POLITICS
The man who would be Player King
NOEL MALCOLM
Thicky; `lightweight'; 'windbag': peo- ple just will not stop saying unkind things about Neil Kinnock. Reports are now circulating that his advisers will not let him take on any speaking engagements at trade union conferences this summer. And the Independent on Sunday has sparked off a `Kinnock debate' (with the Independent on Monday, at any rate), by printing not only Anthony Howard's lengthy analysis of his career, which bent over backwards not to be condescending, but also a list of his most famous `Accidents and Gaffes' and an affectionate memoir by a Cardiff Universi- ty contemporary: `He did finally get a degree of sorts . . . . We had all been out celebrating with many pints of Welsh beer and later that night he was sitting in a gutter repeating with wonder to himself: "I've got a BA, I've got a BA".'
As if to quell all further doubts about his competence, up popped Mr Kinnock on BBC1 on Monday for his first long tele- vised interview this year. He was serious, he was courteous, he was almost alliteration-free, and the parliamentary setting (embossed leather chair, sombre panelling) gave him an extra air of dignity. Admittedly, he told at least one whopping lie: on Nigel Lawson's lowering of interest rates after the crash of 1987, he claimed that `we were saying steady, steady, steady . . . don't overdo it or you will spawn an expansion of credit', whereas what he actually said in Parliament on 29 October 1987 was that, 'this is a time for judgment, and that judgment should be a big cut in interest rates' — but never mind. If Mr Kinnock's memory is a little frailer than his vanity, that is not an exceptional thing in a politician. Of the three qualities which he is usually accused of lacking — intelli- gence, gravitas and concision — only the third was still notably absent in this inter- view. Is the time drawing near, perhaps. when we must stop asking whether the man is bright enough, or dignified enough, to be Prime Minister?
These questions should indeed be dis- pensed with, not because they are imperti- nent or unfair, but because they fail to get to the heart of the matter. Take the question of his intellectual ability, for example. The fact that he gained a pass degree at the second attempt is hardly a disqualification for high office; if academic distinction were required, neither Chur- chill nor Callaghan should ever have en-
tered Downing Street, and the best prime ministers of the century would have been Harold Wilson and A.J. Balfour. The point about Mr Kinnock is not that he is stupid but that he is intellectually lazy. As some of his parliamentary colleagues will ruefully admit, he does not think it neces- sary to master the details of a subject before speaking at length about it. Early in his parliamentary career he once boasted to a friend that although he made frequent speeches about economics, he had only ever read one book on the subject (J.K. Galbraith's The Affluent Society). And unlike colleagues such as John Smith, he has never been forced to learn the art of assimilating a complex brief, either by legal training or by ministerial experience.
The common criticism that Neil Kinnock is too lightweight or too joky is also superficial. It suggests that he might re- medy the fault by being more sombre or more condemnatory. But even when he abandons light-heartedness, when he dis- plays passion or brutal sarcasm (usually at the expense of his own left-wingers), the underlying impression is the same: it is the stageyness of his performance which mat- ters, not the fact that he usually plays for laughter rather than tears. Indeed, to call it a performance is to concede too much, for the real problem is the stageyness of. his very character. It is easy to think of prime ministers (Wilson and Macmillan, for ex- ample) who were consummate performers on the political stage; but it was always
'I'm divorcing him — it's the only way to get the housekeeping.' possible to imagine them at home, off- stage, among confidants, dropping the mask a little and distancing themselves from their public. Neil Kinnock, on the other hand, needs an audience in the way that you or I need oxygen. Mrs Thatcher alone on a desert island is a perfectly imaginable idea: she would be up early every morning, tidying the sand. Mr Kin- nock alone on a desert island is an incon- ceivable thing: one feels that he would just wither away, his mouth opening and clos- ing helplessly, like a beached goldfish.
The fact that Mr Kinnock is histrionic, not just through conscious performance but in his innermost character, is — I believe — the key to almost every aspect of his nature. It explains, for example, his intellectual laziness: he requires facts and arguments not for the intellectual satisfac- tion of solving a problem, but only as one means among many for winning over an audience. It explains his curious combina- tion of tender-heartedness and machismo: he is always conscious of, and responsive to, the feelings of those round him, but finds that playing the role of unsentimental masculinity also comes naturally.
And it also explains, and in an odd way exonerates, the apparent opportunism of his political career. To complain that he has cynically abandoned his left-wing prin- ciples for power's sake is to misconceive the nature of the man. Cynicism requires an ability to distance one's inner self from one's appearance; a man who is all stage mask cannot do this. Even to say that he has betrayed his principles is to mis-state the case. Neil Kinnock is the exact oppo- site of the sort of politician (Enoch Powell springs to mind) who first of all sits down and thinks out what his principles are, and then takes political action in order to express them. I think it was William James who said, `I do not cry because I am sad; I am sad because I cry.' Mr Kinnock, simi- larly, has principles because he expressed them — not the other way round. In his early political career he had an inspiring role, the role of a socialist firebrand who seeks to transform society. Now he has another inspiring role, albeit a more diffi- cult one: the role of a hard-headed would- be Prime Minister who seeks to transform the Labour Party. To accuse him of incon- sistency here is as pointless as accusing an actor of contradicting himself by playing Macbeth one season and Henry V the next.
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