Police called as Blackford flew into rage inside Charles' office
Explosive encounter underlined poisonous and bitter campaign to unseat Kennedy
THREE weeks before polling day, Lib Dem activists gathered i n Charles Kennedy’s Fort William office to discuss the closing stages of the campaign.
There was an atmosphere of quiet dedication among committed party members who fought long and hard for a much-loved candidate who had been their local MP for more than 30 years.
Suddenly a figure appeared in the doorway, flanked by four others, with a look of fury on his face.
What ensued was a nasty altercation that forced a member of Mr Kennedy’s staff to call the police.
The unwelcome visitor that day was Ian Blackford, soon to become Mr Kennedy’s successor after defeating him at last month’s General Election.
He was angry that the Lib Dems had circulated campaign literature which described his SNP opponent, a former senior executive at Deutsche Bank, as a ‘well-funded banker from Edinburgh’.
Angered by the jibe, Mr Blackford had taken the extraordinary step of marching into Mr Kennedy’s campaign office to demand that the MP withdraw the allegation, which Mr Blackford saw as inaccurate. One activist, Candy Piercy, described the SNP candidate as ‘angry, aggressive and unpleasant, wagging his finger at us’.
A party spokesman, who insisted that Mr Blackford was, indeed, a banker from Edinburgh, accused him of ‘bullying and intimidatory behaviour’.
Police say officers attended a ‘minor disturbance’ but took no further action after finding no evidence of criminal behaviour.
The disclosures are all the more surprising given that Mr Blackford paid warm tribute to Mr Kennedy in the Commons followi ng his death, saying that he ‘deeply regretted the passing of this extremely talented man’.
But as the Mail reveals today, despite those laudable comments, Mr Blackford’s campaign was deeply personal, vitriolic, and orchestrated in part by a ‘cybernat’ who was also a friend and, shockingly, an SNP official. Brian Smith was convener of the Skye and Lochalsh branch of the party who used his Twitter account to target Mr Kennedy more than 100 times during the campaign – branding him a ‘ Quisling-In-Chief’ and alluding to the MP’s alcoholism.
‘Excuse me @charles_kennedy I am disgusted at you not doing your job. Do you have a “Problem” that stops you going to WM [Westminster]?’ he asked in one barbed tweet.
Using the Twitter name ‘lobsterferret’, he asked: ‘ Does anyone think there’s any point i n reporting @ charles_ kennedy, my MP, missing to Police Scotland?’
Mr Kennedy’s father died during the campaign but Mr Smith and other Nationalists ceaselessly drew attention to the MP’s lower profile with the mocking hashtag ‘WheresCharlie.’
There are repeated claims that SNP activists also drew attention to Mr Kennedy’s alcoholism while campaigning – even on one occasion unwittingly knocking on the door of the MP’s family doctor and claiming that Mr Kennedy had been drunk on an episode of Question Time.
There are also claims that Mr Blackford himself alluded to his alcoholism while campaigning, which the MP strongly denies.
A resident on Skye, who did not want to be named, said: ‘ My neighbour bumped into him as he was coming out of the shop and he told him that he was campaigning for Parliament.
‘He then mentioned Charles Kennedy and how he likes a drink. He walked away but didn’t think it was an appropriate thing to be saying.’
When the full scale of the hate campaign became clear, the level of public revulsion was such that his old friend, Mr Blackford, told Mr Smith to quit as convener, which he did – though he remains an SNP member.
Belatedly, the vitriol-laden Twitter account Mr Smith ran was deleted last night. He declined to comment in detail when approached by the Mail, saying only: ‘I am not in the slightest bit inter-
‘Angry, aggressive and unpleasant’
ested. I was not acting with his [Mr Blackford’s] approval. End of story. I did not do anything.’
Others see the situation differently. Former Labour MP and exenergy minister Brian Wilson, a friend of Mr Kennedy’s, said the former Lib Dem leader had confided in him about his despair at the hate directed at him and his staff.
Mr Wilson told the Mail: ‘In the full knowledge that Mr Smith was calling Mr Kennedy an arch-Quisling, and also spreading the stuff about drink, he [Mr Smith] was being feted at an SNP Burns Supper.
‘Much worse than that, they make him the head man in the organisation. A lot of people knew what he was up to, and clearly saw nothing wrong with it.’
Mr Blackford claims that he was unaware of Mr Smith’s online abuse, despite following him on Twitter and being a Facebook friend.
Ultimately, Mr Blackford’s association with Mr Smith, who lived near him on Skye, and the highly personal campaign they ran, caused outrage among his constituents and, of course, the many Lib Dem activists who witnessed its extremes at first hand. Mr Blackford’s apparently heartfelt Commons tribute to his predecessor was seen as grossly hypocritical.
As we reveal today, Mr Blackford was told by a senior Lib Dem figure not to attend Mr Kennedy’s funeral – and if he insisted on going, warned that Nicola Sturgeon would be informed.
Wisely, he decided not to attend, though he hopes to go to a political memorial service for the late MP next week.
Last Saturday, the Mail disclosed some of the abuse Mr Kennedy had suffered in his final tragic weeks, revealing that he was abused on doorsteps i n what colleagues described as the worst aggression they had ever seen in politics.
In one incident, Conn O’Neill, campaign manager for Mr Kennedy, said the politician arrived back at his cottage the morning after his election defeat to find that all his bins had been upturned on his driveway.
Meanwhile, a fresh barrage of abuse was unleashed online at Mr Kennedy over his jocular post-election reference to the ‘night of the long sgian dubhs’.
Supporters say that was a reference to Harold Macmillan’s ‘night of the long knives’ in which the former Tory Prime Minister axed a third of his Cabinet. But some people online said the Lib Dem politician was trying to compare it to the Nazis’ night of the long knives in 1934.
Cybernats described him as ‘disgraceful’, ‘despicable’, ‘a nasty, bitter man’, a ‘sore loser’ and ‘a sad, diminished figure’.
One of Scotland’s most senior Lib Dem officials said: ‘I have never known aggression like it in 30 years of politics. He and his staff were shouted at on doorsteps and had leaflets thrown in their face. But the worst happened online, where he was just monstered.
‘Charles tried to rise above it but he couldn’t always. It must have hurt.’
So sustained was the online abuse that members of Mr Kennedy’s campaign team were employed on an almost full-time basis to delete the offensive messages.
Mr O’Neill said: ‘Charles found it upsetting, he was from a different era. You’ll have seen him described as a Highland gentleman in recent days, and that’s how he conducted his politics.’
Mr Kennedy’s Scottish Conservative opponent Lindsay McCallum was also appalled at the SNP’s campaigning style.
She said: ‘At the time, Ian Blackford talked quite a lot about how his [Mr Kennedy’s] voting record was shameful. I didn’t think it was necessary.
‘It’s not the way Highlands campaigning was done – everyone says their piece and people go away and reflect on that.
‘I didn’t feel that style of Nationalism had crept into the Highlands, but I was wrong.’
Our exposé led to an avalanche of abuse directed at the Mail by proindependence activists who spread abuse and vitriol online.
They employed a common cybernat tactic of immediately dismissing the allegations against the Blackford camp, failing to engage with the substance of the claims in favour of branding them part of a Unionist plot to undermine the Nationalists.
Yet, tellingly, it took another five days for Mr Smith’s Twitter account to be deleted, and he remains a party member.
Despite having ready access to Mr Smith’s torrent of insults, Mr Blackford claimed that he had never seen any of the insulting messages because he did not ‘have time’ to consult his social media pages.
He said: ‘I simply don’t have time to look up what other people are putting online and very rarely, if ever, comment on what other people do.
‘People in political life are under a constant barrage of communication and I don’t actively look to see what other people are putting up.’
Asked about the claim that Mr Blackford referred to Mr Kennedy’s alcoholism while campaigning, an SNP spokesman said: ‘The claims are wrong – Mr Blackford entirely rejects these allegations, and Mr Smith has never been employed by him in any capacity.
‘ Today is a day to remember Charles Kennedy with respect and dignity.’
Those final words are undoubtedly true.
But for many of the late MP’s friends and followers as they lay him to rest, how hollow they must sound.
‘Charles tried to rise above it’