"The suggestion that the prime minister had been flirting with one of the senior women cabinet ministers made me laugh every time I saw it, and I thought, "if you only knew!" Perhaps they should have pushed it a bit harder."

Previous Quote

The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public?

— Timothy Garton Ash