3 December 2020 William Hague I don’t think my principles change. I think the way in which you apply those principles to modern society changes.
3 December 2020 William Hague Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable, because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents.
3 December 2020 William Hague Where defining foreign policy as ‘ethical’ went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.
3 December 2020 William Hague Inspiring scenes of people taking the future of their countries into their own hands will ignite greater demands for good governance and political reform elsewhere in the world, including in Asia and in Africa.
3 December 2020 William Hague The message I take all round the world is Britain is open for business.
3 December 2020 William Hague At a time of such hope and optimism in the Middle East, we cannot let the Libyan government violate every principle of international law and human rights with impunity.
3 December 2020 William Hague To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you’ve been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.
3 December 2020 William Hague The Bill of Rights was intended to secure freedom of speech – the freedom of speech of members of parliament to speak freely rather than be at threat of… the threat of an over powerful monarch at the time.
3 December 2020 William Hague I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.
3 December 2020 William Hague It is the mission of the next Conservative Government to build the Responsible Society.
3 December 2020 William Hague I’m not, nor is anybody I know in government part of a nasty right wing clique.
3 December 2020 William Hague The EU is not a country and it’s not going to become a country, in my view, now or ever in the future. It is a group of countries working together.
3 December 2020 William Hague It’s really necessary for the United States to continue to give strong leadership to the Middle East peace process, supported by European countries at the same time.
3 December 2020 William Hague We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today.
3 December 2020 William Hague I don’t deny that there are problems in the intelligence world, but I would argue that in the UK we try to uphold the highest standards in the world.
3 December 2020 William Hague Syria should not belong to one family, to one coterie, or to one party. It belongs to all the people of Syria equally, in all their religious and ethnic diversity.
3 December 2020 William Hague Let’s not be afraid to speak the common sense truth: you can’t have high standards without good discipline.
3 December 2020 William Hague Obviously a Conservative government will always leave taxes lower than they have been under Labour. Those things go with the territory of the Conservative Party.
3 December 2020 William Hague People feel that the EU is a one-way process, a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change.
3 December 2020 William Hague Spending only what the country can afford, rewarding savings, encouraging independence, supporting marriage: people know that these things are common sense.
3 December 2020 William Hague You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don’t agree with, or find disagreeable, so it’s important to stress that balance.
3 December 2020 William Hague As far as I’m aware, everybody in the shadow cabinet accepts that there’s a compelling case on climate change and a strong scientific case.
3 December 2020 William Hague I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.
3 December 2020 William Hague Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.
3 December 2020 William Hague I think Britain would be alright, if only we had a different Government.
3 December 2020 William Hague We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.
