Ignoring prostate cancer won't beat it.

Look, politics can be tough.

Screaming 'you're wrong' at the electorate is not a good strategy for a party seeking to win back its trust.

To be concerned about immigration and the economy is not racist, but I do think there is a virus of racism that runs through Ukip.

I spent many hours slaving away, day and night, bleary eyed, on multi-million pound takeovers, mergers and acquisitions, and the rest. It could sound glamorous (especially when it involved overseas travel) but often it wasn't partly because, as a lawyer, you were not the one calling the shots.

Ukip has policies including cutting taxes for the wealthy and putting them up for everyone else, charging people to see their GP, or taking away maternity rights.

Getting from A to B can be crucial for small-business owners, self-employed people and freelancers too, who often rely on trains and buses to get around, conduct business and meet clients.

In an age of globalisation, investment and good jobs increasingly flow to cities and regions with distinctive strengths and specialisms. These cannot be built up from Whitehall. They require local expertise, knowledge and dedication.

Leaving Labour was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do and it was not a cause of jubilation or happiness. I did it with great sadness, but you have to put the country first.

My dad was this pint-sized Nigerian with an oversized personality. My mother is a tall six foot something Irish-English woman. Us walking down the street was quite an unusual sight, when I was growing up.

Too often, politicians fail to relate what they advocate to the kind of society they want to build, or they dress up policy in rhetoric which belies their actual intention. Meanwhile Joe Public is left wondering what on earth this bunch are all about and how their vision of a good society differs from that of the other lot.

Part of the reason young people are getting involved with gangs, leading to the use of guns and knives, is not the lack of stop and search but the individualistic, consumerist society we live in.

A prerequisite to the inclusive prosperity that will increase equality and reduce poverty is growth. This requires an innovative economy in which productive businesses, the state and citizens work together to create wealth and ensure that globalisation works for many more people.

If truth be told, certainly culturally, I never felt totally comfortable in the Labour party, because I've never really been a massively tribal politician.

My father was a black, working-class man who arrived here with no money in his pocket from Nigeria; my mum came from more of a middle-class background, whose father had prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremberg.

I have quite a different background from a lot of people in the Labour party - I'm of mixed heritage.

We have a really rich and diverse heritage in my family - but I sometimes felt it was a bit of a chain round my neck in the Labour party if truth be told.

Excessive pay and rewards for failure are bad for shareholders, the economy and society.

While we are clear that it is right that those who work hard, generate wealth and create jobs for our country are rewarded, where failure is rewarded or people award themselves huge pay rises that bear no relation to performance or what their companies can bear, trust is severely undermined.

One way to promote shareholder engagement and activism is through greater accountability and transparency.

Requiring fund managers to disclose how they vote would increase accountability and mean that pensioners and ordinary investors would more easily be able to see how those acting on their behalf vote on all issues, including remuneration.

There are retailers successfully combining conventional and online retail, like Argos or John Lewis.

More and more department stores are acting as the shop window for a range of retailers now, using space more efficiently to recreate the feel of the local market, creating new market opportunities for the small and the niche.

Shopping in the future can become an experience where conventional retailers can complement the success of online retailing. Government needs to work in partnership with the sector to help make this a reality.

With Tory privatisations in the past we've seen how service users can end up losing out and getting a raw deal.

We need to see many more people starting businesses and becoming their own boss, but the squeezed middle exists as much within this group as in the population at large as rising costs are hitting small businesses - who after all are consumers too.

We are determined to work in partnership with business not only towards our goal of full employment, but for more secure jobs for working people so they can get on and meet their aspirations.

Some people welcome the flexibility of a zero-hours contract. But their growth is symptomatic of a wider issue - increasing job insecurity and falling living standards in David Cameron's Britain.

We want to see more sources of alternative finance, from innovations in factoring such as MarketInvoice or in peer-to-peer lending such as Funding Circle which Labour local authorities are now using to support and invest in local businesses.

I've never bought the argument that people are apathetic about politics.

Why not let the main parties wither? Because I know of no better vehicle than the political party to enable those with common values to come together and reach a position on issues that can then be offered up as a choice of programmes for voters.

Political parties - which too often operate like closed circles - must open up.

Though I am probably guilty of indulging in excessive tribalism myself at times, I try to put partisanship to one side where appropriate.

As the world has changed through globalisation and technology, it has left many feeling left behind.

We are a great country with huge potential.

We will not try to out-Ukip Ukip. Labour is not going to offer false solutions, such as leaving Europe.

Labour is the party of internationalism and openness.

We must stop looking to the past and focus on ensuring everyone has a stake in the future.

To be clear, aiming to reduce the national debt in the long term and running small surpluses when the economy is operating close to full capacity is what I mean when I talk about seeking to 'balance the books' - a sensible approach.

When a Conservative government is presiding over unfair cuts to tax credits, chaos in the NHS and an unnecessary and ideological attack on trade union rights, it is natural that many in the Labour party should be sceptical of Tory talk on devolution - sceptical, even of government deals with Labour-led local authorities.

This country needs nothing less than wholesale federalisation. The reasons are threefold: economic, democratic and cultural.

We are all proud to be British. But we also feel more local and regional allegiances.

Sometimes it requires national impetus to deliver real change.

Some will say it isn't the government's job to manage who people meet and interact with, but there is clearly a lot it can and should do. It should offer communities much more support to manage demographic and cultural change, including investment in public services and additional housing stock in our migration hotspots.

Our differences needn't divide us, but unity takes work.

Daily we see how demographic change and uncertainty about what it means to be British is exploited by those with their own agenda; those who employ divisive rhetoric, engage in scapegoating and do nothing to tackle root causes of the insecurities people face.

I want to make sure that all GPs, not only in my constituency but across the U.K., help to raise awareness of the increased risk of prostate cancer in black men and have the knowledge to initiate these important conversations with the community.

Believe it or not, we all share the same values in the Labour party, but there will always be differences of opinion on policy - that is in the nature of the broad-church political parties we have under our flawed first-past-the-post electoral system.

Green growth is one vehicle through which technology, globalisation and environmental challenges can be turned from obstacles to solutions for problems related to growth, jobs and competitiveness.

You cannot duck the difficult issues in the middle of an election campaign.