critics-of-the-european-union

"[On then education secretary Michael Gove] They could see he was willing to take a lot of flak. He wants to do what he can for schools in five years. If that means being carted off in a bodybag at the end, so be it. They now work with him to screw other people in Whitehall. So if [[Nick Clegg|[Nick] Clegg]] comes along with another mad idea, our officials work with Michael to scupper it."

"[On arriving at the Department for Education in 2011] Documents were stolen from desks and leaked to papers, there were determined efforts to drive us out. It was beyond parody. Dysfunction was not the word, bedlam was the word."

"If you’ve got Covid and you kill the queen, you’re finished."

"[Cummings lived in Russia from December 1994 until late 1996] Different places and different times in history are the epicentre of mad energy and in 1994 the epicentre of mad energy in the world was Moscow."

"[Referring to school half-term in February 2020] Your fundamental point is obviously correct, that there was indeed a massive crisis. It was indeed pretty insane that so many of the senior people were away on holiday at that time. It's also important to realise that it's not like the civil contingencies secretariat or the national security council, or any of the organisations in charge of this were beating the drum and saying, "We’ve got to get the PM back, this is a massive crisis" — in fact quite the opposite."

"To begin with, it was a disaster every half hour, then every day, by the time I left it was once a fortnight. All the basic things didn't work — every financial model would be wrong, every bit of legal advice, every set of figures. The system had gone toxic. People had to go, a lot of changes had to be made. [...] It would work a lot better if you got rid of even more. There should be between 500 and 1,000 people, but we still have 4,000-5,000."

"Career psychopath"

"[On Boris Johnson] Nobody could find a way around the problem of the prime minister, just like a shopping trolley, smashing from one side of the aisle to the other."

"The poor buggers are caught between structural dysfunction and politicians running around who don't really know what they're doing all day or what the purpose of their being in power is. Everyone thinks there's some moment, like in a James Bond movie, where you open the door and that's where the really good people are, but there is no door."

"Well, I think there is a very profound question about the nature of our political system that means that we got at the last election a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. I think any system that ends up giving a choice between two people like that as the people to lead is obviously a system that has gone extremely, extremely badly wrong. There are so many thousands and thousands of wonderful people in this country who could provide better leadership than either of those two, and there is obviously something terribly wrong with the political parties if that is the best that they can do."

"[On then deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara] I will personally handcuff her and escort her from the building. I don't care how it is done but that woman must be out of our hair. We cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c***”."

"It is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position, in my personal opinion. I am not smart. I have not built great things in the world."

"Ian Hislop: He literally is an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter. Paul Merton: When you say he's an arsonist, is that word not slightly too long?"

"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"

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

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

"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."

"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"

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

"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."

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

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

"[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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"Catastrophe is foolish and reckless word to use. No politician should use it. It's one thing for the Labour Party to say, it's quite another for Conservatives to say it. Catastrophe is a word which should be reserved for genuine massive loss of life, and for people to call leaving without a withdrawal agreement a catastrophe is an act of reckless harm to the United Kingdom."

"No deal is what we've legislated for, you know, in international and domestic law we leave the European Union on the 29th of March with or without an agreement, and it would be a really catastrophic negotiating error to take no deal off the table."

"Boris is doing very well against the marsupials. [Tweet during the hearing]"

"I think you're being very rude to marsupials ... I think it makes kangaroo courts look respectable [On The World at One (BBC Radio 4)]"

"[T]he privileges committee is not even a proper legal set up. It has a gossamer of constitutional propriety thrown over it, but it is in fact a political committee against Boris Johnson."

"And instead of this endless carping, saying it's difficult to get them, we should actually celebrate this phenomenal success of the British nation in getting up to a quarter of a million tests of a disease that nobody knew about until earlier in the year."

"The key is that we have our fish back: they are now British fish, and they are better and happier fish for it."

"Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them – as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections. We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well."