Francis Maude's Quotes

It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain.

We should be the natural home for young mothers. But we're not. Because too often we sound like people who think the only good mother is a married mother.

But if we can work with people in other parties to get the right answer for the country we'll do that.

For the most part our grassroots members are serious, nice, tolerant people.

If we do what we think is right, not try to point-score, people will begin to trust us.

If we want to change what people think of us, then we have got to change.

Our party believes in diversity, not uniformity.

Our party has known great, great days. But we have no God-given right to survive, let alone to succeed.

Our party's committed to tackling failing schools and cutting crime.

Our share of the vote overall rose by less than 1 per cent - yes, that's right: less than 1 per cent.

The party at its best has always been a modern party.

The problem we have is not Labour, in however it is configured.

They don't think we're in touch with modern Britain, or understand modern Britain or like modern Britain.

We need to show that we know and understand and can reflect today's Britain. Today we don't.

I feel fantastically excited that we have a leader who fought for the leadership without compromising his quite challenging view that the party has to change.

It is simply the view, and a view I think shared by most members of the party, that it is very difficult to have a leader that does not command the support of the parliamentary party.

Our members are very much maligned. Obviously the average age is 60 something, but they all have children and grandchildren, they understand what we need to do, they want to win.

So our problem is not Labour, it is us, is making us attractive enough to gain disillusioned Labour support and to compete effectively with the Lib Dems for those loose votes.

We said in our 21st Century Party paper there are 61 mosaic groups, which the market research people use as different socio-economic categories and half of our members come from just five of those groups and that is very narrow - too narrow.

We should be the natural home for the millions of Britons of immigrant origin. But we're not. Because too often we've sounded like people who wish they hadn't come here at all.

We should be the natural home for younger voters. But today we're not. Because too often we sound like people who just don't like contemporary Britain.