‘Reid should not stand in Brown’s way’

Neil Kinnock on the Home Secretary’s ambitions, and Cameron

‘Call me Neil, for God’s sake,’ says Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty when he welcomes me to the chairman’s office at the British Council with its panoramic views over Whitehall and the South Bank. ‘That title makes me sound like the bloody Royal Albert Hall.’

Kinnock has always been too self-deprecating for his own good. Tony Blair’s propagandists like to suggest that Year Zero in the Labour party’s history was 1994, when their Dear Leader took charge. Others have longer memories: Kinnock heroically taking on the Militant Tendency, struggling to give the party some semblance of professionalism and, in the process, planting the seed that was one day to grow into a red rose for Mr Blair.

A youthful, almost boyish 64, Kinnock says the party’s good name is more important than his own — ‘just for the record, both Tony and Gordon have said some very nice things to me,’ he adds quickly — and he is clearly determined to be the very model of a former Labour leader.