Leaders in their own words: Starmer, Harfoot, Kavanagh, Gove, Woolard and Bailey

Published by Richard Yarrick-Holmes on September 25th 2020, 10:10am

In our latest roundup of leadership quotations, we hear from Keir Starmer on the 2019 election, Lyndon Harfoot on responding to failure, Dean Kavanagh on listening to customers and Theresa May on good faith.

Sir Keir Starmer

‘Let's be brutally honest with ourselves. When you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to. You don't look at the electorate, you look at yourself.’ (The Labour leader uses his conference speech to reflect on the 2019 election). 

Michael Gove

'There is going to be a shift in emphasis and one of the things that we are going to emphasise is if it is possible for people to work from home then we would encourage them to do so.’ (The minister for the Cabinet Office explains the government’s ‘back to work’ U-turn to Sky News

Lyndon Harfoot

‘We don’t consider ourselves to have encountered failures – every potential failure has become a challenge, and one that we have learnt from.’ (The CEO who brought KIGG to Britain in 2005 explains how he has responded to failures in his career) 

Christopher Woolard

‘We are consulting on a radical package that would ensure firms cannot charge renewing customers more than new customers in future, and put an end to the very high prices paid by some long-standing customers.’ (The interim chief executive of the FCA on a potential shake up of the insurance sector). 

Theresa May

I cannot emphasise enough how concerned I am [that] the Conservative government is willing to go back on its word to break an international agreement signed in good faith, and to break international law.’ (The former prime minister speaking in the House of Commons).

Dean Kavanagh

We work closely with customers to understand the challenges they face so we can then develop innovative new solutions that exceed their needs. (The managing director of QED Environmental Systems explains the genesis of the BIOMETHANE 3000 fixed system analyser, which was designed and manufactured in the UK). 

Andrew Bailey

‘Yes it’s in the tool bag, but that does not imply anything about the probability of us using negative interest rates at the moment.’ (The governor of the Bank of England speaking about the possibility of negative interest rates on a British Chambers of Commerce webinar). 

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash

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Richard Yarrick-Holmes
Associate Editor
September 25th 2020, 10:10am

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