Andrew Neil

I've got a house that's only 45 minutes from Monte Carlo.

Not all Republicans in the class of 2010 owe their seats to the Tea Party. But many do.

It's probably the journalist in me, but I'm naturally suspicious about consensus and always feel an impulse to confront it.

When I was at Paisley Grammar we were equipped to compete with the private-school kids - and encouraged to do so. The sky was the limit, provided we had ability, ambition and a capacity for hard work.

Britain's great postwar meritocratic experiment was broad-based, but it was in politics that the change was most dramatic.

As one of the grammar-school generation, I grew up as part of a postwar meritocracy that steadily infiltrated the citadels of power.

I get nervous if the bath is too deep.

If you're on the pull, a hen party gaggle, a gang of rowdy chavs or a group of braying snotty bottys, then Baros is not for you - which means it's just grand for the rest of us.

Those who claim to be in the know say Baros is nothing out of the ordinary as Maldivian islands go - that Reethi Ra is far more fashionable, Soneva Fushi more eco-compliant. Truth to tell, they all look pretty much alike from a distance.

There's even less to do in Umea at Christmas than there is in Stockholm.

This is the only country in the world where you can be criticised for trying too hard. That's a put-down in London.

I'm a bit of a loner.

The Tea Party isn't out to be a third force in American politics. Instead, it has infiltrated the Republicans and remoulded them in its own image.

I don't think the standard of our politicians is very high. And when you get good ones, world-class ones, like a Blair or a Brown or a Thatcher, then they do stand out - they are head and shoulders above everybody else.

Donald Trump's grip on the Republican parties stronger than ever post the Mueller report.

WMR is wholly devoted to acquiring and exploiting rights. We're not a production company, and we're not a broadcaster.

I would not rule out Rupert Murdoch once again having control of 'Sky News.'

You know, Rupert Murdoch I've said is like an Italian when it comes to negotiations.

The Sun' and the 'News of the World' fell in line behind New Labour in the run up to the 1997 election, 'The Times' stayed broadly neutral and 'The Sunday Times' unenthusiastically Tory. After the election, 'The Times' quickly fell in line as the New Labour house journal.

Rupert Murdoch has been around since the dinosaurs. He knows how to get around any independent board - as he did with me, and as he's done with other editors as well.

That's the only time when newspapers have some influence, when they are pushing the British public in a direction they are already minded to go.

Well, one person whose company I enjoy is Charlie Whelan. He and I get on really well together.

People know more about my views than they do about most BBC presenters because I had a life before becoming a BBC presenter.

I never set out to get married and the way things have worked out I never have.

I haven't got a family. I live to work.

The English are a tolerant bunch and, outside elements of the London elite, never much minded the rise of the Scottish Raj: after all, we were British, well-educated, reasonably cultivated and spoke with clear, classless accents.

The English, in their ignorance, still have the romantic notion that Scottish schools are superior to English ones; they are at least a generation out of date.

When I went up to Glasgow University in 1967, student life was dominated by 13-hour debates on Fridays, when one of the student political clubs would form the 'government' for the day and attempt to push through a piece of legislation, which the other clubs either supported or opposed.

As class barriers tumbled and Britain became a more meritocratic society, young, well-educated Scots were best placed to exploit the new social mobility.

Now, I bow to nobody when it comes to estimating the influence of 'This Week.'

Muslims are not our enemy.

I don't say for a moment that the far right is no longer a problem. We have seen the neo-Nazi nutters in Charlottesville in America.

Since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is no longer respectable. It was in the 1920s and '30s, but the Holocaust obviously changed that.

On the far left, just as there is on the far right there is a dislike of Israel, not just a dislike, a hatred of Israel.

When I was growing up the obvious antisemites were the knuckle-draggers in the National Front.

I do not regret working with Rupert Murdoch. But there is a nasty undertone to a lot of what he does which does not exist with the Barclays.

You don't really appreciate how much you are going to miss your parents. I keep thinking of all the times I should have made the effort to go up and see them but didn't.

No one can be in any doubt that Britain is becoming more like Europe, though few in an increasingly economically illiterate media seem to realise it.

With growing economic prowess comes, of course, military power.

The sucking sound of capital being pulled out of Europe and into East Asia is almost deafening.

With each step away from communist constructivism to Hayekian capitalism, China has been richly rewarded.

With sad, depressing predictability, the children of today's underclass become tomorrow's criminals and dropouts.

Britain is now living with the consequences of allowing an underclass to take root and fester.

During the Blair-Brown decade social concerns - what kind of society we have become - have gradually replaced economic worries. People fear that we have become an increasingly fragmented, boorish, more violent society.

I recently passed through Mumbai airport. I cannot claim it was a pleasant experience. But if I had a choice between Mumbai airport and Euston on a Sunday afternoon, I'd take Mumbai any day.

Memo to self: never again try to travel by train in Britain on a Sunday.

I travelled through the night in a bus with the Kentucky Tea Party en route to a massive rally in Washington. For the most part I found them decent, self-reliant, regular Americans who feared the American Dream was now over, not just for them but for their children and grandchildren.

I don't fall in love easily... But I do fall in love.

Sometimes, I think 'The Spectator' is calculated to embarrass me.

No-one in their right mind would buy the 'New Statesman' and change it from being a left-wing to a right-wing magazine.