A recording of Neil Kinnock addressing the Parliamentary Labour Party has surfaced on LabourList today. Attacking not only Jeremy Corbyn, but Dennis Skinner, he refers to his trouble with the militants in the 1980s throughout. It is a blistering attack on the direction of the Labour party, its current leadership and its supporters. No surprise that it went down well with the PLP, then.

No matter how old or how young should understand the lessons [of militants and bad leadership in the Labour party] and never repeat that again. But there are some, for whatever reason, are incapable of the instruction of reality. So they better wake up. … My majority against Tony Benn was 88.6%. Tony got 11.4%. With the assistance of Dennis [Skinner], of course. And the assistance of Jeremy Corbyn, of course. No talk of unity or loyalty [then]. … In the constituency parties that in 1981 had overwhelmingly voted for Tony’s deputy leadership candidature, the result was Kinnock 82%, Benn 18%. Why? Because the constituency parties, the rank-and-file of had decided they’d had enough of posturing and hectoring and they wanted to give the Labour party a real chance of securing advance of power and we gained 3.1 million votes because of those people. Now then, we can take further instruction from modern history, the way in which in a supermarket people said ‘I want to vote Labour but I can’t vote for Ed Miliband’. I heard it, oh yes, I heard it. Apply the supermarket test for Jeremy Corbyn and see what answer you get. We know what answer we’re getting on the doorstep … There will be no split. There will be no retreat. Damn it. This is our party, I’ve been in it sixty years. I’m not leaving it to anybody.

Briefing’s favourite point is when Kinnock tells the PLP about being told why a Welsh-man is not listening. Corbyn is “a bit weird”.