Neil Kinnock, Election 2015: the guy who said something worth hearing in the first 4 hours
* What is your reaction to what seems like very bad news for Labour?
If it continues like this it is one of great disappointment. Not so much for the party, but for what it means for millions of people in Britain who needed a government that would be committed to housing, to the Health Service, to jobs and fresh opportunities for the youngsters. And if that government is not at the end of the day formed, then I think that Britain will pay a very severe price for the division in our society and the weakness in our economy. If that's how it turns out but, of course, as everyone on your programme has thus-far said, it's going to be a long night.
* If that's how it turns out, how could it have happened?
Well, it's a combination of things. If it is the fact that there's been a tory surge, it will be attributable to the usual reality that people, whatever they tell the opinion pollsters will, in that ballot booth/box, think that their security -- their financial security -- will be enhanced because of the tory reputation (one that they've never earned in reality) for reducing taxes and giving people more money in their pocket.
Even recent experience demonstrates the contrary of that. But there are enough people who are willing to accept that myth and then think that they're voting for their own security by voting for Conservative candidates. The reality is different, as I said, and the awful thing is that it's not simply those people who relatively innocently are working against their own interests, the real price will be paid by those who truly are innocent who have sought a different path and will be met with the costs of another Conservative government, even a minority government.
* You suggest that a whole electorate can be duped by the Conservatives when they had Ed Miliband as your newly elected leader out there, day-by-day, fighting Labour's cause. So he doesn't seem to have done too well if he can't counter what you think of as Conservative lies about the economy.
He's done very well. But what we're really up against in the scenario that I describe, and of course I may be wrong, and this may not be the out-turn. But if I am right about it, and there's any amount of analysis, literature and experience over many decades that demonstrates the veracity of what I'm saying to you, it is a matter of mood and self-delusion that makes people eventually, -- regardless what they feel they should be doing when they speak to the opinion pollsters -- taking a different view with that stub of pencil in the privacy of the ballot booth. And that's what you're up against and in many ways, of course, that whole drift of opinion, that whole movement in psychology, is assisted, less than it used to be, by parts of the press and it does mean, therefore, that any opposition to that established attitude, any radicalism, any effort to undertake a different path, not just by Labour but indeed by other parties, is always going to have difficulty countering that established myth.
And that appears to be the case in the 2015 election.
-- Neil Kinnock
If it continues like this it is one of great disappointment. Not so much for the party, but for what it means for millions of people in Britain who needed a government that would be committed to housing, to the Health Service, to jobs and fresh opportunities for the youngsters. And if that government is not at the end of the day formed, then I think that Britain will pay a very severe price for the division in our society and the weakness in our economy. If that's how it turns out but, of course, as everyone on your programme has thus-far said, it's going to be a long night.
* If that's how it turns out, how could it have happened?
Well, it's a combination of things. If it is the fact that there's been a tory surge, it will be attributable to the usual reality that people, whatever they tell the opinion pollsters will, in that ballot booth/box, think that their security -- their financial security -- will be enhanced because of the tory reputation (one that they've never earned in reality) for reducing taxes and giving people more money in their pocket.
Even recent experience demonstrates the contrary of that. But there are enough people who are willing to accept that myth and then think that they're voting for their own security by voting for Conservative candidates. The reality is different, as I said, and the awful thing is that it's not simply those people who relatively innocently are working against their own interests, the real price will be paid by those who truly are innocent who have sought a different path and will be met with the costs of another Conservative government, even a minority government.
* You suggest that a whole electorate can be duped by the Conservatives when they had Ed Miliband as your newly elected leader out there, day-by-day, fighting Labour's cause. So he doesn't seem to have done too well if he can't counter what you think of as Conservative lies about the economy.
He's done very well. But what we're really up against in the scenario that I describe, and of course I may be wrong, and this may not be the out-turn. But if I am right about it, and there's any amount of analysis, literature and experience over many decades that demonstrates the veracity of what I'm saying to you, it is a matter of mood and self-delusion that makes people eventually, -- regardless what they feel they should be doing when they speak to the opinion pollsters -- taking a different view with that stub of pencil in the privacy of the ballot booth. And that's what you're up against and in many ways, of course, that whole drift of opinion, that whole movement in psychology, is assisted, less than it used to be, by parts of the press and it does mean, therefore, that any opposition to that established attitude, any radicalism, any effort to undertake a different path, not just by Labour but indeed by other parties, is always going to have difficulty countering that established myth.
And that appears to be the case in the 2015 election.
-- Neil Kinnock