Neil Kinnock: Ed Miliband will become PM but as head of a minority government
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader has spoken to the New Statesman ahead of the Thursday’s election.
He is the first senior Labour figure to admit that he doesn’t think Mr Miliband will win a majority – rather off message as Mr Miliband himself refuses to countenance anything else.
He told the magazine: “I think the most likely result is that Ed becomes prime minister and that he follows a fairly conventional course in the House of Commons. You gather majorities for specific issues, whether they are big statutory requirements, like the Queen’s Speech or the Budget – in some senses they are the easiest things to get majorities for – or amendments on bills.
Kinnock is still close to Mr Miliband. He endorsed him during the Labour leadership contest; his daughter, Rachel, works as Miliband’s events director; his son, Stephen, is standing in the safe Labour seat of Aberavon.
He is interesting on the silent Conservative vote: “That’s always a danger … There’s a superstition that somehow a Tory government will look after your pocket, it’s a triumph of propaganda over reality and people who tell pollsters that they’re not sure or they’re not going to vote Conservative will, in the privacy of the ballot booth, say: ‘To hell with it, I’ll stick with what I know because they say they’re going to cut my taxes’ – even when their record is of course to have put taxes up.'””