Claire Fox

One thing I got from my parents was that they talked about politics all the time. They weren't educated or academic but they were interesting about and interested in the world.

If you challenge multiculturalism you are seen to be a racist. But it's a political philosophy that needs to be looked at. If you don't, you're taking it on trust, which is intellectually dishonest.

There was such a sense of relief on the left when New Labour came to power that certain orthodoxies could not be challenged. People became desperate to hang on to the ascendancy of left ideas without really questioning what they were about.

I have a reputation for infamy.

Senior Tories have exhibited a brand of entitled arrogance that implies that they own Brexit. It seems that anyone else who claims its mantle can be pushed to one side. And that includes voters.

I have no truck with the faintly conspiratorial argument that international governments are gleeful about a public-health emergency to enact authoritarian measures.

My political views have never made me insensitive to the pain and suffering caused to the innocent victims of events such as the Warrington bomb.

I am rather proud of my modest contribution to bringing democracy home.

We already know that the experience of lockdown is a mixed bag. It is increasingly recognised that for many it can be hellish. Enforced leisure - if you are crippled with worry about debts, insecure job prospects, your family's health - is no holiday.

Retreating to indefinite lockdown culture would mean surrendering what makes life worth living, a far more tragic cost than anything inflicted by a virus.

If the widespread attempts to block Brexit gave us a glimpse into how fragile our commitment to democracy had become - reduced to a technocratic in-name-only veneer - reactions to Covid are a stark reminder that freedom cannot be assumed as a social norm that's deeply embedded into our institutions and our psyche.

European civil society and NGOs that petition for favours and influence for their special interests are often themselves funded from E.U. coffers. This creates a system of patronage that encourages self-reinforcing group-think and a cloying sycophancy.

Are Labour members inherently bigoted against women, unable to objectively assess political attributes beyond the gender prism? This accusation seems particularly ludicrous when levelled at a party so much in thrall to identity politics that it sometimes feels more like a student union than an organisation set up to defend the working class.

Democrats need to value free speech and we should not be intimidated into giving an inch of it away.

The media are so key in a national emergency, especially when opposition parties in the U.K. are - let us say - largely in disarray, even leaderless.

You don't need to be a fan of wars or militarism to note that heroic action - whether being prepared to be jailed as a conscientious objector or putting your life on the line by joining the resistance - creates a sense of meaning when society faces a huge challenge.

TV and radio debates seem inflamed, with all that shouting, but real disagreement is always avoided; they conceal their lack of content.

Constantly referring to past wrongdoings can become a substitute for developing a deeper analysis of today's foreign-policy challenges, of understanding what is new and different.

Yes, we know that obesity is an issue, but it isn't the end of the world as is reported everywhere.

Maybe the Tory party might, instead of telling the Brexit Party what to do, make an approach to the Brexit Party and say I'll tell you what, we'll stand aside in certain areas. That would be a very positive thing for me, let's work together for a new kind of politics.