"Thank you for the hard work, faith and courage that means I stand before you as the first leader in the Labour party's history to win three full consecutive terms in office."

"Next month we will publish proposals radically to reform the [incapacity]benefit for the future and help people who can work back into the workforce, where they belong."
"Every time I've ever introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I had gone further."
That is why the NHS reforms, to break down the old monolith, bring in new providers, allow patients choice, must continue.

"But we haven't decisively altered the balance of advantage away from background to merit. The wealth of your parents is still the biggest decider of your future."

"For eight years I have battered the criminal justice system to get it to change."
"And I now understand why: the system itself is the problem. "
"The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted."
"It means a complete change of thinking. "
"First, a radical extension of summary powers to police and local authorities to take on the wrongdoers."

"Britain should also remain the strongest ally of the United States."
"This is a global struggle. Today it is at its fiercest in Iraq."
"Yes, several hundred people stoned British troops in Basra. Yes, several thousand run the terrorist insurgency around Baghdad. And yes, as a result of the fighting, innocent people tragically die."

"Political parties love to tie themselves up in doctrine. They develop comfort zones. Policy becomes ideology, sometimes theology. To challenge it is heresy; to agree it is a sign you belong."
"One thing I've learnt, and I learnt it from Neil Kinnock and it is now so ingrained it's like a strip of granite running through my being. It's about leadership."
"Government is not a state of office but a state of mind."
"Some day, some party will make this country at ease with globalisation. Let it be this one."

Roy Hattersley
Monday September 5, 2005
The Guardian

The admission of error is never easy - even for someone of a naturally humble disposition. But, having misjudged Tony Blair for years and repeated my misjudgment time after time in this column, honour requires me to confess that I was mistaken about an important aspect of his character. While others accused him of mouthing whatever prejudices reports from focus groups made politically appealing, I argued that he always said what he honestly believed. I was wrong.

Last Friday, after a contrived photo opportunity at the Beechwood Family Centre in Watford - regulation mug of tea in hand - he described one of his aspirations for a better Britain. It was a "historic shift from a criminal justice system which asks: 'how do we protect the accused from the transgressions of the state and police?' to one whose first question is 'How do we protect the majority from the dangerous and irresponsible minority?'"

Could any grown man - with even a smattering of understanding about the real world - genuinely imagine that the criminal justice system is based on the principle that its primary purpose is the protection of suspected criminals against the law? Does the prime minister really believe that an obligation to hamstring the police was the imperative that motivated MPs as they passed successive bills in the last parliament? Was it the hope that guided David Blunkett when he was home secretary? Is it the principle that judges observe when they administer the law, and the aim of every voluntary justice of the peace who sacrifices valuable leisure time in order to sit on the local bench?