No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary - not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn't want to be prime minister you have to give yourself 100 percent.

My teacher my great cello teacher Leonard Rose was such a great cellist and nurturing man very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him but obviously Casals Rostrotovich Jacqueline du Pre and many others including many of my peers and contemporaries.

I remember a moment when the Prince went back to his old school Grammar School in Melbourne and slightly to his horror his old music teacher produced a cello.

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control and then says I'm not sorry and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

When I started learning the cello I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.

In the long term Germany didn't need a finance minister who was absent during important negotiations in the European Council. But the chancellor strongly encouraged me to stay. And everything did work out for the best in the end.

I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting then I realised it was me.

Actually music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello which is a different experience you're flexing a different muscle but it's beautiful because it is music.

The foundations of a strong economy don't rest alone on the decisions of Chancellors or the spending programmes of government.