Margaret Thatcher and John Major knew that bluff and bravado doesn't work in Brussels.
Energetic action on debt would make a radical difference to the prospects of many of the poorest countries in the world, at no practical cost to creditor countries.
However, we do not lack anti-terrorist laws. I do not believe that the recent London bombs were the result of any deficiencies in our legal system.
The political health of Britain has deteriorated very sharply. The Conservative Party must do something about it. I am the man to do it.
My entire political career has been based on building up Britain's political standing and economic prosperity through our membership of the E.U. and the European project.
Of course I'd have loved to be Prime Minister. But I'm not nursing a grievance.
I am not a creature of giant business and I think that small- and medium-sized businesses will derive the most benefit from the removal of bureaucratic obstacles to trade.
Referendums are designed to get round parliamentary government, and people only demand referendums when they think they can't get a majority in parliament. Mussolini was the most brilliant practitioner of referendums.
If the prime minister really believes it, he must be the only person left who thinks that the recent bombs in London had no connection at all with his policy in Iraq.
I am a firm believer in open justice, and an opponent of closed justice in any normal circumstances. But I am also an opponent of legal purism, and have no time for institutionalised mythmaking - whether from the authoritarian right or the liberal left.
No country anywhere in the world allows material that genuinely puts national security at risk into the public domain, and that includes a courtroom.
Unless and until I can see an opportunity of actually reversing Brexit and restoring a stable membership of the European Union, then in the real world I concentrate on minimising the damage.
Locking people up without reducing the risk of them committing new crimes against new victims the minute they get out does not make for intelligent sentencing.
