Neil Kinnock served as the MP for Bedwellty (later Islwyn) in South Wales from 1970 until 1995.

From 1983 to 1992, Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party and leader of the opposition. He led Labour into two general election defeats, in 1987 against Margaret Thatcher, and 1992 against John Major.

For over a decade, Kinnock was one of Britain’s most recognisable and prominent politicians.

After leaving Parliament, Kinnock became European commissioner for transport (1995-1999) and then vice-president of the European Commission responsible for administrative reform (1999-2004).

Kinnock played a crucial role in modernising the Labour Party in the late 1980s, moving it towards the political centre ground after its heavy 1983 defeat. Many credit Kinnock for laying the groundwork that enabled the later electoral successes of Tony Blair’s “New Labour”.

Kinnock was elevated to the peerage as Lord Kinnock in 2005.

Neil Kinnock: Labour leadership (1983-1987)

Kinnock was elected leader of the Labour Party on 2 October 1983 in a first-round landslide. On the same day, Roy Hattersley was elected Labour deputy leader. The leadership pairing was dubbed the “dream ticket” by commentators and the Labour faithful, who hoped it could unite the divided party.

The leadership contest was triggered by Michael Foot’s resignation after Labour’s defeat in the June 1983 general election. The party’s manifesto – which featured commitments on unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC), the abolition of the House of Lords, higher personal taxation for the rich, and a sweeping nationalisation programme – was famously branded “the longest suicide note in history”. Labour was reduced to just 209 seats (down 60), the party’s worst result since 1935.

Kinnock, the quick-witted Welshman, had already established a reputation as a formidable platform orator. During the 1983 election campaign, he declared: “If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.”

Kinnock, the shadow education secretary, entered the 1983 contest as the frontrunner. Tony Benn, the spiritual leader of the Labour left, lost his Bristol South East seat at the 1983 general election and was therefore ruled out of the running.

Kinnock ran from the party’s Tribune left or “soft left” – and presented himself as the candidate able to unite Labour’s warring factions. He had clashed with Benn during the 1981 deputy leadership election, having refused to endorse the left-winger’s candidacy after he challenged the incumbent, Denis Healey.

In the end, Kinnock bested his rival candidates, Hattersley, Eric Heffer and Peter Shore. He won a resounding 71.3% of the electoral college. Hattersley, a heavyweight figure from the party’s social democratic right, placed second with 19.3%. Heffer and Shore won 6.3% and 3.1% respectively.

The simultaneous deputy leadership contest, given the party’s recent record of acrimonious internal bouts, was also seen as significant. Hattersley secured 67.3% of the electoral college vote. He defeated Michael Meacher, the candidate of the left.

The Kinnock-Hattersley leadership was seen as representing a balanced ticket. Speaking after his deputy leadership victory, Hattersley commented: “Between us we can do what the party needs.”

Kinnock, aged 41, was the youngest leader in Labour’s history. Foot, by contrast, was 70 at the time of his resignation.

However, Kinnock’s victory was arguably marred by an unfortunate and avoidable stumble on Brighton beach during a photo opportunity. “I’m going to appeal to your better nature now, lads”, Kinnock told the assembled photographers after the slip incident.

Kinnock’s leadership was shaped by his struggle against the party’s far-left. His 1985 conference speech delivered a forceful condemnation of Militant’s tactics in Liverpool City Council. Kinnock famously excoriated Militant for causing “grotesque chaos” in its management of Liverpool City Council – “a Labour council”. He referred to “tendency tacticians” and “gesture-generals”.

At the time of Kinnock’s 1985 address, a series of left-wing Labour councils were engaged in a high-profile dispute over budget cuts imposed by the Thatcher government. Liverpool City Council, controlled by the Militant tendency, issued 31,000 redundancy notices to its own workers, using a fleet of taxis to deliver them. Militant described the move as a “tactic” to buy time.

The most memorable passage of Kinnock’s speech directly condemned this action.

The Labour leader declared: “I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions.

“They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.”

He added: “I am telling you, no matter how entertaining, how fulfilling to short- term egos – I’m telling you, and you’ll listen – you can’t play politics with people’s jobs, and with people’s services or with their homes…

“Understand that, please, comrades. In your socialism, in your commitment to those people, understand it. The people will not, cannot, abide posturing. They cannot respect the gesture-generals or the tendency-tacticians.”

The speech was met with both heckles from Militant-aligned delegates and loud applause – resulting in a uniquely tense atmosphere. Kinnock’s address is today remembered as the beginning of a leadership crackdown on the Trotskyist group – and a moment of immense oratory.

As leader of the opposition, Kinnock clashed with Margaret Thatcher across the commons despatch box. A notable instance came during the 1985/1986 Westland affair, when Thatcher came under pressure over the future of the Westland helicopter company and the resignation of defence secretary, Michael Heseltine. The controversy came as the Conservative Party slipped to third place in the polls behind the Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which split from Labour in 1981.

Thatcher’s survival is said to have been secured by a faltering and unfocused performance by Kinnock in the commons. Addressing the commons on 27 January, Kinnock accused Thatcher of “basic duplicity”.

He added: “We want the facts. We want them now. We want only the one version that will be believed – the truth, the whole truth and absolutely nothing but the truth. If the prime minister cannot tell that truth, she cannot stay. If she will not tell that truth, she must go.”

The speech was ridiculed by Heseltine, who responded: “If there are men born for whom the highest attainment is to remain leader of Her Majesty’s opposition, the leader of the opposition is such a man.”

Kinnock led Labour into the 1987 general election.

The Conservatives under Thatcher campaigned in 1987 on a platform of continued economic reform, tax cuts, and a strong defence policy – capitalising on the beginnings of a period of economic growth known as the ‘Lawson Boom’.

On 4 June, the Conservative campaign was rattled by a rogue Gallup poll for the Daily Telegraph which showed the party’s lead as down to 4 points. At this point, David Young is said to have grabbed his cabinet colleague, Norman Tebbit, by the lapels and declared: “Norman, listen to me, we’re about to lose this f****** election.” “Wobbly Thursday”, as it became known, prompted Thatcher to back calls for more aggressive messaging. This approach was supported by Young but resisted by Tebbit.

Kinnock ran a significantly more professional campaign than Labour’s attempt in 1983. The campaign, directed by Bryan Gould and Peter Mandelson, aimed to overhaul the party’s image and that of its leader – including with a celebrated party election broadcast directed by the filmmaker Hugh Hudson (of Chariots of Fire). The slick broadcast, dubbed “Kinnock: The Movie”, was an attempt to portray the Labour leader as down to earth and understanding. Kinnock’s popularity is said to have jumped markedly in the wake of the broadcast – a factor that contributed to Conservative jitters.

Labour’s manifesto, Britain Will Win with Labour, was also a more moderate document than its unapologetically left-wing predecessor, but the party still struggled to overcome public concerns about its economic policies and its commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.

In an interview on 24 May, Kinnock claimed that Labour’s alternative defence strategy in the event of a Soviet attack would be “using the resources you’ve got to make any occupation totally untenable”.

Thatcher issued a well-refined response. She declared: “Asked this weekend how his non-nuclear defence policy would work, [Kinnock] said, and I quote, ‘You’ve got to make the occupation totally untenable’ – a Soviet occupation, I presume.

“So now we know that Labour’s non-nuclear defence policy is a policy for defeat, surrender, occupation, and finally, prolonged guerilla fighting.”

The Conservative campaign was able to rely on the support of the tabloid press. The Sun ran an article with the headline “Why I’m Backing Kinnock, by Stalin.”

The final result saw the Conservatives win 376 seats with 42.2% of the vote, while Labour won 229 seats with 30.8%. Thatcher was restored as prime minister with a 102-seat majority.

Kinnock said the election result would lead to “an even greater abyss of division than that which we witnessed previously.”

He added: “Any feeling that we have of depression is outweighed by the feeling of enormous concern about what the consequences of the re-election of a Conservative government will mean”.

Neil Kinnock: Labour leadership (1987-1992)

The party’s policy review, conducted in the wake of the 1987 election, was regarded as heretical by the left-wing Campaign Group (later Socialist Campaign Group) for its ideological concessions.

As such, Tony Benn announced he would challenge Kinnock for the leadership in March 1988. Upon launching his campaign, Benn argued that Kinnock’s leadership was abandoning core Labour principles. He pointedly described his platform as a “campaign for socialism”. At the same time, Eric Heffer, a left-wing ally of Benn’s, announced he would challenge the incumbent, Roy Hattersley, for the deputy leadership of the party.

In a joint statement, Kinnock and Hattersley dismissed the contest as “futile and selfish”.

They said: “When the priority of the huge majority of the Labour movement is to combat the Tory offensive against the health service and the poor and to secure support for our campaigns for jobs and justice, these people have chosen to turn inwards.

“Only our foes will be pleased and everyone with any sense knows it.”

The election itself took place on 2 October 1988, at the opening session of the Labour Party annual conference. It resulted in an overwhelming victory for Kinnock, who secured 88.6% of the electoral college vote to Benn’s 11.4%. Kinnock won the support of 183 MPs, while Benn secured the backing of just 38. In the deputy leadership contest, the incumbent deputy, Hattersley, was re-elected.

Kinnock led the Labour Party into the 1992 general election.

The Conservatives, led by John Major after Thatcher’s dramatic resignation in November 1990, focused relentlessly on the economy. On 6 January, the party unveiled its “Labour’s Tax Bombshell” campaign with a famous poster. The attack claimed Labour’s plans would mean tax increases of more than £1,000 for the average voter.

Labour responded by producing its tax and spending plans in detail by way of a “shadow budget”. The party proposed an increase in the top rate of tax from 40% to 50%, and removal of the exemption from 9% national insurance contributions on high earners. John Smith, the shadow chancellor, boasted that eight out of 10 taxpayers would feel better off as a result of the plans. But these figures were ammunition for the Conservative campaign which produced a series of uncharitable costings. One poster named “The price of Labour” as “£1,250 a year for every family”

Nevertheless, opinion polls on 1 April – dubbed “Red Wednesday” – suggested Labour had established a strong 4-7 point lead over the Conservatives. That evening, just eight days before the general election, Kinnock held a high-profile rally at the Sheffield Arena.

The event itself was a carefully choreographed, American-style political rally, featuring celebrity endorsements and a spectacular stage entrance for Kinnock. Images of the Labour leader landing in a helicopter were projected into the auditorium via a large screen. According to subsequent reports, Labour’s strategists had been working on the rally for over 18 months.

Kinnock, upon arriving in the auditorium, delivered an infamously animated performance. Having just journeyed to the stage through the 10,000-strong audience of party activists, Kinnock euphorically proclaimed: “We’re alright!”

Kinnock’s evangelical display was widely perceived by commentators as premature. Moreover, his showing appeared to contradict the quasi-presidential spirit of the Labour campaign. This was no statesman, the Conservative-supporting press contended. The Sun newspaper dedicated eight pages to the Sheffield rally under the headline “Nightmare on Kinnock Street”.

Throughout the campaign, the tabloids – and the Sun in particular – slated Labour and its leadership under Kinnock. On polling day, the Sun depicted Kinnock’s head inside a lightbulb. The savage splash added: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person in Britain please turn out the lights”.

In the end, the Conservative Party won 336 seats and a working majority of 21. Major secured over 14 million votes – the highest popular vote ever recorded by any party in a British general election. Labour won 271 seats, up 42, on a turnout of 77.7% – the highest since February 1974.

Kinnock resigned on 13 April. Hattersley also stood down.

In his resignation statement, Kinnock pinned Labour’s underperformance on those newspapers sympathetic to the Conservatives. “This was how the election was won and if the politicians, elated in their hour of victory, are tempted to believe otherwise, they are in very real trouble next time”, he declared.

The outgoing Labour leader added: “My sorrow is that millions… will suffer because of the election of another Conservative government.”

Neil Kinnock’s rise to prominence (1969-1983)

Kinnock was first elected as the MP for Bedwellty (later Islwyn) at the 1970 general election. Kinnock first won the seat with a majority of 22,279 votes and held it comfortably throughout his parliamentary career.

Upon entering parliament, Kinnock was aligned with the Labour left. He gained a reputation as a fiery orator and supporter of trade union causes, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and socialist policies. He initially rejected ministerial posts in the Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan governments on ideological grounds.

From 1974 to 1975, Kinnock served as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to Michael Foot, a prominent Labour left-winger. He campaigned against Britain’s continued membership of the European Common Market in the 1975 referendum.

Kinnock was a leading opponent of devolution, which was cautiously embraced by Wilson and Callaghan from 1974 to 1979. He was a member of the so-called “gang of six” of Welsh Labour MPs who opposed devolution. They argued that a Welsh assembly would be an expensive, unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and a danger to the unity of the United Kingdom.

In 1978, Kinnock claimed that children in Anglesey were being prevented from going to the toilet unless they asked in Welsh – which he referred to as “linguistic racialism”.

Debating Plaid Cymru’s Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Kinnock said he could “take the honourable gentleman to a school in Anglesey – I shall not mention the name of the village because it has only one school – in which children of five or six have to ask in Welsh to go to the lavatory or suffer the consequences.”

He added: “This may be nationalism taken to a militant zeal that no Plaid Cymru members wants and, indeed, upon which its members would frown. I am asking them to do more than frown.

“I am asking them to ensure that it is a categorical pledge of their party that any person belonging to or associated with the party who is guilty of this sort of informal apartheid in schools or any other body in Wales should be thrown out of the party.”

Following Labour’s 1979 defeat, Kinnock was appointed to the frontbench as shadow education secretary. He served under both Callaghan and Foot.

Kinnock played a pivotal role in the 1981 Labour deputy leadership election, triggered by Tony Benn’s challenge to the incumbent, Denis Healey. The contest came at a moment of crisis for Labour. Earlier in 1981, former cabinet ministers Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Bill Rogers and David Owen – the “gang of four” – all left Labour to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The SDP, which quickly forged an alliance with David Steel’s Liberals, was formed as a response to Labour’s leftward shift under the leadership of Foot. Over the course of 1981, 28 Labour MPs defected to the SDP – which now threatened to ‘break the mould’ of British politics.

Labour, facing a new social democratic opponent, remained split between moderate and maximalist tendencies. The 1981 deputy leadership election, therefore, was framed as a battle for the soul of the party.

In the end, Healey prevailed by just 50.4% to 49.6% in the second ballot; the narrow margin of victory – by just 0.852% of the electoral college vote – carried profound consequences for the future of the Labour Party.

A crucial factor in Healey’s victory was the decision of approximately 20 MPs from the Tribune Group, including Kinnock, to abstain. These Tribune Group MPs – said to represent the ‘soft left’ – voted for Silkin in the first round but absented themselves in the second.

Kinnock, the shadow education secretary, said he had refused to vote for Benn as he stood “for victory in the next general election”. The future Labour leader also said he expected to lose his seat on the national executive committee (NEC) as retribution for his abstention.

This split prompted committed Bennites to form the Campaign Group/Socialist Campaign Group.

Neil Kinnock: European commissioner (1995-2004)

Over the years, Kinnock’s stance evolved and his euroscepticism was revised.

Kinnock underwent such a transformation in his opinion on Europe that, upon leaving the House of Commons in 1995, he was appointed as the UK’s European commissioner for transport under commission president Jacques Santer.

Kinnock later became vice-president of the European Commission in 1999 under president Romano Prodi, with responsibility for administrative reform – a demanding portfolio aimed at improving the efficiency and accountability of the EU institutions. Kinnock stepped down from this position in November 2004.

Kinnock campaigned passionately on behalf of Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.

In December 2020, Kinnock advised Labour MPs not to support the post-Brexit trade deal negotiated by Boris Johnson. He argued that backing a deal negotiated by the Conservatives could be politically “lethal” for Labour.

In a message to a private WhatsApp group, Kinnock wrote: “If Labour supports the ‘deal’, all our future justified criticisms will be rebuffed by ‘but you voted for this!’ and, because it will be true, it will be lethal.”

Neil Kinnock and Joe Biden

Throughout his time in frontline politics, Kinnock was regarded as a gifted orator.

In a speech to the Welsh Labour Party conference in Llandudno in May 1987, Kinnock gave a powerful address questioning inequality, famously asking: “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?”

He added: “Why is my wife, Glenys, the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

“Was it because all our predecessors were ‘thick’?

“Did they lack talent – those people who could sing, and play, and recite and write poetry; those people who could make wonderful, beautiful things with their hands; those people who could dream dreams, see visions; those people who had such a sense of perception as to know in times so brutal, so oppressive, that they could win their way out of that by coming together?”

The speech was widely praised in the UK.

Later that year, during the 1988 US Democratic primary campaign, Senator Joseph R. Biden gave a speech containing strikingly similar passages.

He asked: “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?

“Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright?

“Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?”

Accusations of plagiarism, alongside other missteps, quickly derailed Biden’s presidential campaign. Biden later maintained that he had credited Kinnock on previous occasions when using the lines but forgot to do so in that instance.

In 2007, during his second run for president, Biden met Kinnock at his office on Capitol Hill in Washington. As the two chatted, Biden reportedly quipped to staff: “Folks, I want you to meet my greatest ever speechwriter”.

Before politics

Neil Gordon Kinnock was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, South Wales, on 28 March 1942. His father, Gordon, was a coal miner, and his mother, Mary, was a district nurse.

According to Kinnock, his earliest political memory was hearing local MP Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS, speak in Tredegar. At the age of 15, Kinnock joined the Labour Party.

Kinnock studied industrial relations and history at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, graduating in 1965.

During his time at university, Kinnock helped organise anti-apartheid protests against South Africa and campaigns against the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. After graduating, he worked as a tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association (1966-1970).

Personal life and family

Kinnock met Glenys Elizabeth Parry while they were both students at University College, Cardiff in the early 1960s. At university, the couple were reportedly known by some as “the power and the glory” (with Glenys seen as the “power”). They married on 25 March 1967.

Glenys Kinnock had her own significant political career. She was a Labour member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Wales from 1994 to 2009. She was then appointed minister of state for Europe by Gordon Brown in June 2009, and was granted a life peerage as Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead. Neil and Glenys were one of very few married couples to have both served as ministers and sat together in the House of Lords.

Baroness Kinnock later served as minister of state for Africa and the United Nations (2009-2010). She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2017.

Baroness Kinnock died on 3 December 2023, aged 79.

Neil and Glenys Kinnock had two children.

Their son, Stephen Kinnock, followed his parents into Labour politics and is currently the Labour MP for Aberavon in South Wales (since 2015).

Following Labour’s victory in the 2024 general election, Stephen was appointed as minister of state for care. Through Stephen, Lord Kinnock is the father-in-law of Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who served as prime minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015.

In February 2022, Kinnock’s grandchild, Milo (Stephen Kinnock’s child), came out publicly as transgender. Speaking to the Daily Mail at the time, Lord Kinnock said: “Milo is a beloved grandchild with a great personality and strong, mature judgment. We’re a very close family who cherish him and wish him all the best”.