Michael Foot was more wrong about more things than any other modern politician

Such is the importance of character to the English sensibility that the death of Michael Foot will be lamented more deeply and sincerely than that of more substantial politicians of his age.

Bibliophile, raconteur, enthusiast, good companion, eloquent and witty speaker, warm-hearted spokesman for the underdog — the attraction of his personality is not in doubt, and for many his political style, for all its quiddities, added to his appeal.

Like his literary hero, Hazlitt, Foot could be a deadly controversialist, and a master of epigram, invective and withering irony.

Yet it would be wrong, as well as hypocritical, to pretend that we can ignore his political actions and opinions. Few politicians stand up well to retrospective scrutiny, but to Foot goes the melancholy distinction of having been more wrong about more things than any major politician of his age.

To begin with, the few things he was right about. A scion of a prosperous family — his father was the Rt Hon Isaac Foot, Liberal MP for Bodmin — whose literary and speaking facility suggest that he benefited from his education in public school and at Oxford, he was right to be moved by the plight of those less fortunate than himself.

He was also right to argue against undue British involvement in the Vietnam war, although his pacifist leanings did not prevent this ardent patriot from a defence of British interests, and he was brave in supporting the despatch of the task force to the Falklands — an unpopular stance in his political spectrum — and in taking issue on the subject with his fellow Leftist, Tony Benn.

And he was a passionate anti-Nazi who, as editor of the Evening Standard, campaigned for a second front against Hitler.

Yet none of this can obscure his broader record. The list of his political mistakes is as awesome as his tenacity in adhering to them.

Anti-American, anti-European, a stubborn unilateralist whose indulgence towards Stalinist communism continued long after its atrocities had been exposed, an ally of trade union bully-boy and TGWU leader Jack Jones, who as employment secretary strengthened union power, and later voted to leave their undemocratic ballots in place, a journalist unwilling to challenge the union stranglehold on the press, an opponent (with Enoch Powell) of the reform of the House of Lords, for the evasive reason that abolition was the only way — to say that Foot was prone to political error would be leaden irony, more offensive to his memory than to tell the truth.

The only coherent thing about Foot's politics was the consistency of his misjudgments, too numerous and, in the case of his attitude to communism, too culpable to be overlooked.

Sometimes his wrong-headedness could be attributed to his idealism, yet more often it was the result of a patrician self-indulgence, not untypical of Leftist politicians of his class and age. What is astonishing is not that his political career did not go further than it did: it is that a man of his record of gross miscalculation ever became leader of his party.

When he took over from Jim Callaghan he had not visited the United States for nearly two decades, and his estrangement from our major allies contrasted uncomfortably with his frequently more sympathetic interest in our adversaries. As George Orwell, a man of the Left himself, wrote: "What sickens me about Left-wing people, especially the intellectuals, is their utter ignorance of the way things actually happen."

For all his sporadic incursions into foreign affairs, he was and remained a romantic Little Englander; he had a minimum interest in or direct knowledge of cultures beyond our shores.

In a self-styled literary figure this was limiting; in a putative prime minister, his insularity was extraordinary. The postwar world was being swept by tidal waves of change, yet for Foot what ultimately mattered was the adversarial rhetoric of the House of Commons, to whose quirky traditions he clung as to some mouldering limb.

In this and many other respects — though not of course race — he was not too far removed from Enoch Powell, and privately the two got on well.

Foot was a compelling Commons speaker, indeed some would say he was the outstanding orator of his age. Certainly his staccato tones, with their emphasis curiously unrelated to the phrase in question, spawned a small tribe of imitators. The line between idealism and self-gratifying sentimentality is a fine one, and no objective observer can deny that Foot overstepped it constantly.

In private life he was a kind man. The kindest thing that could happen is that history will glaze over the actions and opinions of the politician, and remember the man.

The zest he brought to his extra-political activities was one of the many engaging things about him, and one can easily imagine him echoing, on his own account, Hazlitt's last words: "Well, I've had a happy life."

George Walden was a Tory MP from 1983 to 1997