Neil Kinnock: 'David Blunkett? I simply don't understand him'

Neil Kinnock remembers two things about the party conference that followed the narrow, but crushing, election defeat of 1992. The first is how the two stone he shed on a post-campaign diet was assumed to be a symptom of serious illness. "Solicitous comrades kept asking for invitations to the funeral," he recalls.

The second was the "hourly surge of relief" that he did not have to make the party leader's speech any more. Preparing any big set-piece brings pressure but that one is particular torture because of the simultaneous need to press the flesh, Mr Kinnock says.

"You are desperate to get on with writing the speech but you have to slap backs and glad hand with lots of lovely people. By the time 10:30 arrives on the Monday night, a kind of suicidal desperation has beset you. It's a horrific experience."

Ten years on, while Mr Blair prepares to address the party ranks, the man who started Labour's march to victory is sitting in a spacious sixth-floor office of a Brussels block as a vice-president of the European Commission. Around him is a collection of souvenirs from his political career: a Sikh sword, miners' lamps, a special bottle of Bass "reformer's stout" and a collection of euro coins. But after years of dealing with newspaper photographers he will not pose with any of them, particularly the sword.

To the left of his desk is a mini-library from which, when asked about the 1992 election, Mr Kinnock pulls a guide to the Commons with a statistic that must haunt him: if just 1,241 voters in the most marginal seats had switched sides it would have deprived John Major of a majority.

The party Mr Kinnock once led is now entrenched in power but – with discord over subjects ranging from Iraq to the private finance initiative – hardly at peace with itself. The former leader comes close to New Labour heresy with his free use of the word "s" word."Socialism is an evocative word," he says.

"Many people would be reassured, and many others would not be frightened off, if we made it evident that the progressive policies were the result of progressive ideas. People voted Labour because they didn't want the Tories but a lot of them voted because they wanted a Labour government. And they've got one."

He is not impressed by some of the recent rhetoric from David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, who urged immigrant families to speak English at home. Mr Kinnock's son, Stephen, is married to a Danish socialist MEP, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and their children's upbringing does not fit into the the Blunkett doctrine. "I simply don't understand him," says Mr Kinnock. "There is enormous benefit in living in a multicultural society. My grandchildren are bilingual. It has not arrested their development. The fact that their two main languages are English and Danish and not English and Punjabi doesn't make the least bit of difference".

All the evidence shows that "familiarity and fluency in two languages increases the propensity to other talents", he says, before making the economic argument for immigration. "People should look at the demography of the developed economies of the EU," he says, pointing out that a declining birth rate in Europe makes immigrants vital to future wealth creation.

Mr Kinnock also thinks that tolerance is good politics. In recent election campaigns in Sweden and Germany the centre-left premiers Göran Persson and Gerhard Schröder polled well against the odds.

"The Liberal party in Sweden saw a rise in its vote after flirting with some xenophobic policies [proposing language tests for citizenship, though with increased immigration quotas] but they almost entirely took votes off parties of the right," he argues. "In Germany, the ultra right, the confessed Nazis, got less than 1 per cent of the vote between them. Schröder didn't slide in any way towards the views expressed by [Edmund] Stoiber [his centre-right challenger] on immigration, Muslims and all the rest of it in the last days of the campaign. Schröder held his ground."

If Labour is trying to outflank the right on immigration, it is mistaken, Mr Kinnock believes. Instead, it should stand up to xenophobes. "The way to beat them is to demonstrate that they are wrong and why they are wrong and to give them no quarter whatsoever."

Mr Kinnock is frank about the concern in Europe over the noises from Washington. "Super power must mean super responsibility. Unfortunately, instead of accepting the responsibility on a host of globally vital issues, the USA has withdrawn or is being actively resistant to leading the global community and playing a full part. That attitude has a relatively short life because it is so impractical and, ultimately, [leads to] a sense of insecurity even for Uncle Sam. But it could be bumpy even for the time that it lasts. The more friendly people are to America, the more concerned they are about US unilateralism."

Mr Blair gets his full support for engaging with George Bush, but Mr Kinnock warns that Washington cannot be given unlimited licence. "The evidence of the influence resulting from that engagement is in the stronger attention the Americans are giving to the UN. A decision point can arrive where there has to be consideration of whether the engagement is greatly in excess of the influence but that point certainly has not come yet."

Mr Kinnock feels that "the Washington whisper is prevailing over the Texas yell", although "it's difficult to calculate what the eventual US course will be. This is not a cavalry charge; this is a long march."

As a veteran of Labour conference battles, Mr Kinnock is anxious to back the Prime Minister in his row over the private finance initiative, and derides some union critics as people "who describe themselves as Marxists but who can't remember recent history".

Even on British membership of the euro – a policy which, as a member of the Commission, he is bound to advocate – he is diplomatic. Left-wing opposition to the single currency is flawed, he believes, because governments invariably sacrifice investment in public services to defence of the currency. The message is: "Continuity of substantial investment in essential public services depends on stability, stability depends on being part of a big currency. If you want continual priority for health education and transport join the euro." The Commission loosened some of the economic targets for governments inside the euro last week, and Mr Kinnock believes that more can be done – particularly to assuage Treasury fears that British membership would restrict investment.

In Brussels, where Mr Kinnock has the unenviable job of forcing through internal reforms, he has been on the defensive over the suspension of the former chief accountant, Marta Andreasen, who claimed the Commission was wide open to fraud.

By attacking Conservative MEPs who accused him of gagging a whistleblower, Mr Kinnock stoked a row in which the Commission would look like a bully, whatever the merits of the case. He argues that he leant over backwards to accommodate Ms Andreasen, but was left with no alternative but to discipline her for alleged breach of staff rules. But he is unapologetic about fanning the flames of the row. "I was on the bridge when my ship was attacked. I repel boarders."

His job – reforming the Commission's accounting system and quelling the powerful staff unions – is not the most glamorous, so does he enjoy it? "Anybody whose idea of relaxation is rolling in a barbed wire duvet would love to do this job," he replies, "but the reason to do it is that it has to be done."

On the way out of his office, Mr Kinnock shows off another memento. It is a plastic crab, given to him by a member of his private office who has written on the shell "Cheer up, you old sod". Not such bad advice: at least he doesn't have to make that speech in Blackpool tomorrow.