Parties are organised happiness but happiness is accidental. You can't legislate for it.

You don't enter politics when you come to parliament. I was getting politics for breakfast, dinner and tea when I was a little kid.

You don't enter politics when you come to parliament. I was getting politics for breakfast, dinner and tea when I was a little kid.

To be honest, it was slavery. Nobody should have any romantic ideas about working underground. It's very, very dangerous. You always knew you were living in danger. You were on your hands and knees half the day.

If I am doing a speech at a Labour party meeting - I think I have done every constituency - I'll look for a happy face, and talk to that face. In the Commons, with all the anger, I'll fix on a blank panel above their heads.

I do rely on my instincts a lot and my imagination.

Environment does shape you. My environment, in a pit family, in a pit village, with nine kids in total.

When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.

We dragged the National Health Service from the depths of degradation. I've got a United Nations heart bypass to prove it and it was done by a Syrian cardiologist, a Malaysian surgeon, a Dutch doctor and a Nigerian registrar.

I don't believe in organised happiness.