Neil Kinnock has said that Jeremy Corbyn will commit a “serious evasion of duty” if he does not change course on his current Brexit policy. He also described anyone who did not agree with his views as being guilty of “infantile leftist illusion”.
In doing so, he joins a growing band of politicians, including Osborn, Cameron and others who, rather than present a rational argument, seek to close it down by attacking the intelligence or sanity of anyone who does not subscribe to their view of life – it’s an old ploy of ‘attack the man and not the ball’, perfected by the current incumbent of the White House (remember ‘little Marco’ ?). Apart from being an intellectually bankrupt approach, it displays breath-taking arrogance. Grumpy is of the view that, when politicians told the populace in the run up to the 2016 referendum that citizens would be stupid to vote leave, they went out and did just that out of sheer bloody mindedness.
His injection may have had more weight if Kinnock himself was not such a abject loser and serial failure. Remember, the man has never been in government, and presided over two defeats for his party (of which he was leader), and the 1992 conference in Sheffield demonstrated his tendency towards self-aggrandizement. He has no possible qualification to make such proclamations.
Following what should have been a humiliating experience in electoral defeats, he was appointed to various lucrative sinecure posts, and entered into the privileged and tax-payer funded European gravy train structures that he purported, in earlier times at least, to despise. However, he was presumably enjoying the excesses of the EU lifestyle too much to allow principles to stand in the way of taking the citizens shilling.
In 2005, he further demonstrated his lack of any principles when he was ‘elevated’ to the upper chamber, an institution of which he had been a critic for most of his life – he had said earlier in life “The House of Lords must go – not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished.” Once asked to join the club, however, he grasped he daily allowance and subsidised lunches earnestly – hypocrisy incarnate.
Kinnock’s characterisation of those who disagree with his Brexit views as committing a serious breach of professional standards, and indeed, being ‘infantile’, shows his self-indulgent myopia. Given the intellect, experience, standing and dedication to public life of many in government of the opposite view, it is an insult Kinnock should be ashamed to voice.
However, he is not and if readers want to see “infantile left wing illusion”, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TOgB3Smvro at the Labour Party election convention, fittingly held on the 1st April 1992; he hasn’t changed.