Formidable, talented, passionate and hugely inspirational, Charles had deep conviction and was able to engage the public in a way no other politician could. That gave him a level of public popularity rarely enjoyed by a political party leader. Above all else he was highly principled and when Tony Blair took us into the Iraq war supported by the Conservatives, he stood firm to those principles against the political establishment. Despite being heckled and shouted down in Parliament and criticised widely he remained resolutely against a war which he knew was fundamentally wrong.
That principled stand was significant in the historic 2004 Leicester South By-election, where media arrived from all over the world. I recall speaking to a number of international film crews from as far away as India and Japan. They were unclear on whether the British public supported the war or not and seemed to have a collective view that this particular By-election would be seen abroad as a Referendum on the Iraq war. Would the British public support Tony Blair’s decision to go to war through the ballot box?
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