Gus O'Donnell

If you want to understand what's happening to the situation in a town in Afghanistan, go down to the market. Is it vibrant? Is it safe? That will tell you an enormous amount about the security situation.

It is our job to work for the government of the day and so that means working for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, and we need to do those preparations just to be sure that we're ready for whoever you, the British public, elect and that's core to our civil service values over the last 150 years.