I was very aware of office politics because I was so baffled by them. So much so goes unsaid. No one says 'you're a cheeky so-and-so ' no one says 'you're so moody ' nobody ever confronts anyone else about anything. But I'm very crass and I'm very confrontational and I have a temper. I had to be hyper-vigilant in every office I worked in.

Every week I read about myself in a magazine about something that I haven't done or some place that I've never been or don't even know. It's just gossip rumors egos and politics.

The challenge in working in politics particularly if you're working for a political party is that everyone's a messenger.

What's going on in the Senate is kind of a politics of escalation. We're getting sort of like the Mideast: pay back everybody when you're in charge.

The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly if that's the best job you can get in terms of money that's too bad you know. Because frankly it's not well paid everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.

Does politics have to be injected into everything?

London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble we had severe energy problems we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.

That is why everyone in politics and we do it must make sure that they do not depend on one single interest group. A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.

Local politics like everything else are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.

Regardless of Bill Clinton's politics or personal life he grew up in obscurity and was elected to the presidency - twice. Don't take that away from him because then you take it away from every other kid in America sitting out there in a school bus with a big dream.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power unrestricted and unregulated armaments international anarchy and preparation for war.

Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.

Clinton and Obama practice this politics known quaintly as the Richard Speck strategy: if you cannot take on everyone in the room at once take them out of the room one at a time.

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics it is everything.

One of the big changes in politics has been because families individuals have felt worried insecure... worried about the economy worried about their jobs worried about their kids' futures... actually the disconnect between the public and media discourse and people's everyday concerns has become bigger not smaller.

You realize that for all the shenanigans that go on in the big circus of politics everybody wakes up and goes to work.

Skip the religion and politics head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate consultant pundit and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.

Everyone wants to demagogue everyone else. That may be good politics but it's awful policy.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed in the face of every constitutional convention only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent scurrilous wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

The message that I gave on the - on the steps today was that you need to stand for those things that are right and empower the individual. Believe in the power of one person. Don't believe that you can't do it. Everybody wants - everybody wants a shot. That we can all agree on. Beyond that it becomes politics. I'm not talking politics.

Everything is politics.