Lord Neil Kinnock was interviewed by the Tribune at his home in Tufnell Park

LORD Neil Kinnock has argued Labour are right not to offer to scrap the Tories’ two child benefit cap due to the risk of breaking election promises.

In an exclusive interview with the Tribune, the former party leader said he understood why Sir Keir Starmer was taking this approach ahead of the July 4 general election. Speaking at his home in Tufnell Park, Lord Kinnock said: “People say in the election ‘we want the truth, we want the truth’, and that’s absolutely genuine. They do want the truth, but if you really ram it down their throats they say ‘oooo that doesn’t taste very nice’.”

He added: “It [the cap] is just appalling, but in the current conditions to give an undertaking to remove the cap would be to offer a promise that we couldn’t be certain of fulfilling to the most vulnerable people in the country.”

He is supporting Praful Nargund, Labour’s candidate in Islington North and has been out canvassing. This puts him up against Jeremy Corbyn, another former party leader and the area’s MP for 40 years who is now standing as an independent candidate.

The two-child benefit cap had been criticised by Labour councillors up and down the country, and Gordon Brown, another of the party’s former leaders, has said lifting it would alleviate child poverty.

Mr Corbyn has already called for Labour ­– tipped to win with a ‘supermajority’ and a total dominance of the House of Commons next month ­– to scrap it.

Lord Kinnock said his old colleague’s presence in parliament would have “very little significance”, if Mr Corbyn was elected as an independent.

“I suppose he feels compelled to run. I don’t think it shows the collective commitment that I would expect from democratic socialists,” he said.

He claimed that Labour would be finding it difficult to beat Rishi Sunak if Mr Corbyn was still leading the party, but believed he would stand a good chance if the conditions of this election were in play when he lost the general elections in 1987 and 1992.

“I only lost the 1992 election by 1,240 votes in the end, and there wasn’t exactly a lame duck,” he said. “I campaigned in 2017 pretty widely. In 2017, whether I was in very solid Labour seats or marginals that we had to win, there was a terrific resistance to Jeremy.”

He added: “I don’t think that Labour would have a significant sustained lead if Jeremy had continued to be leader, it’s as basic as that.”

Parallels have been drawn between Lord Kinnock and Mr Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party, with both being seen as moving it to the political centre in the quest for power – and both being accused of abandoning left-wing ideals in doing so.

Lord Kinnock said: “Keir doesn’t make any secret about the fact that he wants to be elected… I’m not going to make guesses on a scale of 1 to 10 on how socialist he’s going to be. He is a socialist, and he will act in the public interest.”

Asked what he thought of opposition claims that Labour has yet to really spell out what it will do in power, he said: “I went through the experience of not being able to say directly what I wanted to do, simply because I was leading a political party.

“You’ve got to do that. There’s a necessary self-discipline. If you can’t show it, then you’re not fit to lead anyway, and I know Keir is in pretty much the same position.”

He added: “It isn’t that he’s not disclosing, not telling the truth, it is that he is doing his job of providing leadership for a very, very, very broad audience with strong appeals.”

But Lord Kinnock conceded that Labour’s huge poll lead was a result of dissatisfaction with the Conservative Party, rather than just support for Labour policies.

“Since the human being first cast the vote in Ancient Greece, the main factor determining electoral outcomes is ‘let’s get rid of these bastards’, rather than ‘let’s vote for the perfect alternative’.”

As has been well-documented in our pages, Mr Nargund has resisted being interviewed by the Tribune. And there was criticism this week that he will not appear at election hustings.

Lord Kinnock said this would be a “strategic decision” to not accept invites to the debates, adding: “He’s knocking on every damn door he can.

“Nobody can say that Praful is evading anything, it’s just a strategic decision has been taken and is being pursued. That’s often necessary in a contest. It’s not unprecedented by any means.”

He added: “It’s going well. Praful is getting a very good response on the doorstep because so many people want to vote Labour, and know that that is essential to getting rid of this government, and to getting a new system of government with different priorities that favours literally the public interest.”

He said, however, that there was no chance of the Tories winning the seat in Islington North, adding this was “because of the common sense of the electorate, and I strongly commend that.”

While full of criticism for Mr Corbyn now, Mr Starmer once described Mr Corbyn as a “friend” and served as his Brexit spokesperson in Labour’s shadow cabinet. Mr Starmer has now said he never believed Labour stood a chance of winning in 2019.

Asked whether it was right for him to support an agenda he now says he did not believe in, Lord Kinnock said: “That’s called party politics, that’s hardly a new invention.”

Lord Peter Mandelson and Dame Margaret Hodge have been among the New Labour figures joining Mr Nargund on the doorstep. Mr Corbyn held a rally in Navigator Square, Archway, on Saturday – leading on his calls to protect the NHS from privatisation.

Polling for the constituency – paid for by a fundraiser ­– is due to be published next week, following a week of survey results which gave varying pictures of how the constituency contest is developing.