Withering critic who saved most savage attacks for his own party
Clever, passionate, acerbic — as Labour MP Gerald Kaufman dies...
BY THE standards of most politicians, Gerald Kaufman – who has died at 86 after a long illness – was an extraordinarily colourful, acerbic and controversial character.
first elected in Manchester in 1970, he was Britain’s longestserving MP. and although he never held Cabinet office, he made a distinctive mark on our national life as a savage critic of, among other things, the state of Israel, the music of andrew Lloyd Webber and, above all, his Labour Party colleagues. Born in Leeds in 1930 to Polish Jewish immigrants, Kaufman was a clever man who never forgot his roots, and never underestimated his own ability. after winning scholarships to Leeds Grammar School and Queen’s College, Oxford, he threw himself into Labour student politics, tangling with a young man called Rupert Murdoch, whom he managed to block from standing for a club office.
When Kaufman’s early attempts to win a parliamentary seat ended in defeat in 1955 and 1959, he ended up working for the Daily Mirror and the New Statesman. Eventually he landed a job at the Labour Party press office, though he also found the time to contribute satirical sketches to the hit BBC show That Was the Week That Was.
In the late 1960s and 1970s he was one of Harold Wilson’s closest advisers, though colleagues complained that instead of calming Wilson’s paranoia about the security services and plots by his own ministers, Kaufman – himself an inveterate intriguer – stoked it to new heights.
Indeed, although there was no doubt about Kaufman’s brains and ability, many of his fellow MPs distrusted him, which explains why he never rose any higher than Minister of State at the Department of Industry. KAUFMAN
became a fixture on Labour’s front bench in the 1980s, serving as Shadow Environment Secretary, Home Secretary and foreign Secretary. But although he was an outspoken critic of Margaret Thatcher at the time, he paid a remarkably handsome tribute to her after her death, praising her courage, courtesy and patriotism.
Indeed, he reserved much of his most withering fire for his own side, famously dismissing Labour’s Left-wing manifesto in 1983 under Michael foot’s leadership – which promised to scrap nuclear weapons and the House of Lords and renationalise Britain’s industries – as ‘the longest suicide note in history’.
Kaufman was nothing if not a great hater. He loved nothing better than plunging the knife into his fellow MPs, but in 1992 he found a new mission as chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. There he loved to denounce institutions such as the Royal Opera House and the BBC.
The irony was that despite his attacks on the pampered barons of the arts world, Kaufman’s parliamentary expenses were far from parsimonious. among other things, he submitted receipts for an antique rug, bought in New York for £1,461.83, and a 40-inch Bang & Olufsen television costing a staggering £8,865, more than 11 times the approved limit.
The ensuing storm did not, however, deter him in the slightest. He was perhaps the last of a generation of politicians who made no apology for stirring up controversy.
By Labour standards, Kaufman’s own politics were relatively moderate. Though he disapproved of Tony Blair’s foreign policy, he applauded his move toward the centre, and he made no attempt to hide his complete contempt for Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-Left allies.
In his final years, though, it was Middle Eastern politics that dominated Kaufman’s thinking. Despite his Jewish background, he was a ferocious critic of successive Israeli governments.
for decades, Kaufman called for Britain to impose sanctions on Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians. In 2015 he even alleged that ‘Jewish donations to the Conservative Party’ were distorting Britain’s policy towards the Middle East.
Not surprisingly, these remarks were intensely controversial. Some Jewish organisations accused him of pandering to anti- Semitism, and Kaufman was abused by fellow worshippers at his local synagogue.
But he never backed down. ‘My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came,’ he said. ‘a German soldier shot her in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.’
Clever, passionate, outspoken and abrasive, Kaufman was one of a kind. In an age when too many MPs are frightened to speak their minds, he stood out. and whatever you think of his politics, Westminster will be a far duller place without him.