"Our voters stopped thinking of us as the party of principle because we lost our commitment to, and confidence in, our core principles, " he said.
For example during the party's welfare review, should a One Nation Labour Party defend the principle of universal benefits - or would its concern for the poor cost, for example, better off pensioners their winter fuel allowance?
He added that his party supported the merit principle in recruitment and found the controversial 50:50 policy for PSNI recruitment "offensive".
We have a lot of judges that run in non-partisan elections, and it leaves voters having no clue who to vote for- party identification, in principle, signals to voters where a candidate stands on issues.
Many of his MPs were so fired up they placed principle ahead of party.
So the first thing he did was to defeat the alternative vision for a Republican Party that was separated from principle.
John McCain, Goldwater's successor both in the Senate and in spirit, remember Goldwater as a unique figure in American history: a politician and military leader who did not fall victim to the power of his position, but a man who stood by his principle and his party.
While they would be happy in principle to see their party's ranks swell, they are seldom willing to help by allowing their own seats to become less secure.
The Democratic Party has always stood up for the principle of counting every person's vote.
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The party said it supported the cap in principle but voted to support the amendment - arguing the current cap risked making people homeless, ultimately increasing the cost to the taxpayer.
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, says he is opposed to the principle of "land-for-peace", on which the two-state solution is based.
The Conservatives in the Lords were not pleased but in the age of Brit Pop, Cool Britannia and Sporty Spice the party couldn't openly defend the hereditary principle.
Shadow transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick said Labour supported the bill in principle, but indicated that his party's MPs could seek to make changes as the legislation began more detailed scrutiny in its passage through Parliament.
Most people view the Occupy Wall Street movement as the ideological opposite of the Tea Party, yet they share a remarkably similar motivating principle: a concern that our economic system has become fundamentally unfair.
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She said the party was looking at wider changes based on the contributory principle as part of its policy review.
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He was often willing to stake his career and his party on what he considered to be matters of great principle.
There actually are cultural and economic conditions that would richly reward a right-tilted political party with a suitably re-authenticated grounding in political principle.
His view was echoed by Sinn Fein's Pat Sheehan who said that, although he was not opposed in principle to giving police more powers, his party had difficulty with the original motion because the PSNI had not asked for more powers, and the best results came from police and statutory community agencies working together.
Mr Sadr agreed in principle last month to trade armed insurgency for peaceful party politics.
Like Gaitskell, Mr Obama now stands accused by his own party's bitter progressives of lacking fire, fight, principle and backbone.
However, the party insisted that it was merely protecting the D'Hondt principle.
The teenagers were originally charged with murder under joint enterprise, a legal principle which allows people to be prosecuted for being party to an offence that they could have foreseen because of their common criminal intentions.
The fact of the matter is Americans are rightfully upset by the dysfunction they see in Washington when you have, in particular, one House of Congress and one party within that House of Congress adamantly refusing to go along with a principle that is endorsed by a vast majority of the American people, including a majority of Republicans out in the country.
Some say, with evidence, that the Tea Party is not a new movement, but instead a new name and organizing principle for both fiscal and social conservatives.
The principle he seeks to uphold is that the schools run by the Shas party, another coalition partner, cannot get more money from his ministry unless they institute rigorous administrative reforms.
Opposition parties support reforms in principle, but have little incentive to make life easy for a president whose party opposed those self-same reforms when they were in power.
The Green Party - which is a member of the left-wing government - is opposed in principle to a third airport, arguing that it should be sited in the provinces to encourage decentralisation.
Therefore, in order to establish proof of principle that they can hold ground over the long-term against the Tea Party, Democrats had to at least moderately erode the gains made by Republicans in 2010.
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She said Labour believes "in the principle of universal child benefit" and had voted against the changes, although the party has not committed to reversing them if it gets into government.
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The Alliance Party's Trevor Lunn cautiously supported the motion only because it contained the words "in principle", and added the investigation currently on-going by the Treasury into the implications of a lowering of corporation tax should provide the details necessary to have a full debate on the issue.
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