Gordon will do the job very well

16 September 2006

Michael Foot led Labour to defeat in 1983, the year Blair and Brown entered Parliament. He tells John Reynolds why Iraq was a catastrophe and why Brown will be a great PM

Mr Foot believes that politicians should have a love of great literature (he has written acclaimed biographies of Aneurin Bevan and H.G. Wells among others) and also that the best writers of fiction should concern themselves with politics. ‘I’m in favour of politicians knowing something about literature and vice versa,’ he says. ‘Swift was a wonderful example. Swift, his views and ideas changed my life. I was asked to speak at his 300th commemoration at Trinity College Dublin in 1967,’ he says, ‘and I remember thinking I would be hosting perhaps a small seminar in a library or lecture room. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was to give the talk in the awe-inspiring St Patrick’s Cathedral. I felt very close to heaven!’

‘I also met Mary Robinson [the former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] there,’ he continues. ‘She is one of the wonderful women of the world, but I felt she was very badly treated by the US during her work for the UN. Mary showed herself to be independent and was not afraid to ask tough questions when she saw the need, such as during the war in Chechnya. She would have made a wonderful International Secretary of the UN.’

So Swift informed Mr Foot’s philosophy, introduced him to great figures of the day, and also played Cupid between him and his wife. In the early days of their relationship, Foot and Craigie spent many happy hours discussing Swift. ‘Jill and I also read the essays of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw,’ says Mr Foot, then pauses perhaps to replay the happy memories in his mind.

Joyce is another Irish writer whom Mr Foot admires, for his ideas about both love and politics. ‘We have to take notice of Joyce on politics. He embodied the spirit of Ireland, and was outraged by some of the things the English did there,’ he says.

Mr Foot is 93 now and, since his birthday on 23 July, the longest-lived leader of a British political party, beating Lord Callaghan’s record of 92 years, 364 days. And though he’s as politically astute as ever, he sometimes lapses into silence and I find it difficult to get him talking about the current state of the Labour party. On the subject of Tony Blair’s foreign policy, however, he becomes uncharacteristically outspoken. ‘Blair was quite wrong to go into Iraq,’ Mr Foot says, adding vehemently, ‘Our government should be prepared not to accept the American way of doing things, and the ongoing talk of putting pressure on Iran, militarily or with sanctions, is also quite wrong.’