Quotes from Andrew Adonis, Baron Adonis

It is a vital British and European interest to demonstrate to Putin that Trump is on our side, not his.

Labour should have fought with every sinew in 2010 to retain power. To give up power voluntarily because you are tired of government and it is all too difficult is a betrayal of the people you serve.

Yes, I have found many people who voted for Brexit and believe it will answer their problems. But they mostly realise that Europe isn't the problem, however much the E.U. could be improved.

The people should make the final decision on Brexit when they see the government's Brexit deal.

Brexit has always been an impossible project, except at the price of massive self-harm.

It is clear to me that when London has expanded successfully in the past, there has always been a plan.

Global warming - utterly disinterested in our political paralysis - worsens at a terrifying pace.

I was warned by the private sector that we would fail and would fail badly. 'The state can't run a railway,' I was told. Well, they were wrong.

When a small number of companies control both the generation and the supply of energy, it's difficult for new players to enter the market.

By neglecting education, the 1974 Labour government failed as surely as on the picket lines of Grunwick.

It is important to understand that the WTO, like the United Nations, is a weak international agency which depends upon financing and support from its largest members.

Nothing is clear cut in the debate surrounding high-speed rail, but from its successes elsewhere we can be confident that it pays a great dividend to the society it serves.

We have moral duties to the dispossessed - and should be taking our fair share of Syrian refugees, particularly parentless children.

Systematic social and environmental deregulation, and the economics of austerity while enriching the rich, will be the markers of Farage/Tory politics after Brexit. Singapore-on-Sea for the rich; degradation for the rest.

England is so dominant within the U.K. that separate English and U.K. parliaments and governments are a recipe for weakness and instability.

In the end, pragmatism requires a workable compromise. But none exists on Brexit.

Academies place a high premium on local community engagement.

Brexit is a cliff, not a gradient. The mistake we are in danger of making is to believe that some Brexits are better than others when the fundamental problem is Brexit itself.

There are issues that shape every generation and define every age. Climate change is just such an issue and our political generation has got to deal with it.

Our European neighbours in France have invested in their infrastructure early and are now reaping the rewards later. This is because wherever high-speed rail has been built between the major cities and economic centres of a country - as in HS2 - it has exceeded demand forecasts.

Having achieved something so special as peace, it is criminal to throw it away on a whim.

For decades, British governments - including the Blair-Brown government in which I was an education minister - have done a good job of enhancing higher education but paid too little attention to apprenticeships and technical education.

Lots of my contemporaries have had to come to terms with who they are and realise all those deeply held assumptions we had when we were teenagers and in our 20s no longer apply.

Opening up closed markets to competition and protecting consumers from monopoly-style profits is the essence of pro-business politics on the modernising right as much as the left.