Charles Kennedy was a conviction politician. Affability and an ability to bring commonsense warmth into the nation’s living rooms won him affection, but no one who studied his career from 23-year-old MP to sceptical (but loyal) observer of the LibDems in coalition could doubt that principles were more important than public performance.
In his thinking about how the strands of government should come together, he followed in the footsteps of former Liberal leader Jo Grimond. His beloved Highlands would always face challenges different from those of urban Scotland, and so he argued for strong local government, and latterly opposed the centralising tendencies of the SNP administration at Holyrood. The creation of the Scottish Parliament he hoped would be a step towards a federal United Kingdom, but the time was not right. On the other hand, Europe was a cause to be argued for throughout his parliamentary life, not because he was steeped, like Nick Clegg, in the continent’s culture and languages but because he saw Scotland and Britain as participants in a union of nations that had set aside destructive rivalry. He put the European cause at the heart of his leadership of the LibDems, and he was always a keen supporter of the European Movement.
Kennedy as a Glasgow University student and prize debater was an early supporter of the Social Democrats who had broken from Labour. As an MP he realised that only a full union with the Liberals could produce a force strong enough to take on the two big parties. The Liberal revival had largely been at the Tories’ expense. Kennedy as party leader made significant inroads into Labour areas. His principled stand against the Iraq invasion won over many tens of thousands of disenchanted Labour voters, bringing over 60 LibDems to Westminster in the 2005 General Election. Less well remembered is the replacement of the Tories by LibDems as the principal challengers to Labour in many cities across England, Scotland and Wales.
Kennedy matched the national mood better than some leading LibDems eager to build on his electoral success. He was uninterested in obsessive tinkering with policy; the byzantine labyrinth of the party’s structure he side-stepped at his peril. When problems with his drinking mounted, his shortcomings loomed larger within the parliamentary party than his electoral appeal. Many LibDem supporters thought his resignation was a heartless coup. Kennedy’s reaction was to head for a by-election campaign in Dunfermline, where he and the candidate Willie Rennie led a triumphant walk along the High Street – on the road to victory.
Earlier this year the fickleness of politics, which Kennedy understood, brought his electoral downfall. A previously comfortable majority in his west Highland seat disappeared as the SNP swept across the whole of Scotland. Kennedy was philosophic in defeat and generous to his victorious opponent.
He was not given time to find new avenues for his talents, but there is little doubt that he would have been among the most forceful of Yes campaigners in the referendum on British membership of the European Union, just as he was among the most articulate (though underused) of No campaigners in last year’s Scottish independence referendum.
He might also have found a role in higher education, which needs defenders against the cheese-parers north and south of the border. For six years he spoke up for students as Rector of his alma mater. The governance of universities interested him, and a few years ago he made a radio programme on the role of student-elected rectors of Scotland’s ancient universities. He arranged to interview me as a former Rector of Aberdeen University at a time of swingeing cuts and uninspiring academic leadership. After our recording we talked widely about education and politics. Charles was as perceptive and entertaining in private conversation as on the public stage.
Brought up and living in Fort William, with Ben Nevis behind, he was sometimes asked whether he climbed Britain’s highest mountain. Never, he said. He preferred to read a book.
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