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Douglas Alexander [1967-0] British

Rank: 102
Politician, Former Minister of State for Europe

Douglas Garven Alexander is a British Labour politician who was the Shadow Foreign Secretary and former Member of Parliament for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.
Alexander was first elected to Parliament in the Paisley South by-election in 1997.

Communication, Anger, Equality, Knowledge, Leadership, Legal, Trust

Quote	Tags	Rank
For me, fiscal realism is not a betrayal of Labour values; it is the foundation by which we win the trust of the public.	Trust	101
Change is a process: future is a destination. People want a sense of hope, possibility and pride about Britain.		102
Newspapers can make their own judgment in terms of who they support in a general election. Our responsibility is to make a considered judgment about where the national interest lies.		103
I'm at one with Ed Miliband in saying that it's important that people have the right to express their democratic voices and also their deep concerns about climate change because we have a planet in peril.		104
The scale of the ISIS threat is not yet matched by a clarity of approach for securing their defeat.		105
There's no doubt that what has emerged in the years after 9/11, unlike the situation in Britain, there were practices sanctioned in the U.S. that fall far below the standard of conduct that should have taken place. It is for the American system of government, in all of its branches, to address that. It is not for a British politician.		106
Solidarity is the basis of my politics.		107
Obama better understood community organisation and peer-to-peer communication than any recent candidate, and we are applying that lesson.	Communication	108
Traditionally, diplomacy was done in an environment of information scarcity. Ambassadors would send back telegrams to foreign ministries, comfortable in the knowledge that their views of a country would be the only source of information the minister would see.	Knowledge	109
It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.		110
If you talk to most people under 30, they don't read a newspaper.		111
Too often, the idea seemed to be that the cost of being part of Europe was being less like Britain. So after years of fighting to defend Europe against attacks from the Eurosceptic right, it would be fatal to retreat into the same arguments and begin the battle anew.		112
Historically, Labour has used technology as a form of control. We would use pagers and faxes to send out messages telling people what line to take. The key learning from the Obama campaign is to use technology to empower your supporters.		113
It is already clear that, because of advances in technology, drones are going to play an increased role in warfare in the years ahead. It is therefore vital that the legal frameworks governing their use are robust and internationally recognised.	Legal	114
Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about.		115
In an era of billion-person countries and trillion-pound economies, we need to find ways to amplify our voice. We are most likely to be heard when the Chinese negotiate with a £10 trillion E.U., not a £1.5 trillion Britain.		116
A politics that defines itself by difference holds no appeal for me.		117
I don't get up in the morning and think my mission is to end Britain. I do get up in the morning and think that my mission is to end poverty.		118
We can have enhanced devolution - greater powers in Scotland - but within the strength, security and stability of the United Kingdom, and I think that's what most Scots want.		119
One of the big weaknesses of the Conservative Party is not just their ignorance of and lack of effective response to the cost-of-living crisis but a more fundamental error about what makes for success in the 21st century.		120
We'll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale.		121
The Conservatives are so busy focusing on yesterday, they're not focused on tomorrow... on how elections are won in the 21st century.		122
If Nick Clegg hadn't been sitting around the cabinet table, we wouldn't have had the bedroom tax; we wouldn't have had the rise in tuition fees. We wouldn't have had the mistakes we've seen in economic policy.		123
I take UKIP very seriously. The truth is that UKIP presents an electoral challenge to all political parties. The way to defeat UKIP is not to be a better UKIP but to be a better Labour Party.		124
The depth of concern people feel about UKIP is not always matched by depth of understanding.		125
Of course we need to show we are a genuine alternative to an unpopular, Conservative-led government. But we need to set ourselves a higher standard than a party offering anger like UKIP.	Anger	126
Of course we are looking to win support across every section of society. We win support by speaking to voters on the issues they most care about.		201
I've never been interested in self-promotion and that side of politics; and if that means people judge that you're less prominent than others, that's a choice I've been willing to make.		202
Any politician in a democracy has to be mindful of public opinion.		203
David Cameron can change the branding of the party, but he can't change the beliefs.		204
I'm in agreement with David Miliband when he says our generation of Labour politicians are not willing to hand over the direction of the country without a serious electoral fight.		205
My general approach to opposition is where the government is getting something right, we should say so. And where we disagree with them, we should say so, too.		206
I think politicians who suggest they are uninterested in the support of newspapers are not being straight with people.		207
What matters in any campaign is that you have a strategic core that makes the judgements, decides the strategy, and can deliver.		208
I do think our challenge is to balance credibility and a clear message about how we would reduce the deficit with boldness about the choices that we put before the public.		209
It would be wrong for us to offer difference from the Conservative Party at the cost of credibility, but equally it would be wrong to offer credibility at the cost of being clear that there remain very fundamental differences.		210
Politicians often reveal most about themselves in unguarded moments.		211
A self-evidently confident politician, Cameron still suffers from a curious hollowness. Ten years after he became Conservative leader, many people still question what he actually stands for or believes in.		212
Being prime minister is not a job to be performed with an eye for the exit.		213
As shadow foreign secretary, I have been as clear in my support for the government when it does something we agree with as I am in highlighting that which we oppose.		214
In this age of growing interconnectedness, we understand that turning our backs on the world is simply not an option.		215
David Cameron's approach has left Britain weakened and weary because to retreat from the world is as foolish as it is futile.		216
Labour's task for government is to build consent for an outward-looking Britain as the best way to advance not just our interests, but also our values at a time of challenge, both at home and abroad.		217
As Development Secretary, I have seen in the developing world that climate change there is not a theory, is not a future threat: it is a contemporary crisis.		218
Stories come and go. The challenge is to frame the questions that voters will be asking on polling day, such as who has avoided a global depression and worked here to deliver jobs.		219
When I joined Labour in 1982, I didn't feel I belonged to a party born to power. My repeated experience was of bitter and repeated defeats.		220
Part of the reason I am so evangelical in our campaigning work is that I had an unshakeable faith in Labour values, but we needed a machine worthy of the message. I grew up with a peerless Conservative machine, with vastly superior resources.		221
Politics requires the sense of possibility. Dare I say it - the audacity of hope.		222
What people want is a sense of a better future to come.		223
What we are going to offer is not a one-way communication, but one-to-one communication.	Communication	224
This Network Generation have grown up in a connected world. With Skype, Facebook, Twitter and the Internet, the world is at their fingertips via their smart phone. They find the idea of watching TV programmes at a time to suit the broadcaster quaint and old-fashioned.		225
The Network Generation are secure in, and proud of, their Scottishness. Unlike my generation that grew up in the '80s, they don't see our sense of identity as under threat.		226
As times change, so do the way each generation see the world. It is rather like the way our generation came to see our grandparents' views on the Empire and colonies as outdated.		301
If you're part of the Network Generation, you don't have to belong just to one nation. Dual identities come easily to these dual screeners. They fear a separate Scotland would be a narrowing, not a broadening, experience.		302
Politicians diminish themselves by sounding robotic.		303
Our responsibility is to protect people and help them into work.		304
Under Ed Miliband's leadership, we are changing both our party's structures and culture.	Leadership	305
David Cameron wants people to believe that his isolation in Europe is a result of Britain being outnumbered when it matters most.		306
Of course the decision to commit British forces in Iraq was, for many MPs, a wrenching choice. However, our responsibility in the face of a growing ISIS threat is not to be paralysed by history, but to learn the correct lessons from it.		307
In every generation, there are horrors that define an age and events that scar the global conscience.		308
The Commonwealth is a vital and positive partnership between countries striving to develop trade relations and promote democracy and human rights, united by shared values.		309
It seems to me that the Conservatives neither recognise the scale of the living standards crisis facing British families nor offer credible answers as to how the British economy or British society can be better in the future.		310
The style of politics that Damian McBride represents has been discredited, and Labour has moved on.		311
Most people understand that Lehman Brothers didn't collapse because Gordon Brown built too many schools and hospitals.		312
Kneejerk interventionism or kneejerk isolationism is the wrong course for Britain.		313
The Nationalists peddle a misplaced cultural conceit that holds that everyone south of the Solway Firth is an austerity loving Tory.		314
My vision for Scotland is one in which we fight together for the values we are care about: equality, fairness and social justice. Those values are the same whether you live in Dumfries or Carlisle.	Equality	315
Scotland and England may sometimes be rivals, but by geography, we are also neighbours. By history, allies. By economics, partners. And by fate and fortune, comrades, friends and family.		316
As Scots, we certainly want change today, but the change the Nationalists offer is not the change we want or need.		317
In sport, as in science, business, and diplomacy, as Scots we understand that we benefit from the deep and diverse partnerships that make up the United Kingdom.		318
As Scots - like everyone else - we live in an increasingly inter-connected world that demands shared solutions to shared problems. Walking away from others have never been our way. Walking with others has been our heritage and still represents our best future.		319
The Olympics is a time primarily for sport and celebration, but diplomacy does not stop at the door of the U.N., and for it to work, it must be sustained and consistent.		320
The 'Arab Spring' is the most spectacular example of the dispersal of power.		321
Having disrupted business practices, social interactions and political campaigns, 2011 will be seen as the year that the rise of the Internet first disrupted foreign relations.		322
Just as people have long believed that strengthening ties of trade improves the prospects for peace and the free exchange of ideas, Facebook friendships or Twitter followings already transcend national borders.		323

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