Johann Lamont

The instinct of the Labour Party is if there's a problem, change the leader, then sit back, fold your arms and wait to be disappointed because they're sure it's not going to deliver.

I didn't particularly want to go to Westminster - not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.

My biggest ambition is to bring together what happens in the real world with what politicians talk about.

Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the lives of almost anyone else who ever attended the school.

I broke with my religion in college.

When I write that I've known about something for a long time, that's not a boast. That's a confession. It's me acknowledging that I have withheld something important from the public.