secretaries-of-state-for-northern-ireland

"Politicians have a responsibility to give effect to the result of the last referendum"

"The bill has wide cross-party support and is backed by members who have very different views on how the matter of Brexit should be concluded. What unites us is a conviction that there is no mandate for no deal and the consequences for the economy and the country would be highly damaging."

"No serious challenge on the Left exists to Third Way thinking anywhere in the world. This is hardly surprising as globalisation punishes hard any country that tries to run its economy by ignoring the realities of the market or prudent public finances. In this strictly narrow sense, and in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all "Thatcherite" now."

"Apart from the fact that I am not actually Jewish, I wear my father's parentage with pride."

"In 2004 when as a Labour government, we were not only welcoming people to come into this country to work, we were sending out search parties for people and encouraging them, in some cases, to take up work in this country."

"[On Jeremy Corbyn's then Labour leadership] I work every single day, in some small way, to try to move forward the end of his tenure in office. I work every day — an email, a phone call, a meeting with Labour MPs. I try and galvanise them. Every day I do something to rescue the Labour Party from his leadership."

"The [Labour] party has lost its efficacy for many in these places [...] We are in an era of much weaker party loyalty and affiliation than ever before. They [voters] are casting around for a different sort of politics, less hidebound by tradition, old emblems, sentimentality, and for a more transactional, efficacious approach ... They are not so much left behind; it's Labour that is being left behind."

"We look out of date, with too little to say about the contemporary world [...] The truth is we talk endlessly about the 'same old Tories', what the voters are talking about is the 'same old Labour'. We've got to wake up to that. For many voters, there is a simple question: what is the point of voting Labour?"

"I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell [...] I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women. [...] I’m not going to go into this. It's an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?"

"Before this campaign started, it was said that I was facing political oblivion, my career in tatters, apparently never to be part of political life again. Well they underestimated Hartlepool and they underestimated me, because I am a fighter and not a quitter!My political opponents can have their pound of flesh, and they do, but they will not eat into of my beliefs, what I stand for and have done in politics. That is the inner steel in me."

"Britain’s interests and those of other liberal democracies lie in how we harness the power of the US to continue safeguarding the principles – if not always the letter – of the UN Charter. This will mean accepting that Trump’s decisive approach when faced with real-world situations is preferable to the hand-wringing and analysis paralysis that has characterised some previous US administrations or, indeed, the deadlock and prevarication that so often characterise the UN and the EU respectively."

"[On his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein] Possibly some people will think because I am a gay man... I wasn't attuned to what was going on. I don't really accept that. I think the issue is that because I was a gay man in his circle I was kept separate from what he was doing in the sexual side of his life. The only people that were there were the housekeepers, never were there any young women or girls, or people that he was preying on or engaging with in that sort of ghastly predatory way that we subsequently found out he was doing."

"The Lord Mandelson, denied the opportunity to become Foreign Secretary by the sad combination of a Prime Minister too weak to remove his Foreign Secretary and, equally, a Foreign Secretary too weak to challenge the Prime Minister, has gone around instead collecting titles and even whole Departments to add to his name. His title now adds up to, "The right hon. the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, First Secretary of State, Lord President of the Privy Council and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills". It would be no surprise to wake up in the morning and find that he had become an archbishop! That is exactly what happened with Cardinal Wolsey."

"If Peter Mandelson has an historical parallel, it is Robespierre, the architect of the Terror. Without his zeal and cool passion for the right of the French people, the ancien regime would almost certainly have reasserted itself in some way. His defence of the ideals of the revolution was absolute and unmoving. It won him no friends, and eventually swallowed him. It would be a tragedy for Labour if it were to do the same to the architect of its own revolution."

"I've only just arrived but already I can feel there’s real buzz around Washington right now [...] You can sense that there's a new leader. He's a true one-off, a pioneer in business, in politics. Many people love him. Others love to hate him. But to us, he's just ... Peter."

"Starmer may have thought he was playing chess. Turns out it was Russian roulette."

"As you will have seen my position as Ambassador to the United States has come to an end. Being Ambassador here has been the privilege of my life, and Reinaldo's. I could not have wished for a better welcome by you all, a better introduction to the job or better support while here. Your professionalism has been superb, more so than I have experienced in any public role. For this I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The circumstances surrounding the announcement today are ones which I deeply regret. I continue to feel utterly awful about my association with Epstein twenty years ago and the plight of his victims. I have no alternative to accepting the Prime Minister's decision and will leave a position in which I have been so incredibly honoured to serve."

"Bashar [al-Assad] is an intelligent and cultured individual who, having lived and studied in London, wanted to show off his perfect English (unfortunately I did not meet his English wife); but also because, like so many leaders of his type and generation, he is looking for a fresh paradigm for his country that will rescue it from economic backwardness without plunging it into political chaos. Hu Jintao, visiting London this week from China, could tell an identical story."