Top 55 Westminster Quotes

The British political system and the whole clapped out Westminster architecture, and the language that we use about politics, it’s completely unsustainable. You either decide to be part of that transition to do something different. Or you cling to old certainties.

No one out there is interested in who did what to whom in Westminster politics.

And so in my warnings, I was pointing to a number of incidents around the communion that could undermine our growing sense of communion – of becoming a global communion. So that’s why I pointed to New Westminster in Canada, to incidents in the United States, and Sydney itself.

Westminster politics is very unattractive, and people are channelling political energy into more inward questioning – there are a lot of musicians whose songs are all about feeling, and it’s almost like that’s the only safe place to express yourself.

I’ve been breeding Dobies for years. Almost won the breed in Westminster at one time.

Political shenanigans come and go, yet often what feels like a big deal in Westminster fails to get a mention on the news. As a result, the public wisely let most of the hurly-burly of politics wash over their heads.

What we need and have not got at Westminster are real experience and wisdom, possessed by people who do not view politics as a career.

I can cope with politicians now I’ve had about 40,000 cockroaches tipped over my head. Westminster’s going to be no problem.

We will never vote for the renewal of Trident; that’s a decision which will fall to be made in the next Westminster parliament. We will never vote for that.

I mean, you can’t walk down the aisle in Westminster Abbey in a strapless dress, it just won’t happen – it has to suit the grandeur of that aisle, it’s enormous.

There is a danger of Scottish politics being between two sets of dinosaurs… the Nationalists who can’t accept they were rejected by the people, and some colleagues at Westminster who think nothing has changed.

Touch but a cobweb in Westminster Hall, and the old spider of the law is out upon you with all his vermin at his heels.

Finally, there’s a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.

I never thought I would hear Labour and Scottish Nationalist ministers in both Westminster and Holyrood publicly recognise the environmental benefits of good grouse moor management.

I was elected to Westminster when I was 25; I was Britain’s youngest MP.

I refused to pair with a Tory MP, I refused all foreign junkets and I’ve never had a drink in a Westminster bar.

Being out and about talking to residents and representing their views is, in my view, as important to politics as the grandstanding that takes place in Westminster.

When you look at Westminster you think of it as pale, male and stale and I hate that so much.

My drive comes from my parents and from Westminster.

The truth of the matter is that countries the world over have deficits. Let us remember this about Scotland’s deficit: it was not created in an independent Scotland; it was created on Westminster’s watch.

I didn’t particularly want to go to Westminster – not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.

Public perception of the Westminster arena, with all its posturings, does little to engender a sense of voter belief.

I went to a branch of the City of Westminster College in Maida Vale to do drama, sociology and English literature. I stayed for three or four months.

Lisa Nandy is absolutely right that we need to devolve economic power away from Westminster and learn from what Labour councils around the country are doing.

Political reporting is too often trivialised, treated as a soap opera based in Westminster, rather than placed in a broader social or economic context.

The University of Westminster is well known for being a hotbed of extremist activity.

The high reputation of Westminster abroad is not entirely reflected at home.

I think that political coverage generally comes in on a level that means if you live and breathe Westminster detail and diary, then you get it.

There are three main controllers of power here in Britain: the political establishment in Westminster, the BBC (MSM), and the Bank Of England.

One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I’m in Westminster is to stop people thinking we’re all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people’s hands.

Thankfully, due to the United Kingdom and the commitment of the Westminster government we are able to ensure that money brought in, whether it be from the City of London or from North Sea oil, can be pooled and directed to wherever it is needed most. That is what being in the United Kingdom is all about.

Westminster has let the whole country down for many years.

Westminster Abbey, the Tower, a steeple, one church, and then another, presented themselves to our view; and we could now plainly distinguish the high round chimneys on the tops of the houses, which yet seemed to us to form an innumerable number of smaller spires, or steeples.

Westminster is a piece of this city’s energy, something the contemporary world has forgotten.

It is a truth universally unacknowledged at Westminster that there is life after politics.

I do not own a car, and my main form of travel to Westminster and in my constituency is by bicycle. I also take my bike on trains to meetings in other parts of the country, which enables me to see other cities and the other parts of the country.

Being an MP is quite a strange job, because you do it in two different places. Half the time I’m in Westminster and the other half I’m in my constituency and the job is different in both of them.

It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.

New ideas rarely come from the moderate parties in The Hague or Washington, in Brussels or Westminster. The world’s political centres are not the breeding ground for true change, but rather where it comes home to roost.

The U.K.’s debt belongs legally to Westminster, so Scotland, by definition, can’t default on it.

From Lady Carlisle’s trip to Moscow in 1663 to Veronica Atkinson’s tour of duty during the 1989 Romanian revolution, it is clear that very little has changed. Four hundred years of innovation, liberation, and improvement clearly bypassed the Foreign Office while making its rounds through Westminster.

In Westminster, I make sure I maximise my ability to represent my constituents. I can do that in a variety of ways: by asking written questions or questions in the House of Commons, through the scrutiny of bills and by sitting on the environmental audit select committee every week, as well as other committees.

There have been several Duchesses of Westminster but there is only one Chanel!

People don’t want to go back to the days, pre-referendum, when the Westminster establishment sidelined and ignored Scotland. They want Scotland’s voice to be heard.

Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.

Westminster is a jungle – and the hunter can always smell fear on its prey.

I’m not sure when exactly it started to become the fashion in Westminster to skim-read documents, only bother with bullet points or, worse, to take them entirely on trust – but that, perhaps, was when we began as a country to lose our way.

What I was excited about was the opportunity for punters to be part of politics. The whole idea was to allow the voices of people outside this weirdo palace of Westminster to be heard. I thought the whole social media thing might be really positive.

As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.

If you have a Tory government at Westminster that takes us out of Europe against our will, there may be people in Scotland who think, ‘You know what, we might be better off independent.’

Let us put the normal divisions of politics aside. Let us come together as one country; let us seize this historic moment to shift the balance of power from the corridors of Westminster to the streets and communities of Scotland.

Brexit has changed everything in British politics – it has blown open a cosy, zombie-like closed world of Westminster parliamentary politics. It has broken open the traditional line between left and right, which was already an exhausted tradition.

At the end of the day, whether it was in a little church or Westminster Abbey didn’t matter: it was me, as a brother, doing a reading for my sister and her husband at their wedding, and I wanted to do it right.