The worship of youth has diminished - perhaps generally - in recent years.

We need a new British business bank with a clean balance sheet and an ability to expand lending rapidly to the manufacturers, exporters and high-growth companies that power our economy. Today I can announce we will have one.

I made friends with a boy who was a communist when I was 13 and that broadened my political views, but it also brought me into conflict with my father who was very Right-wing.

My job is to support businesses, that means promoting British commerce in the big emerging markets that have been neglected in the past. It means keeping Britain open to inward investors, trade and skilled workers. It means cutting red tape which is suffocating growing companies which create jobs.

Seattle is still more Caucasian than most medium-sized cities. The sort of psychosexual politics of white fandom in context of black athletes who are also both very rich and slightly angry is just, to me, bottomlessly fascinating.

Even the government understands that the environmental challenge is so big that no single agency can handle it. It needs collaboration among all the stakeholders - companies, governments, NGOs and the public. Public accountability will be the ultimate driving force.

I'm very apolitical. I mean, after having covered politicians so much all my life, I basically have no belief in politics. But it's more of an attitude and a discipline in the way you approach life, I think, than it is just what lever you pull in a voting booth.

I enjoy getting things done. My philosophy is the edge, the edge of something. There's where we have to go in local government, in not only the philosophy but the creativity in people around you. They have to go to the edge.