And if you're getting a poll coming out month after month saying something and then all of a sudden does an enormous swing in one direction - you are dealing with a more volatile electorate than most people believe they have.

I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term.

Nigel might have an earlier date, but I think it's unprecedented from my memory. So it is a reminder to everybody that the public can move very rapidly on some issues and therefore what looks settled may not be.

So to that extent that was a very sharp reminder a few months out from the election that we weren't performing in the eyes of the public to the level that they wanted if they were going to re-elect us. So we went out and were much more upfront on issues.

I don't think 'my way or the highway' works, that mentality. And that's what the Tea Party has done: drawn a line in the sand. I'm sorry - that doesn't work in business, that doesn't work in your family, it certainly doesn't work in government and our Congress.

The Government needs to be honest and straight with people.

This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.

Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes.