Neil Kinnock, Labour leader from 1983 to 1992 and now honorary president of the party’s Movement for Europe group, is unequivocal about where he stands on Britain’s future relationship with the EU.
“Oh, I think the rational argument is to seek to rejoin,” he says, as we sit in his bijou – or broom cupboard-like – office in the House of Lords. “Unfortunately, it would be absurd to try to put a date on it.”
He stops. “I mean, next Monday would be fine, as far as I’m concerned.”
Kinnock was a European Commissioner for a decade straddling the turn of this century, and the Commission’s vice-president for half of that. He is now the heart of the Movement, the affiliated pro-European Labour body that is chaired by MP Stella Creasy.
The LME was founded in the late 1960s, he says, largely by people who would go on to leave the party to form or join the SDP. It had a phase when it had “about four pence in the account. I’m not kidding, maybe threepence,” revived under Kinnock’s own firmly pro-European leadership of the party and now boasts more MPs as members than the Tories have MPs in total.
During the latter days of his leadership, and those of his immediate successors, Kinnock says the Movement became “near moribund” as there was little need of a group to promote pro-Europeanism in a party for which it was the settled will. “Just literally, one or two, literally less than a handful of Labour MPs were anti-European by the late 1980s, early 90s, and that’s how it continued,” says the now 82-year-old.
That, he thinks, changed in 2015 when the handful who were assumed the reins of power. “[Jeremy] Corbyn never recovered from adolescence, when he first took up with the Labour movement and became deeply impressed by Tony Benn,” he says. “And he’s one of those people, and they do exist, who made up his mind when he was a teenager, and hasn’t changed it since, regardless of shifting realities. I’ve always thought that people who were afraid of evolving and compromising are people with very, very shallow convictions, fragile convictions, that they’re afraid of compromising, and Corbyn was one of those. So the anti-Europeanism of Tony Benn lived on until 2015 when Corbyn got himself elected.”
Things have now changed. But, last December, Creasy gave an interview to the New European in which she spoke firmly against campaigning to rejoin the EU (the headlined quote was “Brexit is a bad dream… but there’s no Bobby Ewing moment”). Her view was that the aim should not be to rejoin but to mitigate the worst of Brexit’s effects. It was, shall we say, divisive with readers. How do they tally with Kinnock’s views?
“I mean, Stella is an active, very active Member of Parliament, elected Member of Parliament, and I think that it’s natural and necessary for her to express herself in the way that she has,” he says.
“I am not an elected Member of Parliament. I’m nominated and in an unelected house, so I have a degree of freedom of expression that is not available to a Member of Parliament, simple as that, and if I was still an MP I’d observe the same restraint that Stella does.
“Because she’s got to focus on what in the recognisable future could be attainable. And what could be attainable is a very significant reappraisal of our relationship with the European Union and the establishment of a new relationship, the so-called reset, and it’s sensible for our people in Parliament to pursue that objective.
“Re-entry into the Union – that’s within my aspiration and imagination. That’s not going to happen in the near future. There are people in the Commission, both as senior civil servants and as members of the Commission, who favour a closeness of relationships with the United Kingdom that very closely resembles membership. But, of course, they are not the elected governments of democratic states.
“So they can entertain hope in the way that I can and even privately express hope in the way that I can, but I wouldn’t expect them to write essays or produce white papers. I mean, that’s just not where it’s at.”
Kinnock was in Brussels as recently as December to attend memorial meetings for his wife, Glenys, a well-respected MEP for Wales and later minister for Europe under Gordon Brown, who died in 2023. Neil tears up at her mention.
“That was, that was great,” he says. “Obviously I took the opportunity to talk to very senior people, some of whom had been very junior people when they worked for me a long time ago, 30 years ago – Christ, is it 30 years since I went to the European Commission? But obviously they’ve got promotions. They’ve become very senior. They are very responsible decision-makers, and they will remain good friends of mine, and I see them from time to time, especially when they come to London and we have a good catch-up.
“And I mean, they are very UK-phile – I don’t like to say anglophile. And they were devastated in 2016, not simply on sentimental grounds. They wanted the United Kingdom to be part of the European Union, but on very basic civil, political grounds – they valued the engagement of the UK, because, as I think a lot of people who’ve worked in and around the European institutions know, the United Kingdom took a leading part in all the major developments from 1973 on, in a peculiar and almost mystical way, frankly.
“There was a reliance on the United Kingdom always to provide what I called an international rudder, a second opinion, a degree of reservation and objectivity that maybe had something to do with the width
of the Channel or history or political and education systems. I don’t know what it is, but a certain amount of value was always placed on British pragmatism.”
The problem, he continues, was that it was Britain who “neglected it utterly. I’ll give you an example. Tony Blair is without any question, an absolutely committed European who made terrific speeches about the necessity, the practicality, the utility of our engagement in the Union, economically, politically, socially, culturally, but never in the United Kingdom. Not a word. I only refer to it, not to embarrass Tony, but to highlight the nature of our engagement and our relationship.”
The pattern of Britain’s future relationship, he says, is “very straightforward” – “to undertake negotiations, sectoral negotiations in the various identifiable areas where we need to make progress. Obviously, security, obviously alignment, obviously sanitary and phytosanitary arrangements, on non-tariff, impediments to trade in both directions.
“I mean, the figures produced by the OBR and more widely about the massive reduction in exports to us from the EU, and exports from us to the EU are startling. Even for those of us who anticipated a real nosedive. I mean, it’s been a vertical fall off the top of a very high building.
“So if we look at those sectors, and they include arrangements for equivalence of standards, rules, laws, making a tiny bit of progress with that. Those sectors individually constitute small steps. Collectively, they could, within a relatively short time, represent a great stride, most importantly, in the firm re-establishment of trust and the acquaintance and the integrity of the relationship that comes from that. And that will take us a major distance towards restoration of what I think of as normality.
“It is normal for us as a European country that God knows has contributed hugely to the liberty and diversity of our continent. It is unnatural, abnormal, for us not to be engaged in the economic and political organisation and presence of the European Union. It’s just abnormal.”
That’s his hope. Is hope confidence? “I’m absolutely certain that that is their intention, their desire,” he says. “There’s no doubt at all about that.”
He admires Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister and Harold Wilson biographer who is doing much of the work in this area on Keir Starmer’s behalf (“a very good bloke, I’m not saying that just because he’s Welsh”). “There have been 70 engagements between British ministers and counterparts in the European institutions since August. I mean, that’s quite a number. That’s a lot of movement to and fro. I’m sure that Eurostar has benefited accordingly.”
But he still can’t, or won’t, hide his dissatisfaction at the pace or, indeed, the nature of Starmer’s much-vaunted red lines, on the single market, customs union or freedom of movement of any kind. “What’s not available is the material evidence of progress being made. And I find that very frustrating,” he says.
“To some extent, it is a natural requirement of preparation and familiarisation. I mean, not only have we been out for four years, completely out for four years, and then only semi-engaged for four years before that, but the framework, the structure of our relationship, has been dismantled in terms of the civil service, in terms of orientation, in terms of professional commitment, and all the other things that have got to be put back together again. So to some extent, the delay is a structural problem that is being repaired.
“OK, but the other part of it must be the trepidation which the government feels about better engagement, because they’re fearful of being accused of being participants in some kind of Remoaner plot. They’re not actually, but I wish they were.” He laughs.
“I think the tide has been shifting for four years, maybe more. It is manifestly moving now, when the number of people who really stick hard on utter rejection of improved engagement with the European Union is down to about 25% and you know, if that doesn’t say to the government, look, there’s been a permanent and very gradual but continuing movement of opinion… most of it is attributable to a real reappraisal of what our disengagement is costing in economic and political terms, and more and more people recognising it.”
Kinnock visibly bristles when I wonder what conversations he is having with Starmer and his team, especially the suggestion that he might have the ear of the leader, of whom he has been a firm supporter.
“I mean, they’re very polite and very kind to me, very courteous to this Brontosaurus,” he says. “There’s still one roaring around the jungle. But I mean, I used to get Tony and Gordon agreeing with me, sometimes even taking notes and saying how much they agree with me, and then doing damn all about it.
“I suppose that’s the decorative fate of a former leader who’s still got friends around the place. So don’t set too much by the fact that they answer my texts.” He laughs again.
The current quiet “could mean that in May something really tangible emerges… I’m expressing hope about clear, tangible beginnings of achievement being possibly in May. I mean, I’m going to be really bloody disappointed if it doesn’t happen.”
On Starmer’s red lines, however, he is very clear that he thinks them a mistake.
“This is almost a statement of my basic philosophy as somebody who’s had to engage in a lot of negotiations over the last 50 years, I guess,” he says. “I’ve got to question the idea of the vocabulary of red lines before negotiations start. I mean, there are some people who say, in order to negotiate effectively, you must start out with red lines. I don’t accept that, first of all, because they don’t mean a hell of a lot if the advantages of crossing them become really gigantic.
“If the advantages of crossing them are manifestly gigantic, they are crossed. And the second thing is, what do you do as a follow-up act? If, by insisting on red lines, you have so narrowed the area for negotiation as to nullify it? Well, what’s the point of the red lines? You know? So I’m not keen on the red lines talk. It sounds like virility. Actually, it’s often impotence.”
He is stronger yet on what the second coming of Donald Trump means for relationships, between Britain and Europe, America and Europe, Britain and America (we speak before Trump’s announcement of talks with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine and subsequent volte-face on the conflict).
“It appears that, from what Peter Mandelson has said and the general expressions and reversal of critical statements that we’ve heard in the last few weeks that the government is going to try its pragmatic best to have a productive and calm relationship,” he says.
“Such is the nature of Trump, he can’t be relied upon from minute to minute, and so I think the government has probably got to try to avoid offence up to the point where it becomes self-defeating, because the problem is with Trump – and the last thing I would do is to try to tender advice to the government on this, I’m just expressing a personal opinion – Trump will abuse any form of deference. He will consider that it’s evidence of weakness, and he will exploit it mercilessly.
“He’s like all bullies, he needs a bump on the nose. Metaphorically speaking, of course. And it is very, very difficult, given the sheer scale of American power, to have that, to have the audacity, to risk offending him, bloody difficult.
“Because, I mean, the guy is motivated by vengeance. That’s how immature he is. I mean, he’s a big kid in the playground, and in a sense, that’s the one kind of persona that democratic powers haven’t had to deal with since 1945. I mean, we’ve faced superpowers by being part of the superpower. And so there’s been this balance of terror and the degree, therefore, of dangerous serenity. But now all that’s gone.”
The answer? To seek to rejoin the EU. And that, he insists, is what he and others within his party will continue to campaign and fight for.
“What we do recall is that in the Tory Party, the anti-engagement hardcore never went away, and they nagged on for over 40 years,” he says. “The pro-engagement element in the Labour Party is not going away. That’s for certain.”
