Chapter 3. 1983-92: Neil Kinnock and the 'new Model Party'

Following Labour’s defeat in the 1983 general election, Michael Foot resigned as Party Leader. In the election to choose his successor (contested under the new electoral college format) Neil Kinnock received over seventy-one per cent of the electoral college vote, enjoying the crucial support of all the largest trade unions, and he also emerged as the clear winner in the CLP and PLP sections (RACLP, 1983: 29). In contrast to his seventy year-old predecessor who was elected to Parliament in 1945, Kinnock was only forty-one and signified the appearance of a younger generation of leaders (McSmith, 1996: 7). Moreover, his working-class background was somewhat unusual for a Labour Leader (who were and still are mostly drawn from the middleclasses and private school backgrounds), but at this point in the Party’s history a miner’s son was more welcome than middle-class intellectuals such as Michael Foot. During his nine year tenure as Party Leader, Neil Kinnock managed to reinvent both himself and the Party. Elected as a member of the ‘soft’ left, Kinnock had in the seventies been a somewhat radical left-winger and was a 1