Historically, Labour has used technology as a form of control. We would use pagers and faxes to send out messages telling people what line to take. The key learning from the Obama campaign is to use technology to empower your supporters.
We can have enhanced devolution - greater powers in Scotland - but within the strength, security and stability of the United Kingdom, and I think that's what most Scots want.
Too often, the idea seemed to be that the cost of being part of Europe was being less like Britain. So after years of fighting to defend Europe against attacks from the Eurosceptic right, it would be fatal to retreat into the same arguments and begin the battle anew.
It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
There's no doubt that what has emerged in the years after 9/11, unlike the situation in Britain, there were practices sanctioned in the U.S. that fall far below the standard of conduct that should have taken place. It is for the American system of government, in all of its branches, to address that. It is not for a British politician.
Traditionally, diplomacy was done in an environment of information scarcity. Ambassadors would send back telegrams to foreign ministries, comfortable in the knowledge that their views of a country would be the only source of information the minister would see.
I'm at one with Ed Miliband in saying that it's important that people have the right to express their democratic voices and also their deep concerns about climate change because we have a planet in peril.
