Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock PCis a British Labour Party politician. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1983 until 1992, making him the longest-serving Leader of the Opposition in British political history...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth28 March 1942
ideas britain skeptic
I take notice of those who have argued consistently for the modernisation of the E.U., but so many of the skeptics in Britain are just hostile to the whole European idea.
political intellectual way
[Marx's theories] gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did.
party people important
I must emphasise that there is nothing in the Labour Party constituion that could, or should prevent people from holding opinions which favour Leninist-Trotskyism. Certainly Marxism has, and will continue to have an important function in the Labour Party.
party historical trouble
The trouble with the Socialist Workers Party is that they live in an historical thermos-flask.
enemy idealism ideals
The enemy of idealism is zealotry.
party labour-movement answers
Is Tony Blair of the Labour party? The answer to that is profoundly 'yes', but that is not how, sentimentally, he is regarded in the Labour movement generally.
looks kind messiah
We must not look for some kind of Messiah.
resistance stains
In the U.K. the far Right is a stain on society and there is a cultural resistance to it.
everybody prime
I'm the guy everybody wanted to live next door. They just didn't want me to be prime minister.
minded
People, even independently minded people, do to an extent draw their impressions from what they are told, especially if they are told it incessantly by newspapers.
promote somebody
I'd like to be remembered as somebody who tried to promote justice.
event experience labour party prime
My first real experience of ambition was as party leader. It was my ambition for Labour to win, in which event I would be prime minister.
background critical experience people reserved whose
If we are going to have a bicameral parliament, I think there should always be a reserved place for people whose background and experience are critical to the welfare of the nation.
time
There are politicians who seethe with ambition all the time, and there are a lot of other politicians who don't. I'm in the second category, that's all.