Clan Kinnock and their Euro jackpot

Anne McElvoy
12 Jun 2009

Ghosts can be useful things and no more timely spectre haunts the ­troubled and divided Labour Party right now than that of its ­ancienne First Family, the Kinnocks.

At the start of the week, as Gordon Brown fought for air with his sullen and despairing backbenchers, one figure raged against the dying of Gordon's light with a familiar, if windy, eloquence.

Neil Kinnock, the man who spawned New Labour but never won it an ­election, pledged his loyalty to a newly “humble” Prime Minister.

He was the trump card Mr Brown and his now inseparable First Secretary Peter Mandelson deployed to get the embattled leader home and dry from a crumbling but disruptive coup.

The blessing and curse of Lord Kinnock is that he never changes. His speeches inspire and make the blood race — then invariably go on for far too long and remind their audiences why “Old” New Labour failed.

This time, he “roared on and on” in support of Gordon, one witness reports, and resorted, as he does, to the ­language of his hero Nye Bevan, evoking the ­“passion for unity of decent people who want to secure decent aims”.

Mission accomplished though. The man who bravely fought against the sectarian divisions of the party in the Eighties instructed Labour to hold on to Gordon, for fear of strife.

Many banged the desks in approval, though by no means all. “It was awful,” says one pro-Blair ex-minister. “Straight out of the Eighties, like 20 years never happened.

Just at the time we should be moving forward, we wallow in the past and go into retro mode. It's just back to the comfort zone, God help us.”

Clan Kinnock is back at the heart of Labour. Neil's loyalty to Gordon in times of trouble has been reciprocated by the surprise appointment of his wife Glenys as Europe Minister.

She replaces Caroline Flint in a role key to the battles over the Lisbon Treaty, a key “wedge issue” against the increasingly Eurocentric Tories.

As if that did not confirm the revivalist mood, Jan Royall, an old secretary and key member of his Opposition team, is Leader of the House of Lords.

Mr Brown is carefully stitching the past and present together, as armour for his final battle.

Modernisers regard it as a mixed blessing. For a start, the Kinnocks are deeply entangled in the EU and arguments about its reputation for corruption and loose accounting, when the focus is fiercely on value for money in public life in Britain.

Days after accepting Mr Brown's invitation to the Government, Mrs Kinnock was forced to admit she was a mere “acting minister” since she doesn't stand down as a member of the European Parliament until next month.

Her return to Westminster has surprised her own ranks in Brussels, where she represents a Welsh seat.

She had intended to retire because of ill–health. There were rumours of a mini-stroke. “Not well enough to continue here: fine to take a high-profile job in the Lords,” sniffs one Euro-colleague.

Rumours of a high life on the EU gravy train have dogged the Kinnocks since they moved to Brussels in the wake of Neil's second defeat in 1992.

Both of them sublimated bitterness about his failures in two general elections by fully adopting the federalist outlook of Kinnock's mentor On the Commission, Jacques Delors.

When I visited Mr Kinnock — as he was then — in his Commission office early in Tony Blair's reign, I found an entirely congenial and entertaining character, sneakily smoking the odd cigarette — “Glenys will kill me” — and tactlessly determined to hold forth on the joys of taking Britain into monetary union.

“We'll ditch the bloody pound!” he promised, as Downing Street winced at the candour.

Campaigners for EU transparency were outraged by Kinnock's decision as Commissioner to sack Marta Andreassen, the auditor who blew the whistle on the massive hole in the EU's accounts.

Andreassen still pursues a campaign against the couple, telling the Standard: “Glenys is not the best person to do the job.

She and her Labour group refused to hear me when I expressed my concerns about corruption in Brussels.

Her appointment as a member of the House of Lords is really quite appalling. She is just following her husband's career.”

At Westminster, the Kinnocks are still admired in a party that has an immensely sentimental view of its past struggles.

Robert Harris, Kinnock's friend and biographer before he was a best-selling author, says Neil's appeal derives from his personal story as much as his politics.

Both his father and his uncle were miners and he grew up in Nye Bevan's old ­constituency: “That makes him the equivalent of Eton and the Guards in the Labour Party,” laughs Harris.

“There is a great deal of affection for Neil in Labour, especially because he wasn't rewarded by the British people for what he did in moving Labour away from the unions.”

He also dismisses the “throwback” charge. “A lot of what subsequently happened to make Labour electable was possible because of Neil, so it's fitting that he should play a role.

It's a bit like the return of Peter (Mandelson). There's a feeling that the party needs all hands on deck to man the pumps.”

Perhaps a cameo role for Neil was inevitable. Mr Brown is a creature of Labour continuities, though Mr Blair, too, was careful to pay his obeisance to the old leader.

Glenys's return is seen by many as more puzzling. She looks younger than her 64 years and is always carefully coiffured, made up and immaculately dressed. “I've never seen her look off duty,” says a friend.

The lure of ministerial office for a former schoolteacher who stood by her ­husband's side for the long years in Opposition proved irresistible.

Asked in the wake of Caroline Flint's stormy departure if she, too, was merely female “window dressing” for the Government, she didn't dignify the charge for a moment. “Certainly not,” was her sole reply.

Harris says: “She has moved up and become a woman in her own right. She's sensible and formidable.

I think she was born in the wrong generation. A few years later, she wouldn't have been content to be the leader's wife.”

Who can forget her quick reactions in pulling her husband up when he tripped into the sea in one of the great party conference pratfalls?

“They'll show that to the end of my days,” he once sighed to me. “Probably it'll be at my bloody memorial service!”

Others in New Labour are less keen on the return of Mrs K. “It's a publicity stunt.

Don't think it was a good idea to have a minister straight out of the EU structures having to deal with the technicalities of the Lisbon Treaty and its critics in ­Britain.

She's gone too native.” Concerns are being raised too that having a key minister in the Lords makes accountability more difficult.

One way or the other, the Kinnocks are always with us in political life — even in their Saga years.

They still have a wide social circle and Lord Kinnock has taken to the clubbable atmosphere of the Lords.

Both deeply resent the charge that they are “junketeers”, ­moving from one highly paid tax-payer-funded job to the next.

Mrs Kinnock has a salary of £63,291, plus substantial expenses, and will earn more than £80,000 as Europe minister. Hardly a pittance, but not exactly a fortune either.

In 1995, Lord Kinnock became a European Commissioner on £105,584 a year, plus expenses.

Ten years later when he stepped down, he was earning £163,453 on top of a £24,000-a-year housekeeping allowance and a £7,000 entertainment budget.

Former Commissioners also received a sizeable “stipend” — his was a stonking £273,000 —to cushion their re‑entry into life outside the Brussels bubble, plus a handsome pension. That puts some MPs' expenses in proportion.

So much critical scrutiny has come their way because the entire family has lived a similar quango-sponsored existence.

Daughter Rachel was on Mr Brown's staff for a while and has also worked for her mother in Brussels.

Son Stephen was head of the St Petersburg office of the British Council, which promotes the UK's cultural ties abroad.

Its chairman was his father, who has just stepped down in case the post should cause conflict of interest rows after his wife's appointment.

Stephen was almost certainly ­targeted because of his family name in a major diplomatic incident which drew parallels with the Cold War in Russia and caused a major stand-off with the Foreign Office.

The council's offices were closed at the Kremlin's behest and he was arrested on a dubious drink-driving charge, said to be part of a Russian security service operation. He has since moved to the World Economic Forum.

Neil and Glenys, one longstanding admirer says, are “one of the great political couples: they do it all together and they just never give up”.

Now they are back for New Labour's final fight.

A less convenient memory is that the former leader lost twice — and has also been defeated (so far) in his crusade to bring the euro to Britain.

Victory and Neil do not exactly go hand in hand. Something else for Mr Brown to worry about, as the Kinnock Clan rides again.

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