“We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.”

In the end we are all sacked and it’s always awful. It is as inevitable as death following life. If you are elevated there comes a day when you are demoted. Even Prime Ministers.

There’s nothing so improves the mood of the Party as the imminent execution of a senior colleague.

The more you know about a species, the more you understand about how better to help protect them.

There are no true friends in politics.

Give a civil servant a good case and he’ll wreck it with clichés, bad punctuation, double negatives, and convoluted apology.

The only solution is to kill 600 people in one night. Let the UN and Bill Clinton and everyone else make a scene – and it is over for 20 years.