When I appointed the Minister of the Environment to major cabinet status, the Planning and Priorities committee, the signals that that sent through Ottawa were major, because that's what the bureaucracy understands.

If your only objective is to be popular, you're going to be popular but you will be known as the Prime Minister who achieved nothing.

You have to spend your political capital on great causes for your country.

So that was Reagan's political problem. As a rancher in California, he was an environmentalist himself. But the President of the United States doesn't control everything that happens in Washington.

In sport, you only see the fighter, but it's teamwork. Without a good team, you will never be the best. In boxing, you have to work with the best coach, the best lawyer, the best manager, the best doctor. Exactly the same principle applies in politics.

Our supporters just want a Labour government. They want a Labour government that does what Labour governments are expected to do. They expect a Labour government to provide them, their families and their communities with the support and security they need, especially in difficult times.

There never was a democracy yet where the people didn't vote themselves into oblivion.

Politicians are terrified of losing touch with folks back home but content to be clueless about government's failure to fix real problems.