“When Cameron’s Conservatives come to power it will be a golden age for cyclists and an Elysium of cycle lanes, bike racks, and sharia law for bike thieves. And I hope that cycling in London will become almost Chinese in its ubiquity.”

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.

It hasn’t taken them long, they began by telling us they would have a positive and patriotic case and they’re back to project fear within minutes. There they go again they have nothing positive to say.

The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition.

My ideal world is, we’re there, we’re in the EU, trying to make it better.

But if people want to swim in the Thames, if they want to take their lives into their own hands, then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors.

Volunteering is also now more crucial than ever in helping people find work.

I’m no communist. I’m a tax cutting Conservative. But I want a capitalism that is fairer to forgotten people.

I cant remember what my line on drugs is. Whats my line on drugs?

If gay marriage was OK … then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog.

Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books.

Churchill knew instinctively what was wrong with communism – that it repressed liberty; that it replaced individual discretion with state control; that it entailed the curtailment of democracy, and therefore that it was tyrannous.

The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.

I want you to know that I have nothing against Orlando, though you are, of course, far more likely to get shot or robbed there than in London.

I love swimming in rivers, and well remember once jumping in at Chiswick.

We need to look at our nannying, mollycoddled, politically correct culture in my view, which stops kids from going out and playing competitive sport. I also think we need to look at the shear fatness of the regulations which control people who want to help kids play sport.

The meat in the sausage has got to be Conservative.

I don’t really like labels in politics, but I will gladly accept the label of conservatism.

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

I want to see popular free-market Conservatism where barriers are broken down, people have got more opportunities but keep more of their own money.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

Conservatism has always been about reforming government and solving problems, and that’s why the conservative movement should lead on immigration reform.

Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up, to give them the tools at their disposable that make it possible for them to access all the hope, all the promise, all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that.

I live a pretty conservative life, so I probably really haven’t done anything crazy.

In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’