News about Neil Kinnock

QUENTIN LETTS: When political ­conferences finish it is sometimes said the cheers and applause resound through the ether long after the last delegate has left the hall. After this week's Labour Party conference in Liverpool, all that echoes through my sore bean is a low, depressing drone. Is it a punctured bagpipe, a pregnant ewe, some Merseyside fog horn or an air-block in the conference-season hotel plumbing? No, it is the Left-wing voice. 'Fourteen years of Tory misrule… ­£22 ­billion black hole… politics of service… my father was a toolmaker.' Insistent, gloomy, it makes everything sound worse than it is. Nagging. Puts you just on edge. If you have ever heard the mew of buzzards circling overhead, you will know the sensation.

Lord Alli (above right) discussed ­Starmer's sartorial style - or the lack of it - with his old friend Lord Mandelson (pictured with Sir Keir). Mandelson, the infamous 'Prince of Darkness' of political spin, had long argued that presentation and personal appearance matter hugely in politics. Lord Alli, one of the first openly gay Muslim politicians in the world who arrived in the House of Lords in 1998 wearing a diamond earring, wholeheartedly agreed.

As summer fades, you see them on telephone wires, birds of a feather preparing for the autumn journey. Quarrelsome blackcaps head for Iberia and the Manx shearwater girds its wings for the haul to South America. And each September that oddest of specimens, the politics warbler, enters a first-class railway carriage and flutters off to some four-star hotel for the nutrition-rich wetlands of the party conferences. Every year it happens, regular as the tock of a grandfather clock. Parliament adjourns, as it did last Thursday, and for three weeks our political class ups sticks to a provincial destination for some all-expenses-paid nesting.

The first TUC conference I attended was in Brighton in 1978. Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan enraged union leaders by going back on a pledge to call an election , which he would probably have won. After his speech, during which he mocked them with his rendition of the old music hall song There Was I, Waiting At The Church, that evening bedlam broke out in the bars as the TUC barons swore their revenge. They'd handed Sunny Jim a substantial war chest and now they wanted payback. So began what became known as the Winter of Discontent as a wave of strikes drove a coach and horses - or rather a fleet of dust-carts - through Labour's pay restraint policy.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: With the summer holiday season slowly drawing to an end, a familiar back-to-school sensation is settling over the nation. Unfortunately, after the stern admonishments delivered by Sir Keir Starmer in his No 10 speech this week, millions of voters will feel like they have already been given detention. The Prime Minister's speech was the perfect chance to reset the mood after bleak warnings about the public finances and riots. It called on him to re-emphasise the sunny optimism he promised in the run-up to the election and to outline a vision for fixing our disunited kingdom. Instead, with the stony face of a disappointed headteacher, he gave a masterclass in hectoring negativity, selective outrage and political manoeuvring.

During one prolonged strike by railway workers in the 1970s, the satirical magazine Private Eye produced an inspired parody of the progress of the pay negotiations. It went something like this: 'British Rail's managing director Mr Lucifer today offered the National Union of Railwaymen "all the kingdoms of Heaven and Earth and the glory thereof" in a bid to end the deadlock. 'Mr Sidney Weighell, general secretary of the NUR, dismissed the offer as "derisory" and said the strike would continue indefinitely.'

ANDREW PIERCE: As MPs swore their allegiance to the King in the Commons this week, Sir Keir Starmer looked on approvingly at the record intake of 231 Labour newcomers. Strikingly, nearly a quarter of them had been endorsed by a Socialist group dedicated to overturning Brexit. The hugely influential Labour Movement for Europe (LME) - its president is the former EU commissioner and Brussels fanatic Lord Kinnock who was warmly embraced by Starmer at his choreographed arrival in Downing Street last week - not only supports re-joining the EU but also backs the return of free movement of people, which would potentially open the door to millions more migrants. Moreover, it supports a common defence policy for all EU countries, which would be the first step to a European army. Starmer - who, remember, demanded a second referendum on Brexit - has insisted that the UK will not rejoin either the EU, the single market or the customs union within his lifetime.

It did not take long for Sir Keir Starmer's wife, Victoria, to make crystal clear her intention to 'lead her own life' after moving into No 10. On Saturday, as her husband got his feet under the desk, first holding a cabinet meeting and then a news conference, Lady Starmer took herself off to the races. She watched the Coral-Eclipse, one of the biggest fixtures on the Flat season calendar, at Sandown Park in Esher, where she was spotted with friends studying the form in a chic, green floral Me+EM dress and seemingly oblivious to the political drama she had left behind. Racing is her great passion, inherited from her mother, Barbara, who was born in Doncaster on the edge of the town's famous racecourse.

George Galloway has lost the Rochdale seat just five months after winning it - with Labour grandee Neil Kinnock leading the celebrations. The leader of the Workers Party of Britain received 11,508 votes, losing out to Labour's Paul Waugh who won with 13,047 votes. It comes after Mr Galloway won the seat in a February by-election, overturning a Labour majority of 9,668. As news broke of Galloway losing, Lord Kinnock broke into a smile and said: 'I am delighted. He is repulsive. Galloway is repulsive. He always has been.' He denied the firebrand politician was ever a 'thorn in his side' because 'he didn't count'.

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: First of all, please do not forget that the election has not yet taken place. There is everything still to play for. Yes, some postal votes have been cast, but many millions of other votes have not been. The polling stations have not opened, the ballot papers have not been issued. This is no time to accept a defeat that has not happened. Your opinion, your mind and your will all still matter. Labour has not yet won, however many polls claim that it will do so. The King has not yet summoned Sir Keir Starmer to Buckingham Palace to form a government. He may never do so. Imagine waking up on Friday morning and finding that nightmare has fizzled away.

I have never yet seen an election so drained of true excitement, so lifeless, colourless, sapless and noiseless. There are hardly any posters. I have yet to hear the crackling, braying sound of a loud-speaker van. It was not always so. Back in 1964, would-be prime ministers had to endure the ritual ordeal of the Birmingham Rag Market a few days before the poll.

Lynne Franks lives in a wonky witch's house with a green front door in Wincanton, Somerset, with a dog called Bear who thinks Franks is his mother. Bear stares at us intensely because, Franks says, 'He insists on knowing what is going on all the time.' Bear is black and the cat, Tui, is white. Together they look like a monochrome floor, and when I tell her this she says, 'So chic!'

Sick of the election already? I don't mean bored to tears, increasingly grumpy and shouting at the TV before hurling the remote at the flatscreen. No, we're talking physically sick. Blinding headache, palpitations, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, hot and cold running night sweats, loss of libido. Heart-stopping, brain-numbing, bowel-loosening, hands-trembling, Get-Me-To-Dignitas panic stations. A week in, you could be suffering from some or all of these warning signals. I know I am. I thought it was simply the after-effects of my recent bout of the adult '100-day' whooping cough, which has been sweeping the country, and the industrial-strength antibiotics which eventually battered it into submission. Turns out, though, I could be a victim of acute electionitis. So, if any of you are similarly afflicted, before you reach for the razor blades or the jumbo Costco-sized bottle of Swedish triple-distilled falling-over fluid and a handful of sleeping tablets, you can take comfort in the fact that you're not alone.

When the heavens opened over Rishi Sunak outside Downing Street as he called a General Election this afternoon, he could have been forgiven for wanting to turn back time. With the water pouring down and the Prime Minister's suit becoming more and more soaked, it was far from the projection of power and confidence that Mr Sunak would have wanted to portray. In doing so he became the latest unwilling addition to the list of politicians who have suffered cringeworthy political photo-ops that almost - and sometimes did - overshadow the point they were trying to get across. From Theresa May's robotic dancing and Neil Kinnock falling in the sea, to Ed Miliband travails trying eat a bacon sandwich and Tony Blair struggling with a tight pair of jeans, many of Britain's political heavyweights have fallen flat on their face. MailOnline has gone through the last 50 years of British politics, to bring you the some of the most embarrassing mishaps that the public had the misfortune of seeing.

According to a damning survey, voters no longer see the Tories as the party of defence. According to the Mail's poll, Labour is more trusted than his party on national security and defense. Following years of the military being 'hollowed out,' more people now think the Tories are cutting defense spending rather than raising it. The sad results will shock Downing Street as they are a long cry from a decade ago, when the Tories enjoyed double-digit leads over Labour in polls. According to seven out of ten people, it would become a key battleground in the race, with seven out of ten saying that the parties' position on defense would influence how they vote.

The Labour Party's use of D:Ream's Things Can Only Get Better portrayed the country's mood for Tony Blair's resurgent 1997 election bid. For several, the song now sticks in the throat. At the 2008 Labour Party conference, Gordon Brown's use of Sit Down angered singer Tim Booth, who said it was about people and spirit rather than repairing political divisions.' In a video for Tracey Ullman's My Guy, the Labour leader gazed longingly into the eyes of a girl half his age.

Vaughan Gething won the Welsh Labour leadership race today by 51.7 percent, setting the tone for him to become Wales' first black First Minister next week. In his victory address, Prime Minister Mark Drakeford paid tribute to the country during the pandemic, saying he had planned to resign last year. However, Mr Gething, who turned 50 on Saturday, acknowledged the challenges that a Wales battling record waits and response times in healthcare and an economy plagued by heavy industry's decline, the gradual transition to green steel, and threats of strikes against mass redundancies.

Labour has a lot to celebrate following its stunning by-election victories in Wellingborough and Kingswood last week. But there's more to remember. Take this sobering fact: there have been only six Labour Prime Ministers in British history. If you want, call me a party pooper, but the General Election will be very different.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., the President of the United States, is' a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.' Well, everyone knew that. However, because this was the explanation given in a legal report for failing to sue the President for mishandling classified information, it has shattered the campaign to re-elect Biden more than if the special counsel had requested the lawsuit against the 81-year-old in the White House.

Derek Draper's name became synonymous with the Coronavirus pandemic's horrific toll in his last years. With Covid-19, the former 'ruthless political strategist' spent more than a year in hospital beginning in early 2020 and eventually not recovering. However, it was as a central New Labour figure that he was remembered by his former colleagues after he died at the age of 56 last month. The respect shown today by the presence of Labour's leading lights in the 1997 election at Primrose Hill, north London, was evident. Derek, who was instrumental in Labour's victory over John Major's Conservative government, was honoured today by figures led by former Prime Minister Tony Blair (inset today with wife Cherie). The New Labour spin doctor attained a slew of influence in the 1990s but he was best known for his involvement in the 'lobbygate' scandal. He began working as a researcher for Blairite Peter Mandelson, who attended his funeral. Derek joined GPC Market Access in 1996 and created Progress with Liam Byrne, a former minister who went on to become an MP. Mr Draper, 1998 (left) with Labour colleagues Neil Kinnock, John Prescott, and Peter Mandelson in the early 1990s (top right); with his wife during her time on I'm a Celebrity in 2019.

This week Bel advises a reader who fears her marriage is in trouble

Mr Draper, who died of long-term coronavirus, was married to television presenter Kate Garraway, and was one of Britain's most prominent media couples. Sir Tony was one of the leading New Labour figures to pay tributes to Mr Draper, who served with Blairite Lord Mandelson and established the Progress group with Liam Byrne, who went on to become an MP. He called him a "tough, sometimes ruthless strategist" and a "brilliant advisor," but he also said he was a "loving, compassionate, and good natured man." Gordon Brown, another former Prime Minister, wrote on social media: "So sad that after such a long fight, Derek Draper has lost his life as a result of Covid'.' 'I will remember him as brilliant, inventive, and multitalented,' and our thoughts are with Kate, Darcey, and Billy.' Mr Draper was 'a big character,' according to Alastair Campbell, a fellow influential New Labour figure of the 1990s. Mr Draper (left); with Labour colleagues Neil Kinnock, John Prescott, and Peter Mandelson in the early 1990s (top right); with his wife during her time on I'm a Celebrity in 2019.

MAIL COMMENT: Samuel Beckett, the nigma and enigmatic Irish playwright, called to announce on the coming year, but they say no one was happy.' Zero.' He probably knew that optimism was a risky strategy at the best of times as a wartime French Resistance courier and lifelong cricket fan. Can we, should we say the same for 2024? We certainly don't have that luxury. Thousands of us will have the ability to influence events in the coming year, a major source of pride due to the tense choice between two fundamentally different branches of government, which we will be able to make at the ballot box. In fact, this year is especially pivotal for the English-speaking world, as both Britain and the United States face high-stakes general elections. This hasn't happened since 1992, when John Major pulled off his surprise defeat of Neil Kinnock in the same year that Bill Clinton denied George Bush senior the second term.

Baroness Kinnock, the wife of former Prime Minister Neil Kinnock's wife, is dying in Golders Green, north London. The two recent residents of Downing Street, as well as Sir Keir, Lord Mandelson, and a slew of current and former Labour politicians were in attendance. Baroness Kinnock served as an MEP for more than 15 years before deciding on a life peerage in 2009 when Mr Brown appointed her Minister for Europe. The 79-year-old died peacefully in her sleep earlier this month, with her husband by her side. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease six years ago.