Douglas Alexander Quotes

Under Ed Miliband’s leadership, we are changing both our party’s structures and culture.

It seems to me that the Conservatives neither recognise the scale of the living standards crisis facing British families nor offer credible answers as to how the British economy or British society can be better in the future.

What people want is a sense of a better future to come.

Politicians often reveal most about themselves in unguarded moments.

Just as people have long believed that strengthening ties of trade improves the prospects for peace and the free exchange of ideas, Facebook friendships or Twitter followings already transcend national borders.

The Nationalists peddle a misplaced cultural conceit that holds that everyone south of the Solway Firth is an austerity loving Tory.

Traditionally, diplomacy was done in an environment of information scarcity. Ambassadors would send back telegrams to foreign ministries, comfortable in the knowledge that their views of a country would be the only source of information the minister would see.

David Cameron‘s approach has left Britain weakened and weary because to retreat from the world is as foolish as it is futile.

Politics requires the sense of possibility. Dare I say it – the audacity of hope.

I take UKIP very seriously. The truth is that UKIP presents an electoral challenge to all political parties. The way to defeat UKIP is not to be a better UKIP but to be a better Labour Party.

The Network Generation are secure in, and proud of, their Scottishness. Unlike my generation that grew up in the ’80s, they don’t see our sense of identity as under threat.

The Conservatives are so busy focusing on yesterday, they’re not focused on tomorrow… on how elections are won in the 21st century.

Newspapers can make their own judgment in terms of who they support in a general election. Our responsibility is to make a considered judgment about where the national interest lies.

Labour’s task for government is to build consent for an outward-looking Britain as the best way to advance not just our interests, but also our values at a time of challenge, both at home and abroad.

I do think our challenge is to balance credibility and a clear message about how we would reduce the deficit with boldness about the choices that we put before the public.

We’ll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale.

My general approach to opposition is where the government is getting something right, we should say so. And where we disagree with them, we should say so, too.

The depth of concern people feel about UKIP is not always matched by depth of understanding.

I think politicians who suggest they are uninterested in the support of newspapers are not being straight with people.

It is already clear that, because of advances in technology, drones are going to play an increased role in warfare in the years ahead. It is therefore vital that the legal frameworks governing their use are robust and internationally recognised.

We can have enhanced devolution – greater powers in Scotland – but within the strength, security and stability of the United Kingdom, and I think that’s what most Scots want.

It would be wrong for us to offer difference from the Conservative Party at the cost of credibility, but equally it would be wrong to offer credibility at the cost of being clear that there remain very fundamental differences.

David Cameron wants people to believe that his isolation in Europe is a result of Britain being outnumbered when it matters most.

Stories come and go. The challenge is to frame the questions that voters will be asking on polling day, such as who has avoided a global depression and worked here to deliver jobs.

Scotland and England may sometimes be rivals, but by geography, we are also neighbours. By history, allies. By economics, partners. And by fate and fortune, comrades, friends and family.

In every generation, there are horrors that define an age and events that scar the global conscience.

One of the big weaknesses of the Conservative Party is not just their ignorance of and lack of effective response to the cost-of-living crisis but a more fundamental error about what makes for success in the 21st century.

Too often, the idea seemed to be that the cost of being part of Europe was being less like Britain. So after years of fighting to defend Europe against attacks from the Eurosceptic right, it would be fatal to retreat into the same arguments and begin the battle anew.

For me, fiscal realism is not a betrayal of Labour values; it is the foundation by which we win the trust of the public.

Change is a process: future is a destination. People want a sense of hope, possibility and pride about Britain.

I’m at one with Ed Miliband in saying that it’s important that people have the right to express their democratic voices and also their deep concerns about climate change because we have a planet in peril.

Politicians diminish themselves by sounding robotic.

If you talk to most people under 30, they don’t read a newspaper.

Of course we are looking to win support across every section of society. We win support by speaking to voters on the issues they most care about.

Part of the reason I am so evangelical in our campaigning work is that I had an unshakeable faith in Labour values, but we needed a machine worthy of the message. I grew up with a peerless Conservative machine, with vastly superior resources.

As shadow foreign secretary, I have been as clear in my support for the government when it does something we agree with as I am in highlighting that which we oppose.

Of course we need to show we are a genuine alternative to an unpopular, Conservative-led government. But we need to set ourselves a higher standard than a party offering anger like UKIP.

What matters in any campaign is that you have a strategic core that makes the judgements, decides the strategy, and can deliver.

It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

As times change, so do the way each generation see the world. It is rather like the way our generation came to see our grandparents‘ views on the Empire and colonies as outdated.

The ‘Arab Spring‘ is the most spectacular example of the dispersal of power.

The Olympics is a time primarily for sport and celebration, but diplomacy does not stop at the door of the U.N., and for it to work, it must be sustained and consistent.