- The Observer,
- Sunday June 1 2003
Scotching speculation that he will take a seat in the House of Lords after he steps down from the commission next year, Kinnock, 61, hints strongly that unambitious reform of the upper house has all but ruled it out for him.
Instead he says he wants to take advantage of his new-found freedom to 'make trouble' for various people, including Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, someone his wife and MEP Glenys Kinnock has campaigned against.
His comments - his frankest to date - are due to appear on news website EUpolitix.com tomorrow and have been exclusively obtained by The Observer. 'I will always be in politics. It's almost like breathing,' says Kinnock, who has been a member of the Brussels commission since 1995.
'I want to make trouble for some people. Top of my list is Robert Mugabe at the moment. I'm not being pretentious when I say that. There are certain constraints even on politicians - well, I won't be obligated by those certain constraints.'
Kinnock stresses that he wants to remain independent. 'It's just being an activist, that's all,' he says. 'I'm not talking about roles of any kind. The great thing, if you want to actively raise questions and try and get attention for injustices is to have the time to keep on pumping out the arguments. I don't have any pretensions to fulfil national or international roles, and that's not false humility, I just haven't.'
Instead, he says, he wants to transform himself into a vocal human rights advocate with a global brief. 'There are quite a lot of bad guys in the world, there is a lot of injustice, and there are a lot of people who don't have much of a voice. Without, again, being presumptuous for somebody with my beliefs, you always have the task of speaking up for those who don't get heard.'
Kinnock also says that he has long been contemplating campaigning for compulsory voting in the UK in order to revitalise British politics and safeguard democracy itself.
'The lack of vitality in a democracy is self-feeding,' he explains. 'People get used to the habit of not voting. They are then told from some quarters that it is a very sophisticated and worldly-wise attitude to take.
'For somebody whose grandmother was 29 before she was able to cast a vote, that makes me extremely angry, the danger to democracy makes me very anxious.'
Until now many had assumed that Tony Blair would give Kinnock a seat in the Lords, possibly with a seat in the Cabinet as Leader of the House, but the Welshman appears less than enthusiastic about the prospect.
'I'm not even sure I'd go into a reformed House of Lords,' he says. 'Let's put it like this, the decision would have been easier had there been not even complete reform but a substantial stride.
'I don't feel magnetised by it [the prospect of entering the upper house].'
Eleven years after his election day savaging at the hands of the Sun, Kinnock remains fiercely critical of Britain's media.
The Sun 's front-page headline in 1992 - 'If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights' - is unlikely ever to be forgotten by him, and he is furious that the same newspapers seem to be distorting the current debate over a new European constitution with so much success.
'Even someone like myself, who thought he was inoculated against the capacity of parts of the British press for anti-European hysteria, has been shocked by what we've seen in the last three weeks.'
Kinnock, who says he believes Britain will join the euro one day, believes that the new constitution is 'sensible' and that its implications are significant but not 'menacing'.
There is no question, he stresses, that Britain will - and should - give up its right of veto on tax and social security matters.
