Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Crispin Blunt - Page 2

I think our leadership is now seized of the fact that we have a problem with the youth vote and it might be an idea to get into an intelligent place, both in policy making and in terms of the presentation of our values around freedom and responsibility.

The aim has got to be to maximize the opportunities for prisoners, having got themselves clean and got themselves some training, to have the best possible chance of going straight when they come out.

There is a tendency for the British establishment to work out everything very carefully and then present it to parliament as 'a take it or leave it' choice. And then ministers wonder why they have difficulties in parliament.

We are in this Alice in Wonderland world where parliament has approved a motion saying: 'notes the government will not deploy U.K. troops in ground combat operations.' It doesn't say: 'brackets not special forces.' But the convention is that it is 'brackets not special forces.'

Many other countries have tried this and getting businesses to work in partnership in prisons, in prison and with prison labour, and to actually be able to make an economic return is extremely difficult.

Trump has shown that there are limits to how brutal the maximalists can afford to be.

The FCO must help Turkey reinforce accountable state institutions, while also developing ties far beyond them: the UK needs a deeper and therefore more durable relationship with the Turkish people, whichever background they hold, while working to uphold the values of human rights and democracy that benefit them all.

King Abdullah gives a level of insight that we don't get from our own governments.

The 2013 deal, whereby the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons verified the destruction of 95% of Syria's declared chemical weapons, was negotiated between Russia and the U.S. and either the Russians haven't honored their side of the deal or they have been betrayed by the Syrians.

Large numbers have been punished on the basis of a broad and vague definition of terrorism and a worryingly low threshold of evidence.

The Foreign Affairs Committee is first in line to call for the U.K. to take a more active and independent role in world affairs, and to have the resources to do so. But a large part of that role involves working with allies and leveraging the range of our assets in co-ordination.

There are some times when something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realize the Government is about to do something fantastically stupid and I think in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up.

We don't comment on special forces operations. And if you run an operation for a long time as we have here, and in Libya, eventually newspapers like the Times report it.

Frankly, everyone knows that Iain Duncan Smith is not making the impact we would all like him to be as our leader and is not making the necessary impact to carry credibility with the electorate as the alternative prime minister.

Turkey is an important strategic partner facing a volatile period. It needs and deserves our support, but that support needs to include our critique where Turkish policy is not in its own, or our, joint long-term interests: these are regional security and stability as well as strong and accountable institutions in Turkey.

The public don't want prisoners lying about being idle.

In 2013 I voted against military intervention in Syria.