Charismatic ex-commando led Britain’s Lib Dems to strength and respectability

LHe was introduced to an Edinburgh business dinner as ‘‘the first trained killer to lead a political party . . . Margaret Thatcher being self-taught’’.

ord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, who has died aged 77, led the Liberal Democrats over 11 years from neareclipse to the fringe of participation in Tony Blair’s Labour government, but could not translate this advance into real power.

Honed in the Special Boat Service (SBS) and MI6, Paddy Ashdown – nicknamed ‘‘Action Man’’ – added steel to a traditionally undisciplined party, reviving its fortunes as the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major became increasingly unpopular. His strategy paid dividends: over two elections Lib Dem strength in the Commons increased from 22 to 46.

The closest he came to government was when Labour prime minister Gordon Brown offered him a Cabinet seat in 2007; he declined. When Nick Clegg took the Lib Dems into coalition under Conservative prime minister David Cameron three years later, Ashdown stayed on the sidelines. Confronted with exit polls in 2015 indicating near-extermination for the party, he said he would ‘‘publicly eat my hat’’ if they were correct; with the Lib Dems reduced to just eight seats, he duly consumed one made of marzipan.

His keenest policy interest was the tragedy that unfolded in Bosnia as Yugoslavia disintegrated. He demanded intervention by the European Union and Nato to halt ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’, mainly by the Serbs, and in the first two years of Blair’s government paid several visits to Kosovo, with the prime minister acting on his recommendations.

After leaving Parliament at the 2001 election he went to Bosnia as the international community’s vice-regal ‘‘high representative’’, maintaining the settlement reached at Dayton in 1995 and banging heads together when necessary. He was later proposed as Nato’s envoy to Afghanistan, but his appointment was vetoed by President Karzai and influential warlords.

The party Ashdown inherited in 1988 could not have been in worse shape. Recriminations between Social Democrats and Liberals after David Steel’s shotgun merger of the two parties following the disappointing 1987 election had alienated many voters. In the 1988 European Parliament elections, the Social and Liberal Democrats, as they were then, were sidelined by the Greens, and in some polls their support plumbed 2 per cent.

Ashdown changed all that. He was popular with the party grassroots, and his icy gaze not only indicated a man of action but appealed to women voters.

Nor did the mystique about his time in the SBS do him any harm. He was introduced to an Edinburgh business dinner as ‘‘the first trained killer to lead a political party . . . Margaret Thatcher being self-taught’’.

Friends attributed Ashdown’s somewhat introverted nature to his experiences as a commando. One observed: ‘‘A lot of his life has been about finding a framework for his own unruly passion . . . a fairly raw young man attempting to impose discipline on himself.’’ Ashdown himself said: ‘‘If I have a strength, it is enthusiasm. If I have a weakness, it is impatience.’’ His reputation did not suffer lasting damage when, shortly before the 1992 election, an affair five years before with his former secretary, Patricia Howard, was revealed. Ashdown’s wife had forgiven him. Though the publicity was traumatic for the family, he survived The Sun christening him ‘‘Paddy Pantsdown’’ on its front page.

Jeremy John Durham Ashdown was born in New Delhi, the son of an army officer. The family returned from India when he was 4, buying a pig farm in Northern Ireland. He was sent to Bedford School, like three generations before him. Here, his mild Ulster brogue earned him the nickname ‘‘Paddy’’, which stuck; not academically distinguished, he was a fine athlete and sportsman.

The farm failed when he was in the sixth form – the rest of the family emigrating to Australia – and, fearing he would have to leave, he went for a naval scholarship, which paid his fees. This led to 12 years in the Royal Marines, including command of 2 Special Boat Section. As the situation in Ulster deteriorated in 1970, he was sent to Belfast to lead a commando company, arresting the future SDLP leader John Hume.

The next year he transferred to the Foreign Office, but left after five years to live in Somerset, his wife’s home county. Originally a Labour supporter (from the shock of discovering that the men he commanded did not share his public-school outlook), he threw himself into Liberal politics, winning the parliamentary seat of Yeovil in 1983.

With his serious, passionate personality, Ashdown was an easy target in the House of Commons. He never felt comfortable in the chamber, and struggled to establish himself, amid taunts from veteran Left-winger Dennis Skinner of ‘‘Captain Mainwaring’’ whenever he rose to speak.

Paddy Ashdown was sworn of the Privy Council in 1989 and knighted in 2000. On leaving the Commons he was created Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, the village where he lived near Yeovil.

He married Jane Courtenay, cousin of a fellow officer, in 1961. She and their son and daughter survive him. – Telegraph Group