And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.

I was elected to the Diet in the same way as at every parliamentary election.

I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn't believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism.

Even before he came to power in 1997 Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting.

People feel that the EU is a one-way process a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change.

We as conservative intellectuals should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

I'm not sure I make old bones in parliament. It's an amazing experience to have had but I can't see myself being Mother of the House.

I stood for parliament with the amazing support and help of my ex-husband but it's not something that was handed to me like a peerage. I worked hard and was elected. So my achievements such as they are are my own.

However democracy cannot be defined as the existence of parliaments and elections alone.