Ministers Reflect quote bank

Quotes from our interviews with former ministers on the realities of the role and how to be effective in government.

Our Ministers Reflect archive includes more than 130 conversations with former UK government ministers. They discuss the reality of being a minister, reflect on what they wish they had known about the job before they began, and offer advice to new ministers taking on the role.

Ministers Reflect quote bank

Our quote bank compiles some of the best insights from our interviews with former ministers, categorised by topic.

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Kenneth Clarke

"After two years, you are sitting in control now, behind your desk, where you are really going to do this, this, and this. And then the phone rings and the prime minister is having a reshuffle and you move on to the next department and you are back at the beginning, there you are, panicking again."

Tessa Jowell

"There are lots of frustrations in government, but there is nothing as frustrating as being out of government!"

Justine Greening

"Probably 70% of what you do as a minister and secretary of state is stop things from going horrifically wrong in about nine months’ time."

Hilary Benn

"Having a relationship with civil servants in which they can honestly express what they think is really important, and it’s most important when you disagree with them."

Tracey Crouch

"I didn’t take the job straight away, I asked to think about it, which apparently is a very common trait among female ministers, according to David Cameron. All the females that he tried to appoint were: 'Can I think about it?', whereas all the men were like: 'Yes, no, I’ll be marvellous'."

Nick Clegg

"The difference in that furnace at the very top or centre of government is it never lets up. There’s no ebb and flow. It’s seven days a week, 365 days a year."

Johnny Mercer

"If you had talked to officials the way I’ve seen some ministers talk to officials, if you’d have talked to people like that in the army, you would have got punched in the mouth."

Harriet Harman

"I have got loads of alibis for why I didn’t succeed in my first period of office, but I really learned, the hard way, by 2001. By that time, I was an absolutely cracking minister, because I had had the opportunity to get it wrong and learn how to get it right."