“Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under.”

I think the risks that people see of terrorism are incredibly important but we are very confident we have got the right people on it and the risks have been minimised.

I don’t believe that economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity.

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.

Our friends in America will be at the front of the queue for trade deals.

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?

If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.

Some people think that it [Brexit] is the end of the world. It’s not. On the contrary, it’s a massive opportunity for this country.

All the people I talk to, increasingly, can see that the emperor has got no clothes. The case for leaving [the EU] is now overwhelming.

I would ban sweets from school – but this pressure to bring in healthy food is too much.

We celebrate the contribution of people who have come to this country to make it better.

It is easy to make promises – it is hard work to keep them.

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.

My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.

It was the kind of blind, gulping, insensate greed that you associate with some milk-eyed creature in a volcanic fissure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench-an organism with no understanding of the existence, let alone the feelings, of other members of the ecosystem.

This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt. But it is a moment for hope.