“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.”

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 am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.

Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power.

We should celebrate immigrants and everything they do for our country.

My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.

Under my leadership the Conservative Party will come back together in the interests of the whole country.

I am the only candidate capable of delivering these three things as prime minister, and tonight it is clear that I am also the only one capable of drawing support from the whole of the Conservative party.

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

The meat in the sausage has got to be Conservative.

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can’t turn the clock back to 1904, what’s the point of being a Conservative?

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.