Rhodri: The debt I owed to born debater Charles Kennedy
CHARLIE Kennedy led an extraordinary life. He was 20 years younger than me but entered the House of Commons in 1983. That’s four years before I did.
He was elected pretty much straight from university at the age of just 23. He knew no other life.
His death at 55 has affected everyone in and around politics really badly, even though he had just stopped actually being an MP.
It reminds me of the wave of emotion in 1994 at the loss of John Smith – the best Prime Minister we never had, as he is universally known by now.
Actually, John Smith and Charlie had more than you would think in common.
I’m passing over their fondness for the ‘wine of Scotland’.
I’m thinking more of how they both went from an impeccable Highlands and Islands village upbringing off to Glasgow University.
Like most of the scholarship boys at Glasgow, they both found their natural home in the University Labour Club.
They then achieved fame as UK champion student debaters. A career as a barrister or as a politician beckoned as naturally as night follows day.
Not usually starting at 23, mind you.
Like Charles, John Smith was in his 50s when he died.
His problem was that he couldn’t keep to the fitness regime pressed on him by the medics after his first heart attack in 1988.
Charles Kennedy couldn’t stick to any sensible plan to control his addiction to cigarettes and alcohol.
When John Smith came back to the House after a year off he’d lost a huge amount of weight, climbing a ‘Munro’ every Sunday.
A Munro is a Scottish mountain peak over 3,000ft high.
When he became Labour leader after the 1992 election defeat and following Neil Kinnock’s resignation, the mountain climbing ceased and he put all the weight he’d lost back on. The inevitable and fatal second heart attack killed him in 1994.
Memories have been flowing this week of Charles’ part in the Vale of Glamorgan by-election in May 1989.
After the day’s politicking was over the Lib Dem and Labour campaigners would both repair to the Himalaya curry house in Barry.
Charlie was the MP ‘minder’ for the month, looking after the Lib Dem candidate Frank Leavers.
Former First Minister Rhodri Morgan wrote a hugely popular column for the Western Mail each Saturday between 2010 and 2016. To mark his passing, chief reporter Martin Shipton has chosen a selection which we are running daily this week. Here, Rhodri pays tribute to Charles Kennedy after his death in June 2015
John Smith, not the Labour leader but the ‘Barry John Smith’ who eventually won that by-election, and the Labour team, would all eat and drink together with their Lib Dem ‘oppos’.
Charles was just simply fantastic company. He would hold court. He exuded bonhomie.
A late-night curry washed down with pints of lager was how you enjoyed student politics and if you could do the same in ‘real’ adult byelections a life in politics couldn’t be all bad. Everyone there could see that he was going to go far, as far as any Lib Dems can ‘go far’ in a twoparty system.
Charles was also going to enjoy every minute of it, as though it was one long party that everybody was invited to.
Charles later did eight years as Lib Dem Party leader from 1999 to 2007, by which time the drink issue forced his party colleagues to gang up on him and obliged him to step down. That wasn’t such fun. Sorting out policy positions, writing manifestos, that wasn’t Charlie’s strong suit.
I missed all that period because I was in the Assembly by then but I might never have become First Minister but for Charles. So I owe him a lot.
As one of Blair’s biographers Andrew Rawnsley retold it to me, Charles took great delight in giving a blow-by-blow account of how Tony Blair asked Charles around to 10 Downing St for a ‘wee drink’ the night before the vote of no confidence in Alun Michael, due for debate in the Assembly on February 8, 2000.
What the Prime Minister wanted was a favour. Quite a favour.
He needed Charles to deliver a strong message to the six Lib Dems in the Assembly that they ought to withdraw their support for the no confidence motion.
With glee, Charlie would set out the ‘tariff’ for these favours that Tony Blair would sometimes ask of him at these cosy little chats in the flat upstairs at Number 10.
If it was only a little favour, Charlie would get out his fag packet, but before he could fish out an actual cigarette, TB would tell him: “Sorry, Charlie. Not allowed. Cherie loathes the smell of cigarette smoke. Verboten!”
If, however, it was a big favour, the Prime Minister’s behaviour couldn’t be more different.
That night in February 2000 it was such a huge favour that the Prime Minister and his staff were hunting all over the place to find an ashtray for Charlie.
He could go through a pack of 20 if he wanted. It was that big.
After the usual Blair diatribe against me, listing my many obvious shortcomings, when the request finally came to instruct the Welsh Assembly Liberal Group on how to vote the following afternoon, Kennedy refused to budge. No dice.
“It’s a matter for them, not me,” he said. “That’s devolution for you, Tony!”
Even if he’d been invited by the PM to stub his cigarette out on the Downing Street settee his answer would have been the same.
Being a Scot, he “got” devolution. Not just that but he had that little touch of devilment in him which made him savour that kind of moment.
Enjoy the smoke, enjoy the glass of whisky, and enjoy the experience of the all-powerful Prime Minister in ‘begging for a favour’ mode. What a tale he would have to tell his friends!
The upshot was that Alun Michael resigned just before the vote and I was elected in his place a few days later. John Smith couldn’t control his weight in the end and never became Prime Minister.
Charlie couldn’t master his twin addictions and will now never enjoy his retirement or, indeed, political battles yet to come over the European Referendum.
It’s so sad that we’ll never hear that silver-tongued natural-born debater ever again showing us his love of words and his gift for a wellconstructed argument.
A truly tragic loss.