Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street the battlers by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.

The sight of allegedly sophisticated politicians parroting complete tripe trivialises and demeans government and it has to be stopped. It's played a significant part in public disillusionment with politics and has led to the absurd situation where more people vote for 'Strictly Come Dancing' than voted in the general election.

The Labour party has done more than any other to address gender inequalities through legislation and other means and to increase women's representation in politics which has led to recent increases in the number of female politicians.

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems.

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.

You know the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that's healthy and indeed even creative. But it's where - it's really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

What politicians want to create is irreversible change because when you leave office someone changes it back again.