The tragic case of the windbag and the whistleblower

It was a sorry occasion for a politician of such distinction at the end of his career. But Neil Kinnock's bad-tempered appearance before a European Parliament committee this week to talk of sleaze and accusations of poor accounting showed the worst of Brussels defensiveness and, one fears, the worst of Kinnock himself.

Faced with a request to keep his answers shortafter more than an hour of grilling (the committee clearly didn't know their man, or maybe knew him too well), he exploded: "We are paid to be in the stocks but never to respond."

Yes, indeed. The unelected and generally derided officials of Brussels, of which Kinnock is one of the highest as a vice-president of the European Commission, are paid (extremely generously) and are in the stocks. Europe is at a moment of huge changes as it prepares for enlargement, copes with sluggish growth and debates the structural changes needed to keep it running for the next generation. And there, in its very centre, is a commission widely perceived as corrupt, self-interested and (depending on degree of Euroscepticism) either incompetent or devilishly full of plans for federal rule.

Into this sensitive arena steps Neil Kinnock, the man charged with reforming the institution in answer to the charges of malfeasance. And what does he do when asked about the budget chief who argues that the commission's accounting systems leave it open to fraud and auditing failures? He pleads the age-old excuse of the closed institution: forget what the whistleblower is accusing you of, she should have kept her views within the system.

Thus was Clive Ponting dismissed when he leaked details about the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands war. So was Sarah Tisdall actually jailed for putting information about Cruise missiles into the press. And so do governments and companies around the world try to make information a private possession rather than a public right.

Of course Kinnock had a case. He was put mercilessly to the rack by conservative members of the European Parliament who sensed blood in the long-running war with the commission. Strictly speaking, the whistle blower, Marta Andreasen, was not Kinnock's direct responsibility. And she has gone public before going through the new channels laid down for critics.

But come off it. Kinnock is a big boy. He should know just how important appearances are in a case like this. The commission needs to regain its credibility with the public and its sense of self-confidence within. Kinnock has been a politician long enough to understand this and to know what needs to be done. Dealing with a hostile committee should be meat and drink to him.

Yet it isn't. Not any longer. Like Chris Patten, the other British commissioner, Kinnock has joined a long line of UK appointments who have never got to grips with Brussels, nor have been able to achieve anything there. The old accusation is that they go native once they get to that city of art nouveau flamboyance and prissy provincialism. And there is some truth in this. Most do seem to prefer the perks of office there to the project.

But most do try and represent Britain to Brussels as best they can. The trouble seems to be that they never seem to be able to do it the other way round: to represent Europe to the British. Which is odd since they have all been politicians used to the pre-eminence of presentation in the art of British public life.

They disappear into the bureaucracy to return to London not as propagators of a cause but as excusers of an institution.

It may be that the Continental system of government, with its private offices, departmental cabinets and large bureaucracies, doesn't suit the British. It may be – it certainly is – that the British look on Brussels as a place to send their warhorses to grass when domestic politics no longer require them, whereas most of the Continent sees it as a route to greater pre-eminence back home.

The British commissioners who have done best – Leon Brittan and, of course, Roy Jenkins as president of the commission – are those who have known what they wanted and been able to work the system to get their way. Which may tell us something about British politics as much as Brussels.

Reading about Churchill, Attlee, Macmillan and Thatcher, one is made very aware how much they were able to make bureaucracy respond to their directions (or refuse them, thank heavens, in the case of some of Churchill's madder ideas).

When you look at John Major and Tony Blair, you are made aware of how much words have become an alternative to deeds, not their accompaniment. Civil servants are blamed, new systems of supervision and progress-chasing are put in place, but there is no sense of the political force that locks into the drive shaft of government. The rhetoric of exhortation has replaced the politics of delivery.

Kinnock was frequently dismissed in Britain as a windbag. It was unfair and wrong. He had considerable courage and a willingness to fight for what he believed in. But he never had the ability to make things happen, which has left him before a committee of politicians desperately defending the indefensible in terms that would shame a director of Enron.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk