but you have to understand where people are coming from in order to be able to justify your position. My position about all kinds of polling and research has always been that it's an aid to decision-making, it shouldn't make the decisions itself. Certainly one of the things you hear consistently in any focus group is that people want strong leaders. You talk about having been anxious not to become too much a part of the Westminster village and instead stay on the outside looking in. Do you think you succeeded in doing that? I don't know if I succeeded completely because I think it's impossible in some ways when you know a sector, an organisation or an interest very well. But I certainly tried to do it as much as I could. I was very aware that the Westminster village would be obsessing about a topic in a particular way and for the ordinary folk out there it might have completely passed them by or they might have a totally different take on it. I thought that was a huge problem. There was a point where I was under quite a lot of pressure to become a more integrated part of the team, and I could see why that might have worked in some ways, but I felt strongly that it was important to retain my otherness, and to have that degree of independence as I was interacting with voters. One of the conclusions that I draw is that