In the 21 years since he stepped down as Labour leader, Neil Kinnock has rarely loomed larger over British politics. On the pages of the conservative press, his name is continually invoked as the right-wing titles that eviscerated him seek to portray Miliband as similarly “unelectable” and “left-wing”. When Miliband delivered his speech at the Labour conference last month, it was Kinnock, as the only former party leader in attendance, whose face the TV cameras repeatedly cut to. It is his defeat in 1992, the last time a Conservative government beat a Labour opposition, that has become the shared reference point for the optimists in Cameron’s party and the pessimists in Miliband’s.
I’ve interviewed Kinnock for tomorrow’s New Statesman (the full piece will be on online later today) and here are some of the best lines.
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