England, so it is the best security of the Land; for it is Impregnable, so long as the Sea is well-guarded: therefore out of all question, it is a thing of absolute necessity, that the guard of the Sea be exactly looked unto; and those Subjects, whose minds are most fixed upon the Honour of the King and Country, will with no patience endure to think of it; that this Dominion of the Sea, which is so great an Honour, should be either lost or diminished: besides, for safeties fake, the Dominion of the Sea is to be kept, and the Sea guarded. The Wooden-Walls are the best Walls of this Kingdom; and if the Riches and Wealth of the Kingdom be respected, for that cause the Dominion of the Sea ought to be respected; for else what would become of our Wool, Lead and the like, the prices whereof would fall to nothing if others should be Masters of the Sea."

"Soon the men of the column began to see that though the scarlet line was slender, it was very rigid and exact."

"The spruce beauty of the slender red line."

"All fiefs were originally masculine, and women were excluded from the succession of them because they cannot keep secrets."

"Of all the torments, all the cares, With which our lives are curst; Of all the plagues a lover bears, Sure rivals are the worst! By partners in each other kind Afflictions easier grow; In love alone we hate to find Companions of our woe."

"But, mad with his love, To a precipice goes, Where a leap from above Would soon finish his woes."

"And sadly reflecting, That a lover forsaken A new love may get, But a neck when once broken Can never be set."

"How great soe’er your rigours are, With them alone I’ll cope; I can endure my own despair, But not another’s hope."

"But, bold, unconcerned At thoughts of the pain, He calmly returned To his cottage again."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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"

"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 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."

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

"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"

"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."

"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"

"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."

"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."

"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"

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."