During his tenure at The Guardian Jenkins became, according to The Times, the "leading chronicler of the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s, notably of their internecine warfare".
He also wrote the comedy series Struggle, broadcast on Channel 4 (1983–84), a satire on the Conservative–Labour battles in local government at the time.
[4] Jenkins, a longtime smoker who stopped in the final years of his life, died from respiratory failure, caused by idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, at University College Hospital in London on 27 May 1992, aged 58.
John Major called Jenkins a "gregarious man of lively wit and great charm, and an undisputed master of his profession",[5] and David Owen said he was "an exceptional journalist with a deep understanding of the Labour movement".
He cared about the issues; and he routinely produced a rounded, beautifully literate and astute commentary on our political times.