Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas

podcast. Today, it is the second part of my conversation with Robert Saunders on the anniversary, and today is the

anniversary, of Neil Kinnock's speech to the Labour Party conference 40 years ago about

militant. Last time we talked about the background, the content of that speech, today we're going

to take the story from the past to the present and into the future

by talking about what it all means for the Labour Party today, for Kier-Starmer's government,

and indeed for the Democratic Party in the United States.

Robert, we have so far, in talking about Neil Kinnock's speech, primarily trace the story back.

And you've explained the really interesting but complicated context.

We said a little bit at the end of our earlier conversation about where it goes forward from 1985 through

to Tony Blair and New Labour. But I want to here push it right up to the present because I think

there is a whole set of really interesting questions. Not, it has to be said primarily about

militant, but about the Labour Party, the left, the legacy of Neil Kinnock, and indeed

where the Labour Party stands today, now that it is once again the party of government

with a thumping majority in the House of Commons, but struggling, I think it's fair to say,

to govern effectively. How, where we are now, links back to 40 years ago. Forty years ago today,

this episode is going out to the day on the 40th anniversary of Neil Kinnock's speech attacking

militant. So to pick up with the new Labor years, what happened to the left, the far left,

in the Labour Party during the Blair and Brown years?

You said in our previous conversation that it tends to flourish when Labour is out of power,

when capitalism looks like it's in trouble, when various factors come together to suggest that extra

parliamentary, possibly even revolutionary politics is the way to go. In the 1990s and the first

...