- You drink 'port', you get 'ill' and you say 'o'. - This Week, BBC1 11th February 2010
- [on Russia's occupation of Crimea] There's going to be no response of any consequence at all against Russia and that's obvious by what people are saying. When David Cameron talks about consequences, since that word is so unspecific and repeated on a daily basis, it is perfectly clear that it is meaningless.
- [on fox hunting] I think vermin are going to get slaughtered anyway. Foxes are vermin and mice and rats. I think most people think that foxes are vermin and think they've got to be dealt with one way or another.
- I think fox hunting and for that matter bullfighting are parts of cultures and I really worry about going around extinguishing the culture of a nation.
- It may be because I have a Catholic tradition I make a distinction between the soul of a human being and the soul of an animal.
- I remember the Tony Blair speech and I was overwhelmed by it. It was one of the best three speeches I heard while I was in Parliament and it helped me to vote for the Iraq War, and the Iraq War was a mistake.
- [on David Cameron] I don't think we're quite as stupid as sometimes he thinks that we are.
- This was a fantastic wheeze: there were two or three of us who took over this book room when we were about 13 and relinquished it when we were 18. So when everyone else was forced out to play or forced to go home, we had the book room to go to. This was our den. Oh yes, we used to get quite pissed on that [the sickly alcoholic apple drink Pomagne]. [In your lunch hour?] No, after school. We weren't drunk for lessons. [People might have expected the young Portillo to have been a little bit squarer than that.] Well I was very well behaved in the sense that I don't think I ever got a detention or anything. [You should have done for that!] Well it's funny, I think those days were more liberal. I think teachers were pretty aware that we were drinking in there. But we weren't smoking. Smoking was regarded as quite an important crime but I don't think drinking was particularly. He [Clive Anderson] might well have been [involved sometimes]. [Portillo smiles]
- Israeli politics are dictated by the most extreme parties because under their electoral system the most extreme parties get pretty strong representation in parliament even if their popular vote is quite small, and Israel continues to attract as immigrants militants, particularly from the United States, who are more and more pushing Israeli policy towards these extremes.
- Jeremy Corbyn has brought into the Labour Party this very virulent anti-Israeli stance and this has led him to be sympathetic with organisations that want to destroy Israel, and once you demonise Israel in that way then of course you get into all sorts of theories about Israel's allies in other countries, many of whom happen to be Jewish and so on, and it is a real mess.
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