So we're talking a few days after the anniversary of New Labor's landslide election victory in 1997 after 18 years of Conservative government.

But I thought it might be good to go back a few years more to the beginning of the New Labor project

when Tony Blair succeeded John Smith as Labour leader in 1994 after John Smith passed away.

Do you recall how you felt about Blair and New Labour at the time?

And obviously the war on terror and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were far into the future at

that point and impossible to predict. But when it came to domestic policy, did you feel very

pessimistic about the project straight away? Or were you surprised by the extent to which

new Labour cleaved to

neoliberal economic orthodoxy?

Now, I was totally pessimistic, especially through meeting some of the people around the Fabian

Society, in particular people like the soon-to-be notorious Derek Draper, I became aware in a way that most people on the soft left

I was conscious really were not aware as how incredibly right-wing the views of the people

around the sort of protein new Labour project were. I mean, partly because they would get drunk

and tell me their things that they wouldn't admit, like publicly.

What would they say?

Well, they would say they had never wanted Kinnick to win.

They were glad Kinnik had lot.

They never wanted Kinnik to be Prime Minister.

They were glad he lost.

There's obviously a strange echo there with, you know,

would rather Corbyn hadn't won, although obviously

the politics is very different. And it's, and it's sure. And I think it is really the contemporaries sort of Labour left, like it would shock people to think that they were saying that's about Kinnock, because they think of Kinnick now as just being part of that new labour formation. And he really wasn't. Even though he's now very much a defender of the project.

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