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I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so ... prudent.
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Tony Blair's speech in full, BBC News online
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Speech to the Labour Party conference, 28 September 1999, paraphrasing Harold Macmillan's statement "most of our people have never had it so good" and comparing with Gordon Brown's frequent use of the word "prudent".

 

Tony Blair

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In the Prime Minister, we have a man who has forfeited the right to be believed or to be trusted. In more than 20 years in politics, he has betrayed every cause he believed in, contradicted every statement he has made, broken every promise he has given and breached every agreement that he has entered into. In 1982, the Prime Minister said that we would negotiate a withdrawal from the EEC. In 1994, he said: "Under my leadership, I will never allow this country to be isolated." In 1996, he said that he had made it clear that if it is in Britain's interest to be isolated then we will be isolated.There is a lifetime of U-turns, errors and sell-outs. All those hon. Members who sit behind the Prime Minister and wonder whether they stand for anything any longer, or whether they defend any point of principle, know who has led them to that sorry state. In one of his frequent meetings with the former leader of the Liberal party, whom he so much preferred to meeting his own Cabinet, the Prime Minister told us as it is. He said that he had taken from his party everything they thought they believed in and had stripped them of their core beliefs and that what kept them together was power.

 

William Hague

 

Hague: I'd like to congratulate the Leader of the House on being the first female Labour member ever to answer Prime Minister's Questions. She must be proud, three decades on, to be following in the footsteps of Margaret Thatcher, who we on this side of the House and the Prime Minister so admire.
Harman: Well I thank him for his congratulations but I would ask him, why is he asking the questions today? Because he is not the Shadow Leader of the House - the Shadow Leader of the House is sitting next to him! Is this the situation in the modern Conservative Party; that women should be seen but not heard? And if I may, perhaps I could offer the Shadow Leader of the House a bit of sisterly advice: she should not let him get away with it!
Hague: Turning to domestic issues, I was going to be nice to the Rt. Hon. Lady - she has had a difficult week and she had to explain yesterday that she dresses in accordance with wherever she goes; she wears a helmet to a building site; wears Indian clothes to Indian parts of her constituency; presumably, when she goes to a Cabinet meeting, she dresses as a clown.
Harman: Well I would just start by saying that if I'm looking for advice on what to wear and what not to wear, the very last man I would look to for advice would be the man in the baseball cap!

 

Harriet Harman

 

I'm a victim of a criminal act conducted by this party, which is in power right now. So put it on trial. Its leader was the prime minister and his deputy is the prime minister right now and they killed innocent Iraqis in 1980

 

Tariq Aziz

 

James Callaghan: ...I am not pro, nor am I anti...
Robin Day: What are you doing on this programme?
Callaghan: I'm here because you asked me.
Day: You're here to advise people to vote 'Yes' aren't you?
Callaghan: ...I am here, and the Prime Minister has taken the same line; it is our job to advise the British people on what we think is the right result. Now there are a lot of other people who've always been emotionally committed to the Market. A lot of other people have been always totally opposed to the Market. I don't think the Prime Minister or myself have ever been in either category and that is not our position today. I'm trying to present the facts as I see them and why we have come down in favour of – now Britain is in, we should stay in.

 

James Callaghan

 

Tony Blair: Has the Prime Minister secured even the minimal guarantee from the Euro-rebels that, on a future vote of confidence on Europe, they will support him?
John Major: I can sense the concern in the right hon. Gentleman's voice. Perhaps he would like to tell me whether he has received the support of the 50 MPs who defied his Front Bench over Maastricht; of the 40 who defied him over European finance; on a single currency, where the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) was in dispute with the deputy leader of the Labour party; and on clause IV, which half his, I think he called them, infantile MEPs want to keep. He does not, and his deputy leader does one day and does not the next. These are party matters. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what his position is?
Tony Blair: There is one very big difference—I lead my party, he follows his.

 

Tony Blair