Neil Kinnock on the speech that changed the Labour Party

This is a Global Player original podcast. I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code. Outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos. Of a Labour council, a Labour Council hiring taxis to scuttle around the city, handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.

That is the unmistakable voice and cadence of Neil Kinnock. And a bit of the unmistakable, unforgettable speech he made 40 years ago this month. at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth on the first of october nineteen eighty five. He was taking on in the most visceral, explicit. Public terms, the militant tendency, a left wing, Trotskyist organization which had infiltrated parts of the Labour Party, including taking control of Liverpool City Council.

It was a glittering highlight of Kinnock's leadership. A turning point, if not for his quest to become Prime Minister, then certainly in the slow grind of taking the party back to government. It has entered political and speech-making law, beloved of the right of the Labour Party, reviled by the left.

It is perhaps the most famous conference speech ever given. Up there alongside Margaret Thatcher's Lady Is Not For Turning, given a few years before, or her reaction to the Brighton bomb, only a year before. As the Great Britain wide party conferences draw to an end, we thought what better moment to bring the man himself now in his eighty third year into the newsagent's studio to reflect on a lot of time.

Perhaps more heroic political world, a lost style of political oratory, and a lost moment in his life which still lights up the political stage, and most of all, what it might yet teach us. of the battles to come. Welcome to the news agent. The news agents.

Neil f welcome back. Neil Kinnock. Back to News Agent Studio. For this very specific reason, which is as I say, it's forty years on from that speech which has become Perhaps the most famous speech, certainly one of the most famous political speeches of the modern age, certainly the most famous conference speech, I think. Does it feel like yesterday? Sometimes it does, though thank God it wasn't. But it

It's very, very difficult to think of it in terms of four decades. Forty years. Uh'cause you wonder what's happened in the intervening period. There gonna meet loads and loads of listeners to to this who don't remember I mean I I wasn't alive, I'm very familiar with the events, obviously, read lots about it, watched the speech many times.

Can you just give a sense of the kind of background to it in the years before? For a start, could you just explain what Militant was? I'll try to. Um From the nineteen sixties, under the guidance of a man called Ted Grant. who was formerly a member of the South African Communist Party. but somebody who embraced the idea of Trotskyism, the teaching and ideology of Lev Brunstein, whose revolutionary name was Leon Trotsky.

And one of the great figures of the Russian Revolution. He founded the Red Army. And it turned out that he was a strategic genius. But he was much too assertive and prominent, so that after Lenin died in nineteen twenty one the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Stalin.

decided that he was an enemy of the revolution and he had to flee and they eventually murdered him in Mexico. He went into hiding in Brazil. Well in Mexico. Oh in Mexico. And he was he was murdered in Mexico City. People who embrace his ideology consider that the future of the proletariat lies with permanent revolution that will secure utter transformation in all the economic and political relationships. For Ted Grant that meant when he moved to Britain that the best way to develop The changes.

that he supported as an outfit called, I think I remember, the Revolutionary Socialist League was to infiltrate the Labour Party. So basically infiltrate it, take it over. And then make it a radical revolutionary reason that the Labour Party was by far the largest mass party capable of representing the industrial working class. So

uh that policy of infiltration, of entrism, which was the tactic they adopted, became more developed. They were never a very big organization, though there was a time by the late seventies, early eighties. where they had probably a thousand full time employees, some of them devoted to selling their weekly newspaper, Militant, And others.

uh dedicated to organization. So militant was initially the name of their newspaper, but they were they were basically a secret organization. Yes, well covered certainly because uh they operated at two levels. The one was as a newspaper that tried to sell itself and its ideas. inside the Labour movement broadly trade unions and the Labour Party and what would generally be thought of the left inclined part of uh the general population. And what did they want?

they wanted nationalisation of the top 50 uh corporations, they'd said monopolies, but corporations, a living wage that was roughly double what the average uh income was, and Effectively the sequestering the takeover of much private property. So they were this Secret or semi-secret organization. They were dedicated to entryism, to taking over the Labour Party, on the ultra-left of the party.

But they weren't just just a sort of tiny, small kind of sort of outfit as there have been so many kind of through the history of the Labour Party. By the time you get to the early eighties, when you're leader after nineteen eighty three, the nineteen eighty three general election

They have an MP or they have a couple of MPs and they have basically taken over Liverpool City Council. Yes. Why were they so strong in Liverpool? Well, they uh decided because of a Liverpudlian guy called Peter Taff, very bright, very persuasive. was a dedicated supporter of Ted Grant and the Reverishly Socialist League. They developed their organization. particularly in Liverpool. They were headquartered in London.

but they developed particularly in Liverpool, which is a city, a swirling city, a port city, with a racetrack, with all of the effects of deindustrialization. on a very rapid and gigantic scale. So people were rightly, justifiably, utterly brass off with the existing order. And you have the factory government which is in place at the time with a radical economic programme. Historically, in any case Liverpool has been a city

prone to sectarianism. Yes. Throughout history, Protestant and Catholic, but that had faded. That wasn't the problem. But it was a city that had been run by tendencies, groups. uh sometimes on the right of the Labour Party, sometimes sometimes Liberal. sometimes on the left of the Labour Party, and a city that had been run with reasonable efficiency but always with a vested interest grouping in charge. I think often that militant was simply the latest in the whole series.

of cadres, of groupings, of ideologically motivated, organized groupings. wanting to take over the civic government system. And what militant and other left wing groups were able to do entries groups that were able to do at that time, was to take advantage of the fact that in places like Liverpool but other places as as well, places like Bermansey and uh and others, you know, where local Labour parties had been allowed to

Well they were sort of run to keep people out, you know, they're very small they were dominated by the old old guard of the Labour Party. They didn't actually want new members. I could have taken you to people who would say when they applied to join the Labour Party simply out of political enthusiasm, I'm sorry we're full up. No, it which is uh Because those local parties didn't want new people. Exactly. Because they could run it in their own way. That's right. Yeah. And so actually

These groups actually found it easy to take over these places because the actual local Labour Party had atrophied and decayed. Absolutely. I heard Ken Livingstone giving a talk once. He wasn't militant, of course. But he was on the left of the party. Well there were fifty seven varieties of ultra left in London, known generally speaking as the Looney London Left.

But Ken was very popular in some quarters, and I heard him giving a talk to the campaign for Lib Party Democracy, explaining the numbers here. And he said, Really, all you need to do in a ward where it's usual for six people to turn up regularly is get seven people to turn up. And you can be a candidate for the council and in the Safe Labour Ward get elected. No, I mean point is it was said with a degree of cynicism

But it was true. Uh it's just politics in effect. And I wasn't shocked. I was appalled, but not shocked if you know what I mean. And your leader, nineteen eighty three, military in control of Liverpool Council.

What are they doing? What makes them unusual in Liverpool? Uh unusual to the extent that they were taking the uh strategy of protest and disobedience. to the government that bit further than some other councils were doing. I spoke of something called the Dented Shield, which was a defense of those councils that were sailing close to the wind in terms of their budget.

but nevertheless acting within the law in order to stay in office, not be barred from office, to protect the communities that they represented. In uh Liverpool Militant were going that bit further by defying the government. They actually got away with it one year. In nineteen eighty four. Uh in nineteen eighty three. But when nineteen eighty-four came And the 84-85 financial year, uh, they said that there were no circumstances in which they would try to fix.

a legal budget within the limits set by the government. So to be clear, what was go ha what was happening is is that the Conservative government, the Thatcher government, were setting budgets and in Liverpool's case They were in militant controlling them. They were basically refusing to adhere to those budgets. They were basically setting illegal budgets and basically daring the government. to take them on. That's right. And they extended that over a period of several months.

Coming to the conclusion eventually, they say as a tactic, that they would declare thirty thousand of their staff redundant as a way of embarrassing the government into providing them with in additional funds. But of course that did mean that literally in the phrase that I used, they were sending taxis scuttling around the city, handing out redundancy notices to their own workers. Well that's some

Let's listen to this probably the most famous part of the speech and it's the bit that still excites people in a way to this day. Let's just listen to what you said about that specific point. I'll tell you what happens with impossible promise. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma called And you go through the years sticking them up Outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos.

Of a Labour council, a Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle around the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you No matter how entertaining, how fulfilling the short-term egos I'm telling you you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services.

What do you think when you watch that back now, forty years on? I wish I hadn't had to do it. That was the feeling I had when I actually made it. But in a sense of course that was the easy part denouncing them. eight months, I think, of evidence gathering. and of examination of effectively non legal trial, abiding by the rules of natural justice.

where we heard the case of people that I would eventually propose for expulsion. But to be clear, just on that point of the of the taxi thing,'cause I'm sure particularly to younger listeners it will sound really old in a way, and the younger viewers. That's what the council were doing. They were literally And they terrified people. Because the public sector unions wouldn't actually hand out the notices themselves. That's right.

said we're not gonna take these redundancy notices around in order to fulfill your tactical Fooling a boat. Because what they were doing and it goes back to the when you mentioned Trotsky, without getting too sort of abstract, one of Trotsky's ideas is this idea of transitional demands. So you make demands that are so outrageous Impossible Impossible.

So the theory goes, basically will prove to the workers that the capitalist system cannot deliver for them and will then lead them to a revolutionary conversation. I can give you perfect instances of resolutions passed at constituency level, trade union level, national conference level. that were utterly impractical, the fulfillment of wild ideals. I, you know, in some ways I could applaud because, you know, theoretically you could see the purpose of it.

but were never ever going to be accepted or implemented by the Labour Party or the Labour leadership, including me. So then the next thing for the would-be revolutionary to do is to accuse me and the leadership of the party of betrayal, of treachery. So the ultra-left would be succeeding in getting prominence for its proposals, its impossible proposals. And then because rational, sensible, democratic socialism wouldn't have anything to do with the proposals, that they were completely selling out

to the capitalist class and betraying the interests of the proletariat. And they were it was it was pantomime. And in order to satisfy that, as you say They were willing to make a lot of people redundant. Oh, sure. To show I mean they insist. They still are insisting those who survive.

that it was only a tactic. It was only to dramatize their condition. They never would have fulfilled the redundancies. But the thing is they jammed themselves into a corner where if the government didn't provide supplementary funding and they wouldn't then uh they were gonna be stuck with redundancy notices that were made valid by the fiscal circumstances. And how long had you been considering

Before making the speech, taking it. I would have done it the year before, but nineteen eighty four, at the time of conference, we were halfway through the minus straight. And the Labour movement, understandably, was utterly preoccupied with the strike, the merits or demerits of the strike, the offences against civil rights. taking place in the policing of the strike, the consequences for mining communities which were devastating,

and nobody would have been listening and even if they had been listening, they wouldn't have responded in the way that you heard on the recording the Labour Party conference audience did respond. Now I didn't know. that they were going to be responding quite as vociferously, quite as enthusiasm. You can hear it in the hall. With huge support. But I knew I had to take the risk. I mean in a sense To lead is to take refuge. Um why did you feel you had to take the risk?

the tactics of militant and some others on the ultra left up and down the country were inflicting dreadful harm on the reputation of the Labour Party. I mean people quite sensible people, thoughtful people, were thinking that we were in danger of being taken over if we hadn't already been taken over.

by a lunatic fringe. Did it make were people paranoid about it in the sense of because of these secret kind of organisations? Were people paranoid about it? Are you militant, are you not? I mean some paranoia is justifiable. I I have to say, I didn't suffer from it. But there were colleagues in Parliament. Whose lives were making hellish. by the constant nagging and campaigning.

of militant people and ultra-left people in their constituency. Perfectly good, hard-working, dedicated members of Poland. people of talent and integrity were under terrible pressure so that they were they hated the idea of their general constituency meetings because they would be under perpetual attack. Were you nervous before making it? Uh, no more than I always was before making speeches. I mean I

It that might seem strange to you. I I do not like speaking in public. No way. Well you But you're amazing. Well there I mean there are lots of boxers who don't like boxing. and they're football players who get very uptight before going on the field. So I mean you do it I mean the only reason that I became leader of the party was

'Cause it was nobody else. It was it was duty. I'cause so many had lost their seats in the years of re election. I mean it was a utter disaster. We'll be back with more from Neil Kinick just after this.

With a ward win. Okay, under random. American week is next. Reporting from the heart of Life. Leading Britain's conversation. The news agents. Did you know, Neil, it's as I say, gone down in a sort of law, in political law, particularly the best part of the speech. No, well we'll listen to another part of the speech which I think probably is even better. Did you

Did you think this was make or break for you? Did you have a sense of how momentous this moment was going to be in your leadership? Oh, I knew that if we didn't do it and follow it through with effective expulsions and the complete transformation of the party in Liverpool and one or two other places, then we were going to drag around this huge lead weight.

of being misrepresented and misinterpreted for years and years to come. It had to be done. Had to be done. Is it true you didn't sleep before? Oh, I never did though. I used to write all my conference speeches and i quite a lot of other speeches overnight. I stayed up all night. Well you you wrote it the night before? Yeah.'Cause I've because of the

huge diversity of issues that I had to address as leader of the party anyway. And because I'm a lazy sod, I suppose, I I never got round to actually composing the speech. in a written form until the night before. So about half past ten. On the Monday night before the Lib Party Conference, I would get my team of two or three people together and start to write my conference speech. There was one occasion, nineteen eighty six, I recall, when su nye, now baroness nye, wonderful woman.

brought the last two pages of the speech onto the platform after I'd started speaking. That's what they call hitting the dead. No, no, no. Really? No. I mean Can you imagine there's probably no conference speech has been done like that now for decades ago through endless focus groups. through the night, but he used to get a couple of hours. Uh and but he used to worry and rewrite and worry and rewrite, even though he'd arrived at the conference venue with uh a drafted speech.

that they'd been putting together, he and his people had been putting together for weeks before and then he would rewrite and rewrite. And he he never got a lot of sleep before his conference speech, but he he did get some kip. The the thing is I mean I've a serious flaw. Uh in amongst many other flaws for me, is I can't use other people's words, you see. I So it's all your own words. Yeah, yeah. Even when I was in the European Commission and obviously had official statements to make.

and arguments and figures to use. I would take those from my civil servants. I had great people working in my department. terrific from all over the European Union. I would take that, but I would then rewrite them. So much so there's a guy called Wolfgang Elzner, who was a German civil servant, quite a senior manager by the time he finished. Who when I left the transport uh portfolio did um guide for kinnock speechcrafters.

Some of which, of course, did reflect uh my inclinations and tendencies for being infinitive shall not be split. Uh you know, all kinds of things. I you're welcome to see it. It's hanging on my office walk. Could you have one of those for John Sopel? Well I'm sure, yes. I'll tell you a story about John afterwards. Oh right. When he was very, very, very young. Really? Hard to imagine that. Yes. But I I mean I it it's duft. I've had great people working for me. Yeah. They've drafted speeches.

which have ended up with other people and they haven't had a change of word and they've done it and people have clapped and it's been very good. Your speeches are so good even Joe Biden decided to take them on of course.

Yeah, and and Gary Hart and a few others. But with attribution, that's the sense. Yes, yeah. How did it feel to deliver? For people who haven't seen it and people watching this will watch it, but it's worth going to see. You know, other bits of the speech. I mean it looks electric. I mean because you've obviously you're getting huge support. But you've also got members of of militant, you know, people

On Liverpool City Council, Derek Hatton there, he was the deputy leader of Liverpool City Council, very famous figure at the time, screaming at you. You've got Eric Heffer, who was a left-wing Labour MP, storming out as you say that. Could did you notice that? Could you see them? Yeah, I could see Eric getting up. out of the my fringe vision and I thought because we'd had some previous confrontations that he might try to hit me.

What on on the stage? Yeah, I mean he was he was absolutely raging man. with me. He was absolutely outraged, which is why he walked out. And because of our previous history, I thought he might try to click me as he goes past. What li live? Like lamp you run fast.

I mean it was that kind of occasion. So I I got my feet in the right position consciously while I was speaking. That was going through your head at that time. Yeah, so if he'd taken a swing at me he would have missed. Anyway. What would you have done back? Well I it depends on whether he tried again. Uh but anyway that would Lapped him back? Well yeah. I mean be uh in order to prevent him from making the same mistake again.

The uh I mean it it didn't come to that and it was only flashing across my mind this silly sod is gonna take a swing at me. Which he didn't, fortunately. He was much too sensible in the end. But he was stocked a completely aflame with anger, and he he walked out. I could not believe my luck as I reflected afterwards. that Hutton and Milhorn and the other ones were standing up and shouting at me.

You you can't really anticipate what the reception is going to be. Why? Because it made them look frenzied and It was terrific. I could say I'll tell you and you listen. Which in a sense w obviously without any form of rehearsal or anything, or anticipation, uh, made the speech, dramatized it. So it got uh It would have got a lot of notice, but it got even more notice than I anticipated.

Do you think I mean as you say, people like Heifer the the left that part of the left, I mean, they did come to loathe you, you know viscerally. Well heffer said to me and we'd we'd previously been Well not close comrades, but you know, friendly. He tragically contracted uh an incurable form of cancer, and he was dying. And the Speaker of the House of Commons uh put in a reception for him. in deference to his record as a parliamentarian.

And so Dennis, my wife and I went and he was there with Doris, his wife. And after three quarters of an hour or so we left. So I went up to Doris to say goodnight to her and she said good night and I shook his hand and I said, Good night, Eric, all the best and he said, I wish you were dying instead of me. Which uh But not so bitter.

things had become. Right till the end. Yeah, I mean it's I mean I understood what he was saying and how difficult it was for him to handle the reality. I think he lived for about six, seven months after that. I mean you c you can't feel anything but awful when somebody says that to you. Partly because you are repelled by it. It it's a real punch in the middle of the ice. But also you comprehend the grief.

The desperate grief was the And, I mean, if you're an adult, certainly if you're an adult with the breadth of engagement that I've had with people of all kinds, you encounter a lot of death. some of it violent death. I mean I've had friends who've been murdered, Olaf Palmer, the Prime Minister of uh Of Sweden. Joe Cox, Anna Lint, the foreign minister of Sweden who's a great friend of mine, and others who've been who've been murdered. And so you you comprehend

violent death, but also the agony of incurable disease. But even with that background, Response action came as a difficult to manage moment. I can imagine. Why do you think they loathed you so much. I mean, yes you took them on. But it didn't necessarily need to lead to that level of Is it because they thought that you were their person? Because they thought you were on the left? No they'd never voted for me. No.

uh and he ran against Roy Haversley when Tony Benn ran against me in eighty eight. So That grouping in the parliamentary party, which was, by the time we finished, very, very small, and in the party generally, Had never voted for me, which was okay as far as I'm concerned. But I d they detested me, I think, because I attacked them from the left. I told them that they were betraying the interests of democratic socialism by not making the effort.

to appeal to a breadth of the British electorate in order to say things to them like not sort of sit them down, look them in the face and say it, but in meetings where I knew that they were in the audience or on the platform listening. Things like um only people with shallow convictions are afraid of compromise. People with deep convictions are not afraid of compromise because they realize that incrementally that's how you make progress. And so if you're serious about trying to secure support

for a democratic socialist society, you will not be afraid to make compromises. But they struck this posture of purity and of course for the pure. It's very difficult to compromise, especially when they're afraid of diluting their purity if they make a compromise.

Well, as you say it wasn't even as you say the the best part of the speech. In a way some of those themes you reflected later on about what Labour had done for you. Yeah. Not being leader of the Labor Party, I owe this party every life chance I've had from the time I was a child. A life chance. of a comfortable home with working parents, people who have jobs.

A life chance of moving out of a pest and dump infested set of rooms into a decent home, built by a Labour Council under a Labour government. The life chance of an education that went on for as long as I wanted to take it. Me and millions of others of my generation got all their chances from this move. We've got to win, not for our sake, but really truly to deliver the British people from evil. Let's do it.

Yeah, I was just looking there at the sourness of John Maynard and Dennis Skinner sitting immediately behind me or devotees of Ben and Heifer but over my left shoulder My wife. Glennis, you lost a few years ago. Yeah. What did she think of the speech, do you remember? Um by custom after the leader's speech. We went back to our suite in the hotel. Leaders have a suite. Very nice, of course. Trade union movement, journalists

Um Dickie Attenborough was there, you know, lots of friends from uh uh film and the theatre and so on. And um all having a drink. And she came up to me And you had, you had got it out of your system. Yeah. And it was a turning point. Yeah, there was a turning point for the Labour Party for sure. Oh so they say, yeah. You think it was, when you look back? I guess at the time it was, but manifestly not enough.

uh we still had a long way long long way to go. And actually it took another twelve years after that. to get Tony Bland to government with a huge majority. So um Did he ever say anything to you about that stuff? Oh yeah, he's he's always been very kind about it. Yeah. I suppose he probably thinks it was a key Oh yes. Key stepping stone to his own victory in ninety seven. Yeah, I mean he s he said um quite frequently He must have been in the hall, I assume.

Uh He was an MP by then, he was an MP, yes, he'd been an MP years there. Yeah, he was in in the hall. Gordon was there, obviously. And you know, Tony said afterwards when he became Prime Minister very generously said he couldn't have done what he did if I hadn't done what I did. So you know that's a degree of compensation.

W w you were talking before you um you came in, um, saying that you'd just been you'd just been doing a talk at a school and one of the questions was um why it is the left has so much more tendency to kind of fragment and uh be divided than than the right. And obviously what you were doing in that speech was was taking on some of that fragmentation and that division. I wonder do you think that's still true on the right? I mean in a way the right

in British politics now is becoming more radicalised. And you see a lot I wonder do you see a lot of some of the tendencies that you saw then on the left on the right today, a lot of those same hallmarks. Well, no there'd several several parallels. Uh and this is the point I made when I was answering these very smart youngsters who were questioning me. I mean the frequency of division on the left is because on the left of politics everywhere in the world there are idealists and ideologues.

And there is always an element of people always hopefully not in a majority making decisions but they always exist who want victory in a democracy on their terms. And of course in a democracy. You can't do that. You can get some of what you want, but you get victory on the terms set by the electorate. decided beforehand by some always brilliant junta of political geniuses. So then you get in the divergences and arguments.

of ideals and ideologues, tacticians and strategists, the divisions that go with it. I've never really come to terms with it, but that's the reason right. On the right Because they represent vested interests, generally speaking, they are more disciplined. I won't say cohesive, but disciplined. so that under pressure they tend to stand shoulder to shoulder, face outward and fix balance.

Which is one of the reasons why the Tory party has ruled for most of the last century and more. Because they're much more disciplined. It isn't that they don't have disagreements. Now, what's happened in our generation, in this century, is Conservatives in defeat smashed in nineteen ninety seven after eighteen years in government. Wandered round bewildered for a bit.

then thought they should move radically to the right and they picked Ian Duncan Smith. They then had to get Michael Howard in to repair the damage. Then they picked nice Mr Cameron. who looked like, sounded like air cord in some ways, Tony Blair. And they eventually got coalition with the Liberals. Since that time, they've deluded themselves as some on the ultra left always had, that if they only changed the leadership.

their fortunes would be transformed. And I in the history of the Conservative Party, of course, there's never been the repetitive change of leader that we've seen in the last what is it, nine years since the Brexit referendum. And there are errors now being made by the right. Which failed to satisfy the public desire for real change. And superficially, and I hope temporarily. not desire for change.

is articulated by reform, who of course are not a change party. They're very much the same party, but they sound as if they want a significant change. How do you think Starmer's dealing with Farage?

He made a very, very good speech last week. Well you say you how do you think it ranks his conference? We were talking about your conference speech in eighty five. What did you make of his in twenty twenty five? You think? Yeah, and his heart and soul were in it. The trouble is, and I'm sure he would agree, I haven't been in touch with him other than to say, Well done which I'm not patronizing him. I it's important that people

know when they've done well. I'm very much in favor of giving essay writers A's when they've really tried and done the homework. But I give Keir an A-plus for that speech. But I'm sure he would take the view, as certainly I do, it's a pity he had to make it. Uh but it was necessary for the Prime Minister to punch down on this occasion. It shouldn't be overdone. And he had to make it because of the false reputation.

that uh reform is building and the leader of the Labour Party needed to uh uh offer his view of their shallowness. and their dishonesty. Which he did in very fine form. Do you think that he's right to say that Farage's policy is racist? Do you think Faraj's racist are? Do you think Farage is a racist? I don't know if Farage is racist, only he could answer it. And you're unlikely.

to get e other thing other than some kind of slithering response. What do you make of him as a politician? Do you think he's formidable? He's a man of his age. We live in the age of celebrity and he's managed And I guess it's to his credit really as a an operator, to make himself a celebrity. On investigation, of course, the bottom comes out. I mean I'll give you a precise example. He goes to South Wales. makes a speech saying he wants to re industrialize

Fine. Okay. I couldn't disagree with that. except that the re-industrialization that I would suggest is investment in the development of green energy and green manufacturing. And Wales is wide open for that and is already undertaking some of that out. I hope it can be a lot more,'cause our fortunes need restoring. But way of reindustrializing was to say he wanted to reopen the coal mines.

And restart the blast furnaces. Anybody who knows anything about coal and steel, and this includes most of the people living in South Wales. knows you can't reopen a coal mine and you can't restart a blast furnace. You can build new ones, you can take new mines, but you can't reopen them. And so, you know, in the sweep of his oratory, if you can call it that, he was uh

really offering an utter fiction to the people of South Wales. When he was asked by a young woman journalist whether that was practical, he said, I quote him, there were aspirations And uh anything's achievable with the right mindset. And so everything he'd said in the previous twenty minutes came to pieces. Do you think he's dangerous? Some Labour MPs have described him as dangerous figure. Do you think he's dangerous? I he's dangerous in the sense that he offers illusions.

I mean uh his ideas on resolving or managing immigration by gigantic scale repatriation. is just on any examination empty repatriation of whom to wear by what means and so what might ring a bell in headline terms turns to ashes the moment that it's matched against reality. Do you think that Starmer's government is being sufficiently radical in its thinking to take him on, though.

Um you've talked before about the idea of a wealth tax and other things. Sure, sure but do you think you'd be radicalized? I've talked about asset taxes, right? We can talk about if you want to. But look, as I've said many times before Farajan reform will only be defeated by achievement in government, practical things that people can see to be beneficial. Like cutting the waiting list. and developing the health services, like investing in skills and new training, like building houses.

like restoring infrastructure and supporting communities, giving people back pride in where they're from and where they live and seeing that

demonstrating in very, very practical, tangible terms, that they are not left behind. That's the main way it has to be done and will be done. It's very gradually starting. And the the other way is articulate politicians who will examine very thoroughly what reform is, not just who they are, but what it is, who they've associated with, what they've said, policies that they've adopted, and expose them to the light.

I just wonder whether you think I don't know if you've heard what Robert Jenric has said this week or today about or he was recorded as saying, talking about why talking about that he was in Handsworth and you know, he didn't see a white face and that that was a sign of poor integration. He then says, you know, it wasn't about race, you know, whatever. But we see more and more of this sort of stuff. We see more and more

It feels like politics is moving very quickly in a particular direction. It's a swirl. It's a mainstream politics at the moment. And it's very, very difficult for people with the obligations and responsibilities of office like a government. Doesn't it feel like politics is galloping to the right despite the fact we have a Labour government? No not really. See what what we're seeing is galloping grievance.

People uh I encountered people everywhere were really, really brassed off. Now some people are brassed off Because of this tendency towards for what of a better phrase the right, a lot of other people are brassed off because they really think with justification that they've been left behind, that their hopes and aspirations are being neglected. I mean you talk to a young couple who want to buy a house. Something I mean my wife and I in nineteen sixty seven

moved into our n relatively new or five year old three bedroom semi-detached house with a garden back in front and a garage on the Monday after we were married. Our house. I mean we had a mortgage obviously, but we never had any doubt. Well we were graduating, that we were going to be able to get married and buy a house. How many young couples can do that now? So when you're in that situation, and I'm only giving that as an instance. difficulty of having realistic aspirations.

Hope that can be fulfilled.

Are the ones who are managing to speak to that grievance so effectively. I mean for example we know they're offering very, very simplistic responses, never answers. But for immensely complex problems. But for example in you know, part of the country you know best you n you know that you're from Wales

From South Wales, reform doing really, really well, suggestion that Labour could come third or fourth in the Senate elections next year. Do you think if that were to happen Keir Starmer would be his leadership would be under threat? I'm not gonna even guess about that. Partly because of mails from the swirl. Anybody will give you or pretend to offer you an acrid

estimate of the outcome next May in Wales, in Scotland, in local elections. Given how successful Labour has been in Wales for a century, it would be a body blow, wouldn't it? Quite I mean that's part of the reason. for a degree of difficulty no. We've been the majority uh political representatives of Wales for a century. indeed over a century hundred and one years, I think. Now, in some quarters, of course, that could produce complacency. The party in Wales has stayed sufficiently Awake.

Not to become complacent, take things for granted. But of course if we've been there a long time, the assumption By parts of the electorate will always be, for reasons I understand, that they are being taken for granted. And occasionally they'll want to stick you in the eye with a very sharp stick. And there's some of that.

But I mean I well I've got a lot of faith in the current leadership of the party in Wales. Illenette Morgan, she's a dear, dear friend. She's doing the job out of total commitment and duty to Wales and the Labour Party and I hope that that will come through with increasing illumination over these coming months. You know a thing or two about deputy leadership elections. Do you and divisive one?

Are you are you uh backing a candidate in this one? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm backing Lucy Powell. Lucy Powell. Yeah, that's public knowledge. Why's why's that? Well, I mean part from the ask she's been a very good friend and comrade for over twenty years, since she was a kid. But she's also a highly intelligent woman with a very practical

She wants to solve problems. Is there a danger that having a deputy leader outside the cabinet might be rather unstable? No, and this is not a divisive deputy leadership election. When you think of some that we've had, uh the height of moderation politeness. Would you like to see Angela Rayner back in the cabinet? Uh she will be at some stage.

Do you think she's a very capable woman? Do you think she was a victim of classism? That's what some people said. Uh I guess so, but what did for her is that she inadvertently got her tax position wrong. And so uh I guess in these days she had no alternative but to resign.

Just uh one final thing. Um we're looking back on that speech it was forty years ago. I know you say you didn't like doing it, Neil, but remarkable really, because it is an a remarkable example of political oratory. We don't really get

that sort of thing that much these days. Do you think that's a problem? Well, I I I think I might be partly to blame for that in a funny kind of way. Really? Uh well, I got such a belting for being the Welsh wind bug because to a degree in the tradition of some Welsh people, some Scots, some Yorkshire people, I've always been willing to use colourful language in order to paint pictures in making a political argument.

I say that in my own defence. Nobody else is going to defend me, so I might as well. Anyway, that gave me a very bad name. And what was worse and probably true, was for much of the time that I was leader of the party, I couldn't afford to say what I really meant. 'cause I was in the process of making huge changes in policy. And if I'd rehearsed those arguments too publicly too early, then the opponents of change would have organized against me. So uh sometimes I had to use long Tortured.

Answers. too many words in order to evade the question. And it got on my nerves. And I think it got on the nerves of discerning public. So maybe there was something in the Welsh windbug, but I was employing it as a tactical necessity. And I think what's happened is People who've got the capability of being fluent and articulate and respecting their audiences enough to want to bring them into the argument. I've been frightened to use the colourful language. In case they attracted

the criticism I did. Were you not sat there watching Keir's speech last week going, Oh come on, ki Keir, give it a bit of welly. Give it some of the ki kinaconian kind of welly. No, but if you gotta do that, it's no damn good. It's gotta be the absolute straight, authentic article. If you're pretending, forget it. Sit down and shut up, because your audience, if there's anything to it,

They will smell it. There's no good saying I'm gonna give it some welly today. You either get up and say what you mean or you shut up. Okay. Thanks so much. Thank you. My absolute pleasure. The news agents. Well, for me, a geek of political history, what you hadn't noticed, that was a complete treat. Neil Kinnock is a walking treasure trove of modern British political life because he has lived so much of it.

And the thing I always feel, meeting him, interviewing him, is he is everything that people say they want these days politicians to be. He is completely himself, his authentic self. He is warm, he is sincere, he is a proper human being, warts and all, faults and all, rounded and all. His heart, that big Welsh heart for all to see, with the astonishing

searing love he so obviously had for his beloved wife, Glynnis. The greatest Prime Minister we never had? Well that's for others to say, but I think I'm willing to stick my neck out and say that he would have perhaps been the nicest. That is it from all of us for this week. Thanks as ever to our production team on the news agents Georgia Foxwell, Rory Simon, Natalie Inn, Shane Fenley, Anna Georgievich, Mikey Baggs, Michaela Walters and Arvin Badawell, our executive producer.

Is Louis Dagenhart. Our editor is Tom Hughes. No John or Remily today. They're on the Robert Genrick Handsworth Walking Tour. Oh, it's not racist. They're just counting white faces as they do it. The good news is we'll all be back integrated together on Monday.

And remember, if you can't get enough of us, or well me, listen to my LBC Sunday show, all the big interviews and the best analysis, unlike the ones on TV. It's not actually boring. And download, Coining It, my new documentary series if you haven't already. We will see you on Monday. Have a lovely week. This has been a Global Player original production.