Michael Meacher: He made his peace with Blair and served loyally, not even making a showy resignation over Iraq

Meacher loved politics, and gave his life to being an MP. It is far from clear that the affection was returned

Michael Meacher entered the Commons when he was just 30 years old (PA)

Michael Meacher (obituary, 22 October) was proof that in politics, as in sex, timing is everything. With his clever, intellectual, inquiring, methodical mind allied to one of the least self-aggrandising personalities in the Labour ranks in the Commons, despite clear ability and ambition, Meacher was never quite in alignment with the political moment during his 45 years in the Commons.

Today the press are going bat-silly about Jeremy Corbyn, with the Daily Mail jokingly describing the Chinese president meeting a communist – the new Labour leader, that is. In 1970, when Meacher entered the Commons at just 30, Corbynism was mainstream Parliamentary Labour Party politics.

Meacher quickly mastered the language of the left, and his clear forensic ability got him promotion under Jim Callaghan, with the nudging of Tony Benn, who always needed someone with a little economic knowledge to sound as if his theories had some foundations. Meacher was of that generation of Labour MPs who were aged around 40 when the long Thatcher years began.

There is nothing more miserable for a politician than to have served an apprenticeship and then find the chance of plying your trade gone as voters elect and re-elect the other party. Meacher trudged through Labour's wilderness 1980s gradually detaching himself from Benn, who, he came to realise, was not going help Labour win elections.

But he could not read the new times. By chance I met him in south-west France in autumn 1992. He had just written a book called Diffusing Power: the Key to Socialist Revival, which had been launched by John Smith (memo to wannabe Jeremy successors. There is nothing less likely to sell, or impress the left, than a book with "socialism" in its title) .

I said to Meacher, "Michael, John is a great guy but the next English Labour prime minister will be Tony Blair."

He exploded. "Blair! Blair! I have served with Tony Blair on the front bench, on the NEC, in the shadow cabinet. Tony Blair is nothing, nothing, nothing!" he bellowed as other diners in the restaurant wondered why les deux Anglais were having such a heated discussion.

"Michael," I said. "I know exactly what you mean but as a friend of yours let me suggest you find any bit of Blair still sticking out and start sucking now." He snorted, and we went back to the safer topic of how Labour and Michael would bring socialism to Britain.

By the time government came, Meacher was pushing 60 and Blair was unkind in not giving him full Cabinet rank, though once he got down to problem-solving with the help of civil servants Meacher, with his environment brief, was a competent, efficient and respected minister.

Unlike Robin Cook, whose better sense of timing and of where the shifting sands of Labour politics were moving ensured him a top Cabinet slot as de facto leader of the Parliamentary left, Meacher never formed a faction, and his calm, factual expositions could never match the gallery-playing oratory of other left-leaning Labour politicians who had a higher profile.

He lost a stupid libel-case dispute with Alan Watkins over whether the private school he had gone to was a public school or not. It was, and in the end he made his peace with Blair, the public schoolboy, and served loyally as a Minister of State, not even making a splashy, showy resignation over the Iraq war.

In the Commons he was always polite, inquiring and without side, a thoroughly decent man. He had a near half-century as an MP but never quite made it to the very top. There are Michael Meachers among Labour today starting out on the long traverse of years in opposition. Anyone aged over 50 should work out the odds. Meacher loved politics, and gave his life to being an MP. It is far from clear that the affection was returned: politics is much better at swallowing its practitioners alive rather than allow them to be full and successful human beings.