Neil Kinnock: Policy

Neil Kinnock is British politician. Explore interesting quotes on policy.

Neil Kinnock: 58 quotes0 likes

“In my right hon. Friend's reply to the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition, was he not rather unsympathetic, especially now that she appears to be the last pro-Marketeer in Britain? Is not this disturbance manifested by her use of the word "abrasiveness"? For the right hon. Lady to protest a dislike of abrasiveness is rather like Count Dracula professing a distaste for blood. Will my right hon. Friend give an undertaking to increase his abrasiveness until he rubs out altogether the common agricultural policy?”

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1979/mar/15/tuc (15 March 1979).

“I don't believe that the policies on which we fought the [1983] election ought to be ejected like some sort of spent cartridge.”

Tribune, 15 June, 1983.

“We believe there should be reforms in the EEC which would benefit all the members. If these were not achieved, our policy is to preserve the ultimate option of withdrawing Britain. That option would not, this time, need a referendum, as it did before.”

Source: On Labour policy regarding the EEC (8 January 1986)

“By emphatically pressing the view that it is only possible to support radical Labour policies by supporting Tony Benn, Tony's associates have turned the contest into a gamble with policies, [yet any] disagreement with those claims has been slandered as 'opportunism', 'careerism' and evidence of every kind of departure from socialist conviction and purpose. That is the truly dangerous product of these months of contest.”

"Personality, Policies and Democratic Socialism", Tribune, 18 September 1981.

“[A]lterations in policy had to be made with continual reference to the need to be elected in order to be able to put principles into power. I repeatedly had to reinforce the message that the real penalty for our defeat was paid by the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the young and the old that the Labour Party existed to help.”

Later life
Source: ‘Reforming the Labour Party’, Contemporary Record, Volume 8, Issue 3 (1994), p. 540