“We’d all be losers” if the Conservative Party died out, Neil Kinnock has claimed in a new interview. Speaking to PoliticsJOE, the former Labour leader said that “so much of [Britain’s political] system, and the integrity of our democracy, depends upon there being a rational, forward-looking, Right-of-center party.” This force exists to “contest the ideas of democratic socialist Labour”.

Kinnock was speaking after the conclusion this week of the Tories’ conference in Manchester, where party leader Kemi Badenoch was praised for a speech in which she vowed to abolish stamp duty on primary home sales and criticized the fiscal irresponsibility of both Labour and Reform UK. This has given the Conservatives a boost after recent polling showed the party’s support was as low as 14%, putting it in fourth place behind Reform, Labour, and Zack Polanski’s Greens.

According to Kinnock, who led Labour between 1983 and 1992, “it’s going to be a long time before [the Tories] produce a leader who can become prime minister.” He criticized Badenoch’s vow to block Tory candidates who don’t support leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, labeling it “ultimately impractical and, in its inspiration, authoritarian”.

Reform UK is currently at least 10 points ahead of Labour according to most polls, and Kinnock argued that his party “could and should be focusing attention on political attacks” on Nigel Farage and his colleagues. He added that “it was essential for Keir to give attention to Reform in his [Labour Party conference] speech last week, but in some ways that need arises from the delay in getting hold of what Reform is.”

The former leader of the Opposition also highlighted a lack of media scrutiny of Farage’s party, saying: “Reform has been getting away for a long time now with half-digested facts, counterfeit statements, inconsistencies, and also managing to do without any further examination of its associations.” Last night on the BBC’s Question Time, Green Party leader Zack Polanski accused Reform of maintaining links with the Kremlin, in reference to former Reform UK Wales leader Nathan Gill, who last month admitted to accepting bribes to make pro-Russia statements in the European Parliament.

Kinnock claimed that Farage’s party offers “the snake oil of simplistic answers to complex problems”, which is “the definition of populism”. He added that Reform’s purpose is “poking the establishment with a sharp stick”, and that the party “lives off grievance”. In a separate interview in June, the former Labour leader cautioned Starmer against “trying to use the vocabulary of isolationism or segregation or division” because, as he put it,“appeasers get eaten.” Such a strategy, in Kinnock’s view, would be “mortally stupid”.

Suggesting in today’s conversation that the Prime Minister should largely delegate attacks on Reform to junior MPs, Kinnock said: “If I was a youngster in Parliament now, I would delight in taking [Farage] on.”

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is UnHerd’s Deputy Editor, Newsroom.

RobLownie

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