Will Black

Writer with a background in anthropology and mental health care

Thatcher's attacks on unionised industries devastated vibrant communities. The impact is still being felt, with high levels of unemployment and drug abuse. Her cull of manufacturing, mining, steelworks and shipbuilding led to the current unsustainable situation where our core industry is finance, with volatile banks run by questionable people.

Mags Waterhouse and Bev Clack

Vice Chair of Labour Left, a political think-tank that was formed in 2011

If we are to challenge a culture of abuse, we must listen to our children. We must also create a society where all are listened to, regardless of gender, class or race. Only then might such systematic abuses become a thing of the past.

Ken Livingstone

Former Mayor of London and Labour London Mayoral Candidate

The problem with politics at the moment is people saying we can't do things. We can't hold down student fees, we can't hold down VAT, we can't keep EMA. I don't agree. More than ever we need to do things that help people ease the burden on their household expenditure and reduce the squeeze the great majority are feeling. I have been spending a day in every London borough as part of my Tell Ken tour. Across the city, what I hear most about is transport issues - and the spiralling cost of fares.

Damian Collins

Conservative MP and PPS

Spying on lawyers, paying police officers, hacking phones, buying silence; as we listened to the litany of charges against News Corporation I think James Murdoch had also come to our parliamentary select committee to deliver his own message straight from the script of The Godfather

Mark Fletcher-Brown

Commsmeister

Moments of truth can define public lives. Single instances or images forever captured in the public imagination can cause people to be inextricably ...

Alex Smith

Former aide to Labour leader Ed Miliband, and consultant for Champollion Digital

At long last, then, the Labour Party is showing signs that it can get it right online. They will need to. A friend close to Tory Towers at Millbank told me earlier this year that tech-savvy Conservatives are "under the hood, developing big new ideas that could shape the next election".

Francis Hoar

Barrister, writes on law reform and blogs on politics

Truly, this relationship has damaged our governance. It has infected every Party and made it ever more difficult to make complex but essential arguments on behalf of those unable to defend themselves against the mob. The tabloid press, its campaigns, its lack of ethics, its use of emotive rhetoric to advance its causes and its influence on government has changed our democracy for the worse. It is the responsibility of all political Parties, not just the government of the day, to turn their back on cheap tabloid headlines and act, for once, in the public interest.

Jonathan Walker

Jonathan Walker is the Political Editor of the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail

Nobody has done more to bring the truth about phone hacking at the News of the World into the open than West Midlands MP Tom Watson.