Douglas Alexander Quotes & Sayings

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Politicians often reveal most about themselves in unguarded moments. — Douglas Alexander

For me, fiscal realism is not a betrayal of Labour values; it is the foundation by which we win the trust of the public. — Douglas Alexander

Change is a process: future is a destination. People want a sense of hope, possibility and pride about Britain. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

It's important to learn the right lessons from the past. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

In this age of growing interconnectedness, we understand that turning our backs on the world is simply not an option. — Douglas Alexander

In every generation, there are horrors that define an age and events that scar the global conscience. — Douglas Alexander

The Government have consistently made it clear that the mechanism in the United Kingdom whereby the European draft constitutional treaty could be implemented is approval by the House of Commons followed by a referendum of the people of Britain. There is no question of implementing it by the back door. — Douglas Alexander

We'll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale. — Douglas Alexander

There are genuine questions to be asked about why we now have the highest level of employment in many decades, contrary to the position during the boom-bust years of the Conservatives. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

The Nationalists peddle a misplaced cultural conceit that holds that everyone south of the Solway Firth is an austerity loving Tory. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

What we are going to offer is not a one-way communication, but one-to-one communication. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

David Cameron wants people to believe that his isolation in Europe is a result of Britain being outnumbered when it matters most. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Being prime minister is not a job to be performed with an eye for the exit. — Douglas Alexander

I think politicians who suggest they are uninterested in the support of newspapers are not being straight with people. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Obama better understood community organisation and peer-to-peer communication than any recent candidate, and we are applying that lesson. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Kneejerk interventionism or kneejerk isolationism is the wrong course for Britain. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Under Ed Miliband's leadership, we are changing both our party's structures and culture. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

The Conservatives are so busy focusing on yesterday, they're not focused on tomorrow ... on how elections are won in the 21st century. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about. — Douglas Alexander

Solidarity is the basis of my politics. — Douglas Alexander

Politics requires the sense of possibility. Dare I say it - the audacity of hope. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

The scale of the ISIS threat is not yet matched by a clarity of approach for securing their defeat. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

What matters in any campaign is that you have a strategic core that makes the judgements, decides the strategy, and can deliver. — Douglas Alexander

A politics that defines itself by difference holds no appeal for me. — Douglas Alexander

Any politician in a democracy has to be mindful of public opinion. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Most people understand that Lehman Brothers didn't collapse because Gordon Brown built too many schools and hospitals. — Douglas Alexander

The 'Arab Spring' is the most spectacular example of the dispersal of power. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

As Scots, we certainly want change today, but the change the Nationalists offer is not the change we want or need. — Douglas Alexander

If you talk to most people under 30, they don't read a newspaper. — Douglas Alexander

The style of politics that Damian McBride represents has been discredited, and Labour has moved on. — Douglas Alexander

What people want is a sense of a better future to come. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Our responsibility is to protect people and help them into work. — Douglas Alexander

David Cameron can change the branding of the party, but he can't change the beliefs. — Douglas Alexander

The depth of concern people feel about UKIP is not always matched by depth of understanding. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

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. — Douglas Alexander

Politicians diminish themselves by sounding robotic. — Douglas Alexander

David Cameron's approach has left Britain weakened and weary because to retreat from the world is as foolish as it is futile. — Douglas Alexander