Emotional Neil Kinnock wipes away tears as he praises Burnham’s pledge to change lives by unlocking potential

An emotional Neil Kinnock wiped away tears as he praised Andy Burnham’s drive to ensure everyone in Britain has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

The former Labor leader, who had a brief career teaching adults before entering politics, said he saw first-hand how unlocking people’s talents could change lives nearly six decades ago.

In his first major speech as prime minister-to-be on Monday, Mr Burnham said he wanted to give people the stability that would create “the ability to get on with life” and pledged to ensure everyone “has the chance to be everything they can be. That’s what we’re going to do”.

In an interview with Independent, Lord Kinnock said Mr Burnham’s appeal was “not just an emotional and political appeal, it is real”.

“And of course the tragedy is that so few people realize their abilities, largely because no one tells them.”

Recalling his brief career teaching adults, particularly trade unionists, 56 years ago, he said: “I learned much more from them than they learned from me.

“But I know I’ve changed lives by telling men and women, ‘You don’t know how good you are.’

“And I would tell them about things they said or wrote that showed a dimension they didn’t realize, and certainly the school they went to, the army they served in, and even parents they never knew.

“As a result, in three years, I sent 21 people from the workshop to university. And all of them got better degrees than me.”

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Some of them, he said, were “gorgeous.” “They’re just fucking geniuses waiting to be discovered. But they were all amazing,” he said.

In a speech when he was leading the Labor Party in 1987, Lord Kinnock asked why he was the first Kinnock “in 1,000 generations” to go to university.

He said: “Why am I the first Kinnock in 1,000 generations to go to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Was it because those people who could work eight hours underground and come up and play football were weak?”

The phrase was later borrowed by Joe Biden before he became US president.

Similarly, he asked: “Why is Joe Biden the first in his family to go to college?”

“Was it because our fathers and mothers weren’t smart? Was it because my ancestors, who worked in the coal mines in northeastern Pennsylvania and came back after 12 hours and played football for four hours, didn’t work hard?”

Lord Kinnock was speaking Independent as part of it Europe: The Way Back Campaign calling for the UK to rebuild its relations with Europe.

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