Gordon will do the job very well

Michael Foot and I are sitting in the kitchen of his house in Hampstead, north London. Outside in the garden a red ‘Labour’ rose blooms in the afternoon sun; inside, the house is crammed with books: they’re in piles on the kitchen table, on shelves on every wall: William Hazlitt, William Blake, John Keats, Benjamin Disraeli, Thomas Paine. Upstairs there’s a whole roomful of books on women’s suffrage that belonged to his late wife, Jill Craigie, then another room where an entire corner is devoted to Irish writers: George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift.

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.’

It’s not of course that Mr Foot has any objection to spreading democracy. ‘Government by consent is the most sacred cause of all,’ he said in 1970, and he has always argued that all people deserve to live in democracies. But his love of democracy these days often rubs up against his hatred of war and his fear that in an attempt to destroy injustice, the world will destroy itself. ‘The pre-emptive strike is a terrible, terrible idea,’ he says, about the onset of the second Gulf war, ‘and the dangers of this idea spreading are just appalling.’ One of Mr Foot’s persistent worries is that other nuclear nations might take up the idea of pre-emptive strikes, to catastrophic effect. ‘Look at India’ (Mr Foot was a close friend of Indira Gandhi) â” ‘the dangers if they tried a pre-emptive strike are too awful to contemplate.’

Perhaps, then, Mr Foot has more in common with David Cameron’s foreign policy than New Labour’s? After all, on his recent visit to Mumbai, the Conservative leader referred to the ‘challenge in international affairs’, the British political obsession with Europe and America, and the importance of ‘our deep relationship with India’.

The answer is an emphatic ‘no’. While Mr Foot would agree with Mr Cameron that it’s crucial to take notice of what other countries think â” ‘Of course we should be listening to people in India,’ he says, ‘they’ll give us better ideas about how to deal with the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction’ â” during the course of our interview it becomes clear that he’s a great supporter of Gordon Brown.

So even after all this infighting and betrayal, you still see Mr Brown as a figure on whom to focus your hopes, I ask. Mr Foot raises his voice, sounding more urgent than usual as he says: ‘I have known Gordon Brown for a long time and I’m very much in favour of him taking over.

‘I think he’ll do the job very well,’ he adds, leaving little doubt that he sees Mr Brown as the inevitable heir â” and the sooner the better. It is perhaps strange that, for someone who favours debate and diplomacy, Mr Foot sees no need for these qualities in a new party leader. Nor does he seem concerned that the Chancellor’s seriousness and his obvious bitterness will put voters off. But then Mr Foot is an intellectual, and the antithesis of the image-conscious politicians of today, as he himself would happily admit. ‘The age of the agitators has gone,’ he wrote in 1965, ‘and that of bureaucrats, political technicians and public relations officers has succeeded.’

By now, Mr Foot is tired and keen to finish our interview. ‘I’m going to have to throw you out, I’m afraid,’ he says, firmly but politely. As I gather my notes, he thoughtfully gives me a book of his essays to take with me, before walking me to the front door.

John Reynolds is a freelance writer based in Ireland. Michael Foot’s and Alison Highet’s biography of Mr Foot’s father, Isaac, published by Politico’s, goes on sale on 18 September.