Lib Dem personalities

Daniel Finkelstein comments, regarding this story: "We now know that at the last election the Lib Dem campaign to clean up politics was led by an alcoholic and financed by a fraudster." Daniel recalls this Times article in which Stephen Pollard castigates "the Lib Dems’ hypocrisy and shameful behaviour".

Periodically I have lunch with Messrs Finkelstein and Pollard. I can never get them, even in private, to throw off their natural reserve when describing the Liberal Democrats. Were he less fastidious in observing the conventions of polite debate, Daniel might have written that at the last election the Lib Dems were led by a lying alcoholic. In 2002 Charles Kennedy told a national television audience that he drank "moderately, socially, as you [Jeremy Paxman] well know". As a new book by the Times' political correspondent Greg Hurst points out, this was the occasion on which Kennedy first flatly and publicly lied about a drinking pattern that was far from moderate.

I defended Kennedy on this. Seriously. While no friend of the Lib Dems, I thought that the allegations of excessive drinking were, even if true, an invasion of privacy. I even drew a ludicrous comparison to Winston Churchill, whose political effectiveness was hardly impaired by his prodigious alcohol consumption. And I was wrong. Whereas Churchill was a heavy drinker who was a great political leader, Kennedy was regularly rendered incapable of carrying out his duties even as leader of a minor party, and his party colluded in keeping this from becoming publicly known. In this case (as opposed to, say, Paddy Ashdown's marital infidelity), a politician's personal failings were a matter of legitimate public interest. Supposing the last general election had resulted in a hung parliament, Kennedy might have entered a coalition government and held a senior Cabinet post that he could not have carried out. (Defence? Health? Leader of the House?)

I find this a scandalous reflection on the Liberal Democrats. A debilitating illness, such as Roosevelt's incapacity through polio (which was successfully hidden from the public), need not impair a politician's effectiveness. But Kennedy's alcoholism incontestably did affect how he spoke and behaved in public. The Lib Dems perpetrated a lie, which eventually unravelled only because journalists found documentary evidence of the truth and not because the party discharged what it ought to have regarded as a civic obligation.