Quotes About Politics

Being an MP is quite a strange job, because you do it in two different places. Half the time I'm in Westminster and the other half I'm in my constituency and the job is different in both of them.

I'm not sure when exactly it started to become the fashion in Westminster to skim-read documents, only bother with bullet points or, worse, to take them entirely on trust - but that, perhaps, was when we began as a country to lose our way.

One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people's hands.

I can cope with politicians now I've had about 40,000 cockroaches tipped over my head. Westminster's going to be no problem.

Mice are everywhere at Westminster but many MPs, including me, did not report them because we were afraid of their possible fate.

New ideas rarely come from the moderate parties in The Hague or Washington, in Brussels or Westminster. The world's political centres are not the breeding ground for true change, but rather where it comes home to roost.

The creation of regional mayors has done little to reduce the sense that all power is concentrated in Westminster, and all investment in London.

Brexit has changed everything in British politics - it has blown open a cosy, zombie-like closed world of Westminster parliamentary politics. It has broken open the traditional line between left and right, which was already an exhausted tradition.

Westminster is gripped by a fanatical race towards a cliff-edge Brexit and nobody is stopping to think about the impact it would have on the everyday lives of the people we serve as politicians.

I think that political coverage generally comes in on a level that means if you live and breathe Westminster detail and diary, then you get it.

Westminster's hardly a billboard for people-centred politics. Given its makeup, the term 'Commons' is pretty ironic, too.

No more top-down politics with Westminster dictating what's right for every community. We must all be partners in designing a better future for our country.

Westminster has let the whole country down for many years.

When you look at Westminster you think of it as pale, male and stale and I hate that so much.

Working within newspapers, so many of them are so used to the status quo, they're so invested in lobby journalism, and assuming that all politics happens in Westminster... but doing social affairs, I spend a lot of time out of London speaking to people who have been hit by cuts, or disabled, or who have been made unemployed.

Way back in October 2007, I had urged thousands of Australians to vote for Kevin Rudd and Peter Garrett's Labor Party. Why? Because they promised to get tough on illegal Japanese whaling.

What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible?

'2016' is based on an experiment: what if you let Obama do it himself? That experiment is necessarily limited because I'm not factoring in a Republican House, a Supreme Court or the tug of public opinion.

What if democracy does not serve liberty? This question is seldom asked in the West, where democracy is often seen as synonymous with liberalism.

If Clinton is elected or if Trump is going to get elected, I think the polarization in Congress will be greater than ever. Nothing is going to get done. It is going to be so ugly, so partisan, so back-biting. Well what if you elect a couple of Libertarians?

Rising leftists openly call for open borders and seek to erase the distinction between citizens and non-citizens. I tell you what, if you erase our borders, you erase our country.

Politics is partially about what you fear more than what you love, so there are plenty of things about liberalism all by itself that make me tempted to support Trump.

I was in the classroom four days after the inauguration, because I said to Joe when we got elected, 'Joe, I really want to continue to teach.' And he said, 'Absolutely. You should be doing what you love.' Politics - that's Joe's life, really, his love. But teaching is mine.

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.