I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor, so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

People feel politics isn't about their lives.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

Everything about my politics has been about the future.

I've committed myself to serve my constituents in South Shields and I have committed myself to British politics.