A product of a gentler era, but Charles Kennedy would have seen through Sturgeon

Charles Kennedy, the laid-back son of a highland crofter, in 1983 unexpectedly won the vast division of ross, Cromarty and skye for the sDP/ liberal alliance.

he thus became Britain’s youngest MP – still not twenty-four – and for its largest constituency.

Of easy charm and noted aversion to physical exercise, Kennedy became hugely popular. That was because he was fun and because, as he put it: ‘I make no apologies for being a fully signed-up member of the human race.’

But it was also because he was brave. In 1987 he alone of the five surviving sDP MPs had the guts to stand up to David Owen and insist that the alliance parties had to unite. For his entire political career he doughtily defended the Union. and the eU. Unlike the gullible Paddy ashdown, he saw through Tony Blair and New labour at an early stage, and pressed for distance.

In 2003, too, Kennedy unambiguously opposed the invasion of Iraq. Today, we practically all regret that misbegotten war. In 2003 it was hysterically supported by most political parties, most of the general public and most of the press.

and, under Kennedy’s leadership in 2005, the liberal Democrats won their highest tally of seats in eight decades – 62, a result today beyond the wildest dreams of a sad little rump. Yet, especially from their shocked new MPs, there was building concern about their leader.

In my own dealings with Kennedy, even before he turned thirty it was evident his drinking was problematic. By 2005 he had been, several times, visibly the worse for wear in front of cameras. early in 2006, he was at last deposed by his anguished but exasperated party.

BUT he never beat the booze. In brutal succession, it cost Kennedy his marriage, it cost him his dignity and, in 2015 and after a sad, shambling campaign, his seat in Parliament. a mere month later – two years ago today – it claimed his life.

We miss his humanity, his wit, his decency; the classier political era to which he belonged. and, sadly, we can but imagine his droll perspective on this extraordinary general election.

It is unlikely he would have approved. an election is very expensive – about £90million – and generates uncertainty and unpleasantness. The mass of us are ballot-weary after a succession of existential polls since 2013 and given that we had a Westminster contest only two years ago, many keenly resent this outing.

Kennedy would have mischievously pointed out that, historically, we tend to punish Prime Ministers who call opportunistic and premature dissolutions – Baldwin in 1923; attlee in 1951; heath in 1974.

and he would not have been in the least surprised that, in a matter of weeks, the Conservatives have frittered away a vertiginous lead in the polls.

Kennedy would crisply observe that Theresa May is not nearly as good a campaigner as many had hoped and that the labour manifesto is not nearly as unpopular as most had expected.

That the public have been assailed for so long – not least by what is left of New labour – of Jeremy Corbyn’s hideous overseas alliances and his past schmoozing with the Ira that they have grown bored of it. and that the affable, avuncular figure he cuts, refusing to lose his temper, seems to have grown on many voters.

Kennedy, though, would impishly remind us of 2010’s ‘Cleggmania’, when the then little-known lib Dem leader was carelessly platformed alongside David Cameron and Gordon Brown in much-hyped TV debates and became an overnight sensation.

By polling-day pundits confidently forecast his party would take more than 100 seats; might even beat labour in the popular vote. But the surge had flattered to deceive and, on the ground, fatefully dissipated campaigning efforts; the lib Dems shed seats, before wilting into a coalition that would devour them.

Kennedy would point, too, to Brexit, and Trump, and indeed the 2015 election: remind us that opinion-polling is not what it was and that, historically, it has tended to underestimate Conservative support and inflate labour prospects.

he would be saddened by the sorry figure his party cuts now. how Tim Farron has diminished himself by his panicked recantations on abortion and homosexuality; how – in a sporting country, used to accepting hard results and moving on – the lib Dem tenet of reversing Brexit has won no traction whatsoever. But Kennedy, who suffered untold and vituperative abuse from Nationalist thugs in his last campaign, would, one thinks, rather enjoy the ongoing horlicks of the current sNP effort.

We are still not sure if, for them, this contest is about independence, the eU, austerity, or even the old stand-by of ‘standing up for scotland’ – because we have all those lines, and more, in recent weeks, as the sNP flail amidst sturgeon’s egregious (and unforced) errors.

she assumed that appalled scots would surge for independence rather than be hauled out of the eU.

Wrong. she refused until this year even to countenance – far less address – the reality that nearly a third of habitual sNP voters support Brexit. Foolish.

and then, in February, grandly unveiled proposals for a referendum most scots do not want for an objective most scots do not support. Uh-oh.

This week, to the evident vexation of Kezia Dugdale, has seen a curious if coded love-in between sturgeon and Corbyn. he made clear on Tuesday he would happily talk about it a second referendum. sturgeon has also made clear the sNP would by no means be averse to some sort of coalition to lock the Tories out of power.

In what is now a faintly desperate place, sturgeon needs to hang on to the mass of labour voters the sNP won over two years ago.

Charles Kennedy would understand that. But what, he would ask, is in it for Corbyn? ed Miliband fatally flirted with the Nats, at a late stage in the 2015 campaign, to the horror of untold english voters.

lord Kennedy of Kilmallie, were he still with us, would enjoy next Thursday night from the pleasant perspective of a retired spectator. he would expect labour, come the hour, to be royally stuffed.

Theresa May, Kennedy would purr, needs to emerge with a seriously big majority or look diminished and silly.

and what if angus robertson, for instance, were to fall in Moray? and other big beasts? There would of course need to be a new Westminster leader; a degree of crisis over sturgeon’s own position. alex salmond, Charles Kennedy would impishly remind us, is still only 62.