This is quite something. Handkerchieves at the ready. Thank you to @JohnPugh2017 who retweeted this.
Annual trip to the most beautiful burial ground on earth to play a lament for Charles Kennedy at Clunes in the Highlands pic.twitter.com/0dpdBKVVnr
— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@campbellclaret) January 3, 2020
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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5 Comments
We are in desperate need of a Charles Kennedy today.
Were he still with us:
We might not be leaving the EU
We would be standing up to Trump.
I know Charles was ill, but a lot of people never forgave the Lib Dems for the way he was treated when they took away his leadership. Even a sick Charles Kennedy would never have allowed the Lib Dems to backtrack on tuition fees and support the Tory disability cuts. He was a great man and those who followed him weren’t in the same league.
Charles Kennedy was the most successful leader that the Liberal Democrats ever had. Yes he had a drink problem but then so did Winston Churchill. Fixed in my memory was the outpouring of public sympathy when his alcoholism became public, in sharp contrast to the opportunistic stance of Liberal Democrat “strategists” who were determined to be rid of him. Where are any of them now?
All the focus and interest is on who is going to be the next Labour leader rather than who will be the next LD one. Few people even care. If the Labour membership have the sense to elect a moderate leader and can move on from Corbynism , perhaps some form of Lib-Lab alliance will be possible? Better surely than Liberal Democrats constantly courting shy “soft” Tories who always return home when the going gets a little rough.
How did the Liberal Democrats fall into such an obvious elephant trap? To allow Boris Johnson when at his weakest point, to hold an election on his own terms? Did anybody see it coming? Charles Kennedy would have.
A divided opposition spells permanent Conservative Government. It is not only the Labour Party that is potentially facing political extinction.
Thank you Paul Walter and John Pugh for disseminating Alastair Campbell’s tearfully moving lament for his late friend Charles Kennedy. Charles’s voice is more sorely missed than ever. I think this anniversary is properly an occasion for turning our thoughts to Charles’s political spirit, rather than regurgitating mundane stuff that is already being contested across the social media.
Perhaps a good way of displaying our loving respect to Charles’s memory, and to Alastair’s homage, would be to re-examine our radical liberal heritage, which Charles embodied in so many respects, and to dedicate ourselves – with great energy – to analysis and radical policy formation in community, national and global society, all of which are desperately crying out for profound, progressive renewal across-the-board.
A Great Man who I had the pleasure of meeting on half a dozen or so occasions.
He would never have allowed things to come to pass in the way they have.
Some of the party treated him in a disgraceful way.
We need him more now than ever,
Cllr Nick Cotter