Sometimes success rushes too swiftly towards the professional politician, and in retrospect Charles Kennedy might have benefited had he not become an MP in 1983 at the early age of 23.
Although his paternal grandfather had been an active, old-fashioned Highland Liberal, Kennedy started his own political life in the Labour party, defecting to the SDP on its formation in 1981 partly because Labour seemed “less about releasing individual potential and more about levelling down”.
He was so astonished by his election as an SDP MP for Ross, Cromarty and Skye that he had to ask whether MPs were paid. It was an extraordinary period when it seemed possible the SDP could overtake Labour as the chief voice for social democracy in the UK.
Often regarded as naive, Kennedy had a political nose and could see the need for the SDP to merge with the Liberals well before his mentor, David Owen, and largely outwitted him in those merger talks. It led to allegations by Owenites of his being a Judas, since he was the first SDP MP to back a merger – a decision that was critical in the formation of the Liberal Democrats.
Within a year of the new party being formed under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown, Kennedy was being talked of as a future leadership candidate and even a prime minister. In the summer and autumn of 1997, after the election, he appeared to be questioning Ashdown’s strategy of building bridges with Labour by implying, improbably, that the Liberal Democrats could somehow replace the Tories.
Ashdown was typically generous on Tuesday, describing Kennedy as “the best of us when on song and on form”. But in private Ashdown was often exasperated by what he perceived as Kennedy’s lack of seriousness, as well as his lack of punctuality.
In 1990 Kennedy became party president, a post he held for four years before being given a frontbench portfolio on Europe.
He had a love-hate relationship with the drudgery of politics, joking in private about the horror of becoming party president knowing it was a stepping stone towards the leadership but also dreading the grind of meetings around the country.
At the same time, once at those meetings or at the party executive he would throw himself into the discussion, gregarious, thoughtful and aware of the Lib Dems’ beating heart.
That open, untamed personality gave him the personal appeal of a liberal Nigel Farage – the kind of politician you could imagine meeting in a pub and enjoying a drink or two with. Like Farage, he was not a great organiser and not a stickler for policy detail, leaving this to others and focusing on the big judgments.
But he had the politician’s eye for the main chance, outmanoeuvring Menzies Campbell to win the party leadership when Ashdown stood down in 1999, showing his flat-footed senior that he already had the campaign team and support to beat him. Campbell came to regret his decision not to stand, believing in retrospect he could have won and knowing he was personally better equipped for the glare of leadership.
In office it became clear that Kennedy, a relatively shy man, hated confrontation, reshuffles and the difficult phone calls that are a necessary part of leadership. Sometimes he hid how serious he was about his politics and the issues he never abandoned throughout his life – social justice, liberalism, Europe and the legality of war.
Doubtless it will be his decision to oppose war in Iraq for which he is most remembered as a politician. He described it as the biggest British foreign policy mistake since Suez, and told parliament in the critical debate: “The case has not yet been made for military action. The evidence has not been clearly assembled. Public opinion in this country is profoundly opposed to unilateral action by US and British forces without a UN mandate and without clear evidence of the need for war.”
It was a brave move since he had admired much of the domestic policy of Tony Blair, and leading a political party in opposing military action quickly led to allegations of appeasement. He found himself as the most senior front-rank politician to join an anti-war march in Hyde Park, London. He also did not abandon the issue after the invasion, insisting that the continued occupation of Iraq “contributes to the insurgency and attracts those from abroad who see the opportunity to spread violent fundamentalism”.
His anger at the invasion and the lack of postwar planning grew. Convinced that his opposition to the invasion had been vindicated, he risked controversy by implying there had been a link between the terrorists attacks in London in 2005 and British foreign policy, saying: “Those like President Bush and Tony Blair, who have sought to link Iraq with the so-called ‘war on terror’, can hardly be surprised when members of the public draw the same link when acts of terrorism occur here in the United Kingdom.”
His and Campbell’s stance on the war led to an electoral dividend for the Liberal Democrats, winning 62 seats in the 2005 election, almost eight times its current complement of MPs. Six million voted for his party, as swaths of former admirers of Blair deserted Labour.
Yet the stories of his alcoholism had been circulating in public since 2002 and his colleagues expected him to stand down after the 2005 election. He refused to do so, leading his fellow MPs to hand information on his drinking to ITV. Even then he tried to cling on, saying he would stand for the leadership in an open contest. Only faced by a mass walkout did he resign.
Once he stood down – replaced by Campbell and then Nick Clegg – much of his political platform, in effect a party to the left of Blair, was consciously dismantled mostly by Clegg and his policy advisers in the CentreForum thinktank. Clegg regarded the 2005 manifesto as incoherent, statist and unchallenging.
Kennedy, battling with his alcoholism, became an ever more peripheral figure, although he opposed going into coalition with the Conservatives, spoke frequently in defence of Europe and voted against the rise in tuition fees.
In his last piece written for Lib Dem Voice reflecting on his defeat in the general election, he betrayed no bitterness, just a sense of loss that he was not to represent the seat he loved so much. He insisted his love for politics was not dimmed and he looked forward to a parliament that would be about two unions: the union in the UK and the European Union. He promised to be a player in both debates, but for whatever tragic reason that was not be.
