You’ve got to ensure that the holders of an opinion, however unpopular, are allowed to put across their points of view.
My dreams of taking the West End by storm as a dancer flickered but then faded; my father’s ambition to see me in a steady office job was tried and abandoned. But I had won a national speaking award, had stood for election to the local council, had begun to travel and took a job working for the Labour Party.
It’s like miners’ coal dust underneath your fingernails. Very difficult to scrub out. I’m a social democrat to my fingertips.
If Labour ends up on the scrapheap of history, it will do so because of its own foolishness and self-inflicted wounds. What party in its right mind would allow a combination of far-left enemies, militant trade unions and first-time supporters to decide its fate?
As a member of the House of Lords, I don’t have a vote. If I did, I would be motivated as much by what I don’t want as what I do. I do want a Final Say referendum. So I do not want a Johnson majority.
I came out of the womb into the Labour movement.
Already, even before we have left the EU, Brexit is damaging our country, our economy, our society and our standing in the world - damage that will be worsened by the kind of ruinous no deal being pledged by some who aspire to become prime minister.
Whatever your age, think about the young generation. And try to give them back the future being taken from them.
Being speaker has afforded me a unique opportunity to serve parliament, for which I am immensely grateful.
The group For Our Future’s Sake will tour key marginal constituencies to ensure first that young people register to vote then, second, that they use that vote tactically to keep their hope of a final Brexit referendum alive.
I travelled to Germany to witness for myself what nationalism, populism and the breakdown of peace between the great European nations had done. Amidst the rubble I made great friends who have remained friends for the rest of our lives.
We fought big time fascists when I was knee high to a grasshopper up in Yorkshire, when I grew up I fought fascists in the West Midlands in the form of the National Front.
People talk often of Brexit as the biggest challenge since the Second World War. It is certainly proving to be a lot more difficult and complicated than was promised by those who won the referendum campaign in 2016.
Do not let anyone get away with the argument that tearing our country out of one of the most successful partnerships in our history is somehow a great act of patriotism. It is not.
I’m a patriot, but I’m also a European. I think the two go together.
There are very good people in the Labour Party who I would like to see in leadership.
I think it would have been nice to have a family; it would be nice to have grandchildren.
I say to myself: ‘Come on, Betty, you can’t have everything in life. You’ve been very lucky.'
We don’t duck democratic choices out of fear of fascists.
Europe needs us just as much as we need Europe and it's time to stop fiddling for a solution, it's time to implement the solution.
