22 JUNE 1985, Page 5

SINCE FOOT

SOME time during the Attlee terror, Professor Michael Oakeshott irreverently described Ernest Bevin as the worst for- eign secretary since Sir Anthony Eden, his immediate predecessor. In a recent Sunday Telegraph interview Ken Livingstone de- scribed Neil Kinnock as the best Labour leader since Lansbury. Some detected in this comparison an intent to make mock of Mr Kinnock. Others took it literally, as an expression of Mr Livingstone's genuine esteem for both these statesmen, and of his perception that they have certain charac- teristics in common. What does he think these are? We can only guess: woolly idealism, perhaps, amiability and toler- ance, a socialism springing from heart rather than head, an abiding innocence, prolix and invertebrate rhetoric, a degree of ovine pacifism, an insouciant and un- worldly incapacity to understand how wealth is created and realms are defended, perhaps even vulnerability, a readiness to be pushed around, aside or out — though in Mr Kinnock's case this last must remain a hunch or hope rather than established fact. Mr Kinnock may not be as easy to get rid of as the saintly Lansbury, who, accord- ing to Bevin, hawked his conscience about from conference to conference, dressed in martyr's robes, till he, Bevin, brutally put a match to the faggots. But wait: just as Lord Randolph Churchill forgot Goschen, hasn't Mr Livingstone forgotten Michael Foot? Of all that he may value in Lansbury and Kinnock, what is missing from Foot? Or perhaps the phrase he was really looking for was `the best till me'?