Charles Kennedy

Charles Peter Kennedy (born 25 November 1959), is a British politician who was the leader of the Liberal Democrats (the third largest political party in the United Kingdom) from 9 August 1999 until 7 January 2006.

Having been elected to Parliament at the age of 23 as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 1983 election, that intake's youngest member, he rose through the ranks as the SDP and Liberal Party merged to become the Liberal Democrats. Kennedy became the Liberal Democrat party leader (in succession to Paddy Ashdown) in August 1999. As a major Opposition figure he was made a member of Privy Council, granting him the style "The Right Honourable." Under his leadership the party won an increased number of seats in both the 2001 election and the 2005 election, whilst substantially increasing their proportion of representatives and controlled authorities in local government.

He faced criticism for his laid-back leadership style, and there was considerable speculation regarding his alcohol consumption. From December 2005 some within the party were questioning his leadership and calling for a leadership election. On 5 January 2006 Kennedy was informed that ITN would be reporting he had received treatment for a drinking problem. Kennedy decided to pre-empt the broadcast and admit his drinking problem openly. Kennedy called a leadership election at the same time, stating that he intended to stand. The admission of a drinking problem proved to be too damaging to his standing with the parliamentary party. As support for him amongst this key group ebbed away, Kennedy resigned as leader on January 7 and said he would not be standing in the leadership election. Deputy leader Sir Menzies Campbell took over as interim leader and was elected as leader on 2 March 2006.

Early life

Born in Inverness, Scotland and raised as a Roman Catholic, Charles Kennedy was educated at Lochaber High School, Fort William and went on to study for a Master of Arts degree in Politics and Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. It was at university that he became politically active, joining the Dialectic Society (a debating club), but he was not a member of the Labour Club. He was elected president of Glasgow University Union and won the British Observer Mace university debating award. GUU was the last all-male student union in the UK; during his time as president it is claimed that Kennedy opposed admitting women as members - he has personally denied this. Shortly after he joined the Social Democrats (SDP).

Upon graduation in 1982 he went to work for BBC Highland as a journalist, and later received a Fulbright Fellowship allowing him to carry out research at Indiana University in the United States, on the speeches and writings of Roy Jenkins.

Political career

While studying in America he also received the Social Democratic Party (SDP) nomination for the Scottish seat of Ross, Cromarty and Skye, which he went on to win in 1983, becoming the youngest sitting Member of Parliament. He has retained the seat and its successor, Ross, Skye and Inverness West, at five subsequent general elections. He is the Liberal Democrat MP for the seat which replaced it in 2005, Ross, Skye and Lochaber.

In the late 1980s the SDP and the Liberal Party, which had been co-operating in the SDP-Liberal Alliance, merged to form the Social and Liberal Democratic Party, later renamed the Liberal Democrats. Kennedy was the only one of the five SDP MPs to support the merger from the outset.

Kennedy served as a frontbencher for the Lib Dems in a variety of posts, including social security, agriculture and rural affairs, health, Scotland and Europe. He was also party president for four years, between 1990 and 1994.

Initial period as party leader

On 9 August 1999, Charles Kennedy was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats after the retirement of Paddy Ashdown; he beat Jackie Ballard, Malcolm Bruce, Simon Hughes and David Rendel. He won 57% of the transferred vote under the Alternative Vote system (Simon Hughes, the runner-up, won 43% of the vote).

Kennedy's style of leadership differed from Ashdown's, being regarded as more conversational and "laid back". Although he has been dismissed as "Chatshow Charlie" by some observers, as a result of his appearances on the satirical panel game Have I Got News for You, opinion polls showed him to be regarded positively as a party leader and potential Prime Minister by a significant fraction of the British electorate. He had made many appearances on HIGNFY prior to his election as leader; and subsequently became the first serving leader of one of the three main parties to appear on the show. He then went on to guest as a host of it.

Kennedy maintained the long-standing aspiration for his party to break through to the status of official opposition. In his first major campaign, the 2001 general election, the Liberal Democrats improved their share of the vote to 18.3%, 1.5% more than in the 1997 election. Although this was a smaller share than the 25.4% the SDP/Liberal Alliance achieved in 1983, the Lib Dems won 52 seats compared to the Alliance's 23. In his last General Election as leader, in May 2005, the Liberal Democrats won 62 seats, their greatest number of seats since the 1920s, gaining 22.1% of the vote.

In 2001 Sir Ludovic Kennedy, (no relation), condemned Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, for opposing euthanasia. He then resigned from the party to stand in the general election as an independent, on a platform of legalising voluntary euthanasia, but has since rejoined.

2005 general election

Kennedy, along with his "election guru" Lord Rennard, targeted the Lib Dems' campaigning on a limited number of seats in such a way as to turn a lower level of national support into a greater number of Parliamentary seats. He extended this strategy at the 2005 General Election targeting the seats held by the most senior and/or highly regarded Conservative MPs, dubbed a "decapitation" strategy, with the expectation that without these "key" figures, the Conservatives would be discredited as the Official Opposition allowing Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats to claim that they are the "effective Opposition".

However, this strategy is widely seen to have failed. At the 2005 General Election, the Liberal Democrats failed to unseat leading Conservatives such as the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Oliver Letwin, Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, Shadow Secretary of State for the Family Theresa May and the Leader of the Opposition Michael Howard. The biggest "scalp" the Liberal Democrats managed to claim was that of the Shadow Education Secretary Tim Collins in Westmorland and Lonsdale. This was one of only three seats the Liberal Democrats won from the Conservatives, the others being Solihull and Taunton.

At the same time, the Lib Dems also hoped to capture marginal Labour seats, attracting Labour voters (particularly Muslim voters) who were dissatisfied because of the invasion of Iraq; the party had succeeded with this tactic in by-elections, taking Brent East and Leicester South from Labour. The Party did succeed to some extent in this aim, winning particularly in student areas such as Bristol and Manchester, but did not see the breakthrough some expected in areas with large Asian populations, even losing Leicester South.

In the 2005 election the party succeeded in regaining the seat of Ceredigion, its first gain from the Welsh Party Plaid Cymru. Overall Kennedy's party achieved a total of 62 seats, their highest number since 1923 with 22% of the overall vote.

Developments since the election

In the wake of the General Election, Kennedy's leadership came under increased criticism from those who felt that the Liberal Democrats could have surged forward at a time when, arguably, the Official Opposition, the Conservative Party, were in a relatively weak position. Many pointed the finger of blame at Kennedy for failing to widen the Party's appeal while others, like the former Deputy Chairman of the Federal Liberal Democrat Party, Donnachadh McCarthy, resigned from the Party citing the party's shift to the right of the political spectrum under Kennedy in pursuit of Conservative votes. Under the party's rules, a leader has to stand for re-election within a year of a general election. Kennedy handed out the ballot papers to the parliamentary party within days of the 2005 election, leaving no time for anyone to mount a challenge, and allowing him to be re-elected unopposed. There was much speculation at the time as to whether he would have survived a challenge.

In late 2005 the leadership speculation was renewed, with the journalist Andrew Neil claiming to speak "on good authority" that Kennedy would announce his resignation at the 2006 spring conference of the Liberal Democrats. Kennedy's spokeswoman denied the report and complained against the BBC which had broadcast it. After the election of the "more moderate" David Cameron as Leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005, it was widely reported that senior members of the Liberal Democrats had told Kennedy that he must either "raise his game" or resign. ^*

Leadership contest

On December 13 2005, the BBC's Political Editor, Nick Robinson, claimed that there were briefings against the leader, with members of his party unhappy at what they saw as 'lack of leadership' from Kennedy. A "Kennedy Must Go" petition was started by The Liberal magazine (a publication which has no affiliation to the Liberal Democrats) and allegedly had been signed by over 3,300 party members including 386 local councillors and two MPs by the end of 2005 A 'round robin' letter signed by Liberal Democrat MPs rejecting his leadership received 23 signatures [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-1972024,00.html.

On January 5 2006 Kennedy was informed that ITN would be reporting that he had received treatment for alcoholism, and called a sudden news conference to make a personal statement confirming the story. He stated clearly that over the past eighteen months he had been coming to terms with a drinking problem, but has sought ongoing professional help. He told reporters that recent questions among his colleagues about his suitability as leader were partly as a result of the drinking problem, but stated that he had been dry for the past two months and would be calling a leadership contest to resolve the issues surrounding his authority once and for all. [http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/kennedy-calls-for-leadership-election.html It was later claimed that the source for ITN's story was his former press secretary turned ITV News correspondent, Daisy McAndrew.

Responses to Kennedy's statement focused on his previous denials of any problems with alcohol. As recently as the Jonathan Dimbleby programme on ITV1 on December 18 2005 when asked "Has it been a battle to stay off the booze, have you had to have medical support in any way at all?" Kennedy replied "No, no, no, that is not the case, it is a matter on all fronts – if there's something my doctor really wants me to do over this holiday period as a matter of fact, is give up smoking and I think he's right". In 2002 the journalist Jeremy Paxman claimed Kennedy was often drunk, and asked him if he drank privately "by yourself, a bottle of whisky late at night?". "No I do not," Kennedy replied. BBC apologised to Charles Kennedy; Paxman refused to endorse the apology. In 2004, The Times published a "clarification" over a report it had made stating Kennedy had not taken part in that year's budget debate due to excessive drinking ^*.

Resignation

Following Kennedy's admission, a letter from twenty five Liberal Democrat MPs was delivered to him. It stated that the signatories could no longer serve as frontbench speakers under his leadership, and gave a deadline of Monday January 9 for him to make a decision before they resigned. Despite a combative interview in The Independent at which Kennedy described a decision to resign as a "dereliction of duty", on January 6 a large number of senior Liberal Democrats stated that his position was untenable. Chris Davies (leader of Liberal Democrat Members of the European Parliament) described him as "a dead man walking". A survey for BBC Newsnight found that more than half of Liberal Democrat MPs thought he should resign, and only seventeen out of sixty two MPs positively wanted him to stay, while eleven of his twenty three frontbenchers wanted him to leave. Among those who thought he should go were Norman Lamb and Andrew George, who had served as his Parliamentary Private Secretary, and Matthew Taylor, the chairman of his 1999 leadership campaign.

At 3pm on January 7 Kennedy called a press conference where he announced that, whilst he was buoyed by the supportive messages he had received from grassroot members, he felt that he could not continue because of the lack of confidence of the parliamentary party. He said he would not be a candidate in the leadership election, and that he would stand down as leader "with immediate effect", with Menzies Campbell acting as interim leader until a new leader has been elected. He also confirmed in his resignation speech that he does not have any expectations of remaining on the frontbench, pledging his loyalty to a new leader "as a backbench" MP, but that he wishes to remain active in the party and politics. His leadership lasted slightly less than six years and five months. ^*

Post leadership

Following his resignation Kennedy's first major political activity was to campaign in the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, which the Liberal Democrats went on to win, taking a seat from Labour. He also gave full public support to Menzies Campbell upon the latter's election as Liberal Democrat leader. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4768088.stm

On June 22 2006 Kennedy made his first appearance in the national media after stepping down when he appeared on the BBC's Question Time. One of the questions on the show was about his possible return as leader, which he declined to rule out. ^*

Personal life

In July 2002, Charles Kennedy married Sarah Gurling, the sister of his best friend, James Gurling ^*.

Reports of Kennedy's ill-health in 2003 at the time of crucial debates on Iraq and the budget (his ill health meant he missed an entire budget speech) were linked to the rumours of alcoholism which were strenuously denied by himself and the party but which he subsequently admitted.

Sarah gave birth to their first child, Donald James Kennedy, at 12:14 a.m. April 12 2005, at St Thomas' Hospital, London. Kennedy had been due to launch his party's manifesto for the General Election, which was subsequently delayed, with Sir Menzies Campbell taking temporary charge as acting leader and covering Kennedy's campaign duties. During the manifesto launch on his first day back on the campaign trail after the birth, Kennedy struggled to remember the details of a key policy (replacing the Council Tax with a Local Income Tax) at an early morning press conference, which he later blamed on a lack of sleep due to his new child.

Bibliography

The Future of Politics (2000) ISBN 0007101317 (hardcover) ISBN 0007101325 (paperback)

External links

Rt Hon Charles Kennedy MP official site
Rt Hon Charles Kennedy MP profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
ePolitix.com - Charles Kennedy
Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Charles Kennedy
TheyWorkForYou.com - Charles Kennedy
The Public Whip - Charles Kennedy voting record
Open Directory Project - Charles Kennedy directory category
BBC News - Politics: Charles Kennedy profile 7 January 2006
BBC News - Politics: Charles Kennedy: Life and Times 7 January 2006
"The Pol Who Drank Too Much", Slate.com, January 11, 2006.

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