The paper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, has since cast doubts on that claim and any like it, telling the BJR that politicians “vastly” over-estimate the influence of the press. Kinnock, idly sipping from a glass of sparkling mineral water in a House of Lords bar, isn't so sure, recalling a Daily Telegraph article by Lord MacAlpine in which the former Tory Party treasurer effectively acknowledged that the Conservatives owed their 1992 victory to the tabloid press.

“I think that's probably exaggerated,” muses Kinnock. “However, when the difference between not winning and being the largest single party is 1,240 votes – the combined Tory majority in their least-safe 11 seats – you begin to wonder. Secondly, if you go back you will see that in the four days leading up to the election there was a kind of simultaneous effort made by the Mail, Sun and Express on coverage of similar stories. Thirdly, you will see there was newspaper promotion activity that consisted of giving away hundreds of thousands of copies of particular newspapers free in particular areas – strangely, not including my constituency. So I could not and would not attribute John Major's victory to the fact that their reserve regiment, the right-leaning press, was mobilised, but I would say that I'd be astounded if it hadn't had some impact in an election in which they got, in percentage terms, measurably more than we did, but in actual numbers in marginal seats only squeaked it. I certainly don't think the idea that the press has no serious impact would stand serious examination.”

It was all a long time ago, although he claims a hostile press is something with which he still has to contend – “It amazes me that they still go for me. I'm not whingeing, but it does really irritate that I seem still just as much a target as I was when Leader.” But the widely-reported London School of Economics speech by Charles Clarke, one of his last before being sacked as Home Secretary, has once more pitched the media debate high on political and journalistic agendas and Neil Kinnock has never been one to treat a debate in any way other than to seize it by the throat.

He supports much, although by no means all, of what Clarke said and scorns those newspapers “that really do believe that they determine who is elected and not elected and really believe they determine the substance as well as the shade of government policy and the flow of public discourse. I say determine, not dictate, but that's a gesture of generosity on my part. I do think you can make the accusation that they operate in the belief that they do determine the flow of events, and because that process is unaccountable it is, as Charles Clarke said, pernicious”.

Unaccountable? “They will argue that they have shareholders. They will argue even more that they have readerships, and if the readership doesn't like what it's getting it votes with its coppers and goes to buy another newspaper. But that isn't accountability. That's equating a newspaper with a burger or a tin of peas. If you get a bad tin of peas, you'll never buy that make again. You get a burger that the kids don't like, you go to the next burger bar. But it's not the same with a newspaper, because normal market sellers are trying to attract, not determine your taste. Yet even though they're not accountable to any Demos as it were, newspapers consider themselves to be the engines of accountability to those who are elected. In a sense it's the arrogance of some papers in their view of themselves and their own significance and the virtual absence of accountability that makes me think they are quite dangerous.”

Warming to his theme, he produces sheets of paper bearing findings of the Eurobarometer, a series of cross-national and cross-temporal social surveys conducted on behalf of the European Commission. Kinnock himself urged inclusion of a question on trust in the media when serving as a Commissioner. Across Europe the most trusted media is mostly radio, with television not far behind. “The written press has the trust of only half of those polled in eight of the 15 Member States,” reads the report, with the UK press scoring the lowest “tend to trust rating” – just 20 per cent (the next lowest was Sweden with 38 per cent – still poor, but almost twice the British rating). Later Kinnock sends me the figures for 2005. The UK “trust rating” has fallen to 19 per cent, and although the percentage of those who “tend not to trust” the press has improved on the previous poll's findings, this is still, emphasises the report, “substantially higher than the EU averages”.

“The media survey was started in 2002,” says Kinnock, “and has shown a sustained downward trend in trust in the press [as have other similar surveys]. Now if I were a British press journalist, I'd have to be worried by that, because while we're about par for the course in trusting TV, and radio is good, the figures for the press means there's an innate scepticism about the value of press reporting among the general public. That's an encouragement to me, because I have huge reservations despite my admiration for parts of the press and some journalists. But at the same time it is a major worry that a major organ of expression in an established parliamentary democracy, which applauds itself on its freedoms, has got a press that such a small percentage of people trust.

A real disservice to democracy

The readings of the Eurobarometer are reflected in Kinnock's own view of British radio and television, and especially of the BBC. Unlike many in his party, he is not a BBC basher, although the style of interviewing epitomised by John Humphrys's (and examined elsewhere in this issue) causes him unease.

“For grown-up politicians, the problem isn't what's been developed by John [Humphrys] and Jeremy [Paxman] into an aggressive house style,” he says. “What they're acutely wary of are risks of being aggressive back – many politicians, maybe most, can give it as well as take it – because to respond in kind can lead to accusations of bluster, evasiveness, losing their rag and therefore being not really fit to accept the responsibilities of public office. I'm very glad those programmes are put out on the BBC, but the question is, are they setting the general standard? And the answer is, they are, increasingly – because the youngsters coming out of the journalism courses naturally form the opinion that if they want to get on, get noticed, become professionally successful, they've got to try to emulate that sharpness. Of course, some of them doubtlessly have that talent; others just give the appearance of being abusive. They're easy to deal with – if you can't deal with them you shouldn't be in politics – but what bothers me is not that John and Jeremy may put up their dukes in broadcasting, or that smacking them back often doesn't get the fair coverage it deserves, more important is that there's an effort to make rant the norm in current affairs reporting. And it would be bad if it became the norm, because the search for facts would take second place to the entertainment of the wrestling match.

“Ironically, and I've said this to John, the programme or the kind of programme that gets the biggest disclosure from the interviewee is Desert Island Discs. People will say things on that programme they wouldn't dream of saying in a current affairs interview, not because their attention is distracted, but because there is an absolute absence of aggression. Maybe they'll be a swing back of some kind. But in the meantime, to be distrustful of the BBC, to condemn the BBC because of the style adopted by a couple of interviewers I think is very unwise on the part of politicians. I am very pro-BBC. I have my arguments with them, but generally speaking, I think, the BBC is best is the bloody world.”

(His most recent quarrel was a Yesterday in Parliament broadcast that contained, he says, “some complete fictions” while also referring to him as “a former Eurosceptic”. A letter to Director-General Mark Thompson elicited a reply “full of regrets” but in which Thompson said that references to Kinnock's one-time Euroscepticism might still be made in the future. “So I dropped him a line pointing out that it's well over 20 years since I was a Eurosceptic and that 10 years after campaigning for a ‘No' vote in the 1975 referendum I changed the policy of my party,” recalls Kinnock with a shrug and a smile. “While I don't in any way compare myself to Winston Churchill, I do think it very unlikely that in, say, 1940, the Prime Minister would have been referred to as ‘the former Liberal', which he had been until 16 years before.”)

We return to the subject of the press and the view, expressed vociferously by critics inside and outside the industry, that its behaviour is a threat to the democratic process in this country. Kinnock does, he says, take very seriously “what is now a really substantial and incessant attack on politics as an activity of remote, entirely self-interested, arrogant gits to the point where only a crank or somebody on the make would even join a political party. I'm not being paranoid – that's the persistent theme coming through. It comes from people who consider themselves to be very enlightened, but patronise politics by deriding political engagement – some parts of the The Guardian and Independent come to mind and some parts of the Telegraph, too. But there's another side of the campaign, which I think is probably much more influential, which is that on every page almost, certainly on every page with a column and in every diary piece, there's a constant reference to how worthless, useless and meaningless political engagement and political activity is. I'm much more worried about that.

Such bloody clever-clogs

“Often when it comes across on the radio or I read it, I say to myself, or to Glenys or the kids, they're such bloody clever-clogs. And, like bad doctors, bad journalists bury all their mistakes. Nobody believes more than journalists that they're writing tomorrow's chip paper – that's why they can, without any real fear that someone's going to follow up what they said a fortnight ago, or 10 years ago, be perpetually right. The only place I know where somebody does try to track them is that page in the otherwise frequently-irritating Private Eye. It's about the only place where you can see what the same newspaper or even journalists have said before, in direct contradiction to what they are saying today.”

He is contemptuous, too, of the press's part in dumbing down British culture, believing that newspapers, rather than reality TV and a national hankering for celebrity, set the trend: “Here's a peculiar paradox. The tasks and living conditions of our society are more complex and demand higher levels of formal and informal skills than ever before. And, simultaneously, we observe deterioration in vocabulary, means of expression, etcetera, etcetera. But I don't think society has spontaneously dumbed itself down, because its living and working experience and learning experience contradict that. People have had to smarten up, because that's the only way to live and earn a living and everything that goes with it.

“The idea's been encouraged that knowledge, articulation, discernment don't matter and you can't really blame a lot of people, particularly kids, for absorbing that. But where did it come from? I don't believe anybody ever conspired and then designed a dumbing down process – that would be ridiculous. But the Murdoch tabloid press, particularly and manifestly, declared itself to be aiming at a less-demanding readership. I'm sure they would be very critical of that and come to the defence of Sun readers, but frankly if you look at it over 25 years, that's what they've been doing. It's populist superficiality with strong strains of cheap nationalism – that's what they do and there's a corner in the market for it, but then it becomes endemic. You will get a degree of it gradually in The Times and then other papers and then, damn me, because the broadcasting media, specially in current affairs, have to rely in the urgency of the moment on newspapers as the major source of news and analysis, by osmosis almost what's happening in newspapers has an effect on current affairs programmes. Sometimes it pauses and goes a bit into retreat, but the trend over a quarter of a century has been in that direction.”

Although insisting that he would be “very reluctant” to advocate legislative regulation of the press – “I buy the theory that the industry should regulate itself ” – he feels newspaper ombudsmen are mostly “a joke” and the Press Complaints Commission “even more of a joke”. (A drawn-out and unresolved squabble with The Sun over a story about a Kinnock Brussels project, the renovation of the Berlaymont building, colours this view. The paper's figures were “78 per cent out”, he claims wryly, and observes: “We take it for granted that Europe is almost universally misreported and that's a matter of concern, because here's an essential area of economic and political engagement and people are getting a twisted and distorted version of events. It's going to be difficult for them to formulate discerning opinions and that's doing a disservice to the British public.”)

“I do think the form of regulation should be changed,” he continues. “I'd be reluctant to see an Ofcom, but I think there could be a body that is very substantially, although not wholly, drawn from the industry. Characterised not by current editors but by people who are getting towards the end or have reached the end of their journalistic career, so they have nobody to be afraid of – journalists in their fifties or early sixties who have discontinued full-time work. If we had that kind of body, with a few other people – a couple of lawyers, a couple of business people, a couple of nurses, train drivers, whatever – what we would get is a body which could offer judgments that were not statutorily binding and that never thought of itself as a police force. And I think that could be a real help to reinforce the best standards many journalists try to set and conform to.”

Press deserves praise

Kinnock is still finding his way around the House of Lords, which, following his driving ban for speeding, he now delights in reaching easily by public transport from his West London home. At 63 he is a more relaxed if still combative version of the forceful politician he always was. He pauses to grin and say: “The last thing I want to sound like is a grumpy old bugger – I am a grumpy old bugger, everybody knows that – and I think the great majority of the British press deserves praise for over the past 10 years declaring itself anti-racist and for its changed attitude to homosexuals.” The negative attitudes of much of the British press towards asylum-seekers, travellers, “women with forceful views” and bureaucrats are not to his liking, however, and he deplores “tabloid editorials that fulminate against pornography while on other pages the paper runs full-frontals of attractive young women”.

As he walks me to the exit, a final look over his shoulder at the press attention he attracted when leading the Party produces this: “Any politician who says names will never hurt them – the old sticks and stones thing – is telling lies. You have to learn to live with it, but that doesn't mean you don't have the odd scratch to show. When it becomes insufferable is when it extends to the family, because it's difficult for a politician to fight back but it's impossible for the family to do so. The times that I used to rage always had to do with that. I found it was relentless, and it wasn't confined in any way to news pages and political comment. It was in diary pieces, there were irrelevant references in news pages that didn't have much to do with politics, and it was continual. Jim Callaghan said that in all the time he'd been in politics, he knew of people who had been attacked as vehemently, but never so continuously as me. He really was astounded by it.”

And one final thought from Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty: “Sometimes I think the whole of society should be run by a committee of rugby union referees, and they don't have all to be Welsh. They are people who sustain confidence in the rules because they apply them to everybody the same and never take any nonsense. Come to think of it, maybe they should be regulating the press.”