Elected to Parliament in 1970, in 1978 he became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, and after his party lost office in 1979, he was an effective opposition spokesman for Education. In 1983 he was elected leader of his Party and thus led the opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s second and third administrations. Following Labour’s electoral defeats in 1987 and 1992 Kinnock resigned. He was a European Commissioner from 1995 to 2004 and became a life peer in 2005.