The prime minister's view is that we need to look at all the options and everybody knows that is what we are going to do.

In Downing Street they called me 'Boss'. Civil servants would always call me 'Prime Minister'.

He has a great background and he knows what to do. He's new, refreshing and definitely isn't Tony Blair.

The great advantage of the Lib Dems is precisely that no-one knows what they stand for.

If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations. Everybody knows this in their walk of life.

My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.