Last night’s late news and today’s national media are titillating themselves more than their audiences with the potential defection to Labour – which has not been denied – of former Liberal Democrat Leader, Charles Kennedy.
He is said to have been opposed to the party’s governing coalition with the Conservatives from the start. In truth, he has been piqued at feeling sidelined by the movement of tectonic plates in political history which this alliance has signalled.
And it came at a time when, seemingly unable or unwilling to conquer his alcoholism, his personal life was in turmoil, leading to his recent separation from his wife.
Never the most disciplined politician, Kennedy has made a point of public disaffection with the coalition, often almost childishly. On one occasion he allowed himself to be photographed on a bus, sitting opposite party leader Nick Clegg and, red faced and pop-eyed, wagging a finger at him.
Once upon a time the generation voting in the recent general election have never known, Charles Kennedy was a star. The youngest to be elected to Westminster, he had a quick and incisive intelligence, a ready wit, an engaging manner and real charm.
For many years now, as drink has alienated him from himself, he has been putting on these attributes like a suit of increasingly ill-fitting clothes, rather than possessing them.
But how are we to believe that the man who, even in his decline, stood so clearly and so publicly against the disastrous war in Iraq – and he was the single beacon of hope at that dark time – can, out of a sense of personal displacement, even contemplate joining the party that, sheep-like, led us there?
Anyone with humanity will mourn the long loss of a real ability. Anyone who thinks it matters what he does any more has lost judgment.
He will simply be a tethered goat to attract lesser but equally undisciplined members of his party to the side of the most discredited party in living political history.
The coalition is a grown up game. It is painful to watch Kennedy demonstrate that all he is fit for these days is a pantomime.
In many ways the tragedy of Charles Kennedy is the drowning in drink of frustration at an ability that could not bear fruit in political management – in the perennial dustbin of the minor party.
Yet now the Liberal Democrats are in power and are gaining in experience of what power means in practice and how the levers work.
They have a minister in every department – seeing their best people grow in response to the most challenging fiscal and political circumstances the UK has known; and seeding specific knowledge and expertise across the spectrum of portfolios.
These people will not be Charles Kennedys, condemned only to shine on entertaining but essentially trivial television shows. We never see these ministers. They are deep in their departments wrestling with profoundly difficult tasks that will determine how this country emerges from a burden of national debt previously not even imaginable.
They must somehow steer a course that sees Britain take the inevitable pain of engagement with debt repayment while keeping social justice as intact as possible.
They must be part of the redefinition of social justice Britain has long needed and progressive governments have ducked. This government cannot duck this issue. In many ways it is the issue.
So don’t be seduced by the mischief making around the luring away of a man to whom just now, any lure that promises fleeting attention seems really shiny.
Sadly, he doesn’t matter.
His party has almost five years to grow and to recover its drop in the popularity polls. The Liberal Democrats will come out to fight the next general election with an authority honed in a fire few have experienced.
Their action in this choice of coalition – and very particularly in the responsible and professional manner in which the coalition is being managed – may change the conduct of political life in the UK.
It would be more than foolish to write them off. It would be unhinged to imagine that reheating the political corpse that is Charles Kennedy can do anything more than temporarily embarrass an unexpectedly capable coalition.
Was t6his crapwritten by Nick Clegg?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Pingback: Mourn the train wreck that is Charles Kennedy, not his possible defection – For Argyll by Consolidating College Loans Personal
This is vile.
If you are capable of shame, you should feel it for basing an article on name calling, mud slinging and personal attacks of the slimiest, lowest type.
For some time I have come to this site for reports of local news, but I won’t be able to do that from now on. Everything that comes from a sewer is tainted, and you have proven yourself a mean minded, vicious creature.
It’s not enough that someone who disagrees with you is wrong, is it? They must be reviled too. They must have personal faults, they must be “childish”, “piqued”, “in turmoil”, “alcoholic”, “red-faced”, “pop-eyed”, “alienated”, “a tethered goat”, “undisciplined”, “drowning in the drink of frustration” (oh, do we see what you did there?), “a reheated political corpse”.
Stalin and Lenin would have read this with approval and glee. Tim Bell will probably send you a congratulatory tweet. It reeks of the gutter.
My respect for the LDs began to fade when they sacked their leader for being ill. That respect disappeared completely when they entered a coalition which a substantial proportion of their voters did not expect, and do not condone.
My respect for Mr Kennedy will rise if he does leave the coalition – putting principle before a poodle’s place.
My respect for you, the anonymous purveyor of this vile swill, is, of course non-existent.
Shame on you.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I also thought this was in surprisingly poor taste. Rumours of CK’s defection were in any case utterly false – he said:
“I will go out of this world feet-first with my Lib Dem membership card in my pocket”.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
A callous and utterly mean-spirited article.
You have a right to an opinion, but when that opinion is based on ill-founded speculation and you use that speculation to launch a highly personal and venomous attack of this nature, one is tempted to wonder just what your agenda is.
Michael Mooney is absolutely right.
I also used your website regularly to keep abreast of events in Argyll, but this is beyond the Pale, and I am amazed at your lack of judgement – not to mention good taste – in running it in the first place.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
A shocking piece.
ForArgyll has shown itself for what it is – a vile blog which cannot be bothered to check facts before expressing an often misguided opinion.
The un-named author of this sick personal attack should not be allowed to write for ForArgyll again.
Disgusting.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I agree with the honourable posters quoted above. This is a shameful article and says much about the judgement of both the writer and the site’s editor – perhaps one and the same, who knows, as most articles here are not credited but hide behind the anonymous ‘newsroom’ byline.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
A have to agreed with the gentlemen above, a very poor peice indeed.
I wouldn’t write Charlie K off yet, he could come back to bite. There are alot of unhappy Libdems MP’s out there and it would not surprise me to see a leadership challenge after christmas, if Nick Clegg contuines on the same course of sucking up to the tories instead of pursuing more Libdem policies.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Our editorial policy is to publish comments from members of our audience in the belief that free speech is crucial and that others are as free to be critical of us as we are of specific actions, decisions and individuals.
In this case, we are fully aware that the piece on Charles Kennedy’s reported contacts with Labour party members on his possible defection was mercilessly unsentimental. It had to be.
In our view, however the current coalition government eventually makes out, it is working hard to govern well and rationally and to try to pull the country back from the worst debt levels it has ever known.
There is no alternative to it. The country – belatedly – rejected the Labour party whose Blair/Brown administrations had demonstrably debased the currency of politics to a dangerous degree. Anyone who argues that more of the same would have been preferable to what we have now would find it hard to make a credible case for such a stance.
We felt that the national media – whose tendency to light-fingered mischief is born of the parochialism of the Westminster village which blinds them to the wider realities – was warming up to pretend that it really mattered if Charles Kennedy defected to Labour. Ironically, such attention could have made this an unearned reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy, damaging the stability of the only chance we currently have to get ourselves nationally straightened out.
The coalition may or may not work but it has earned the right to try. Weakening a new government and distracting it from numbing responsibility – out of casual mischief and at a time when, in the national interest, we all need it to succeed, is actually dangerous.
The stunt the media were warming up was not a matter of policy – which should always be rigorously debated but rarely is. It was just such mischief-making, essentially a matter of triviality and personality.
Charles Kennedy has denied that he intended to or ever would defect to any other party – and we unequivocally accept that.
He has not, however, made any comment on the allegations that he listened to, talked to and entertained the attentions of those attempting to lure him into such an action. He may well have been teasing them but he gave them hope – and the media room to wreck havoc in a national situation that is profoundly serious.
In what we said, we fully acknowledged Mr Kennedy’s unusually significant capacities and while many will have recoiled from the brutal reality of our headline, it highlighted the real loss that British political life has suffered in this gifted man.
In the end, no one is redeemable if they are not willing to redeem themselves.
The times we are living in today are not times to pull punches in issues of taste. They are times for hard-headed responsibility and we are prepared to take whatever flak we get for our attempt to assert the need for realism and an unrelenting focus on immediate national priorities.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Is this supposed to be an excuse, a justification, or an apology?
If it is, it fails on all counts. It’s vain, pretentious, egotistical drivel; the Daily Mail would have been proud of it.
Face it – you ran a non-story and spiced it up with a stream of nasty, unpleasant claptrap and pretentious waffle to create what was nothing more than a character assassination – without even the courage of a byline to identify the assailant.
You accuse ‘the media’ of ‘…. mischief-making, essentially a matter of triviality and personality’.
Which, I think, aptly describes your own handiwork, which, however, broke new ground because it was so utterly – and needlessly – offensive.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I agree wholeheartedly with all the previous comments regarding your offensive article and in your reply you state the coalition earned the right to govern -Only in England not in the rest of the UK.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
What does all this prove? That ForArgyll is beyond the pale? That they occasionally write really provocative articles? That Charlie Kennedy has support? Probably only that whoever writes the stuff, they can produce debate, and therefore traffic, from the slimmest of commons.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Nonchuk, it takes, skill and insight to write a provocative article; to match that description it should make the reader at least consider that the writer has a view worthy of consideration.
Insults and cheapjibes, not to mention self-important opinions presented as facts, don’t even begin to meet that description.
And this article did not produce debate – with the exception of yourself, it has produced nothing but revulsion – and the ‘newsroom’s’ justification of its stance does it no credit whatsoever.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Let’s set matters of taste aside – and the question of when matters of taste are irrelevant.
Anyone who thinks that there was no discussion between Mr Kennedy and members of the Parliamentary Labour Party about his possible move to that party is misinformed, willfully blinkered and/or naive. Mr Kennedy himself has not denied that these did take place. He has simply denied that he would have defected.
It is possible that premature publicity on the possibility stalled events which might otherwise have taken a different direction. What would you have felt had such an unthinkable defection actually occurred? Would you have celebrated it?
The former leader of the Liberal Democrats had stood inspirationally against the Labour government’s ramming of this country into an illegitimate, ill-judged and ill-managed war with Iraq whose reverberations roll on. This war has made Britain a target for terrorism it had not previously attracted – and killed Iraqi civilians deliberately uncounted because the statistics would have been inconvenient.
How would you have squared the same former Leader of the Liberal Democrats joining that same Labour party, with that war still a live issue and historically likely to prove the most ill-founded and damaging conflict the UK has undertaken since the Suez escapade?
How would you describe a calibre of judgment that would even entertain the notion of such a move?
Do you really think where the Labour party solicited Mr Kennedy’s affiliation it was also solicitous of him and of his needs? You may have blanched at our description that the use they planned for him was as ‘a tethered goat’ – but let us hear your own more tasteful description of their intentions and see if, in essence, it is any more dignified.
In the post-election negotiations between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative and Labour parties, it is reliably reported that the Labour attitude to the Liberal Democrats was patronising and stinting where the Conservative perspective on the coalition was – and has in practice been – an inclusive partnership.
Given that the country had rejected Labour in the election and that its return to office by the Liberal Democrats – an alliance that alone would not have created a secure government in any case – would have been nationally unpopular, what do you feel would have been the basis for the different decision Mr Kennedy has let it be understood he would personally have preferred?
From the perspective of the Liberal Democrats, would you have chosen to return to office a discredited, damaging and spent administration in a push-me-pull-you of a rainbow alliance in exchange for a minimal presence in government?
Or would you have chosen a genuine partnership offering your parliamentarians the development of far more exposure to the experience and responsibility of government?
Given the result of the election, do you think that, in the needs and the mood of the country – as opposed to the needs and mood of any political party – there was a viable alternative outcome to the one we have? And a viable alternative fit for the purpose we must now adopt?
Our present national condition is far from being a game. Do you think that it is responsible to make of it a pitch to play a game?
What do you think would happen to this country now if the current administration was seriously undermined? Would you be willing to bring that about and to take responsibility for it? Again, you are misinformed, willfully blinkered and/or naive if you imagine that this was not a scenario Mr Kennedy toyed with, however briefly.
One comment here has said that the coalition has not earned the right to govern north of the border. The plain fact is that as long as Scotland chooses to stay within the Union as it stands, it cannot complain about the rules. And this is said from a belief that, nationally, Scotland will neither grow up nor grow until it accepts responsibility for shaping its own destiny.
This does not necessarily involve secession. There are federal scenarios that would confer independence within the context of continuing a partnership that, however fractious and exploitive, has been serviceable.
And Scotland does not yet recognise – as England herself does not – that the current ‘constitutional’ arrangements disadvantage England more than any other constituent nation in the UK. If we do not wish to be disregarded ourselves, we should not be prepared to watch another endure that condition.
All of this is now for the future. The inherited state of the country’s finances and its economy will first require a universally concerted effort and endurance to recover.
Do you think that disguising one man’s momentary folly – which could have been the agent of the destabilisation whose consequences we have here challenged you to confront – is a matter of sufficient weight to imperil what chances of success the present government has to combat the most serious situation this country has faced for a very long time?
So rather than bleat about our ‘vile’ ‘cheap jibes’, let’s hear what you think and why you think it.
That’s what you’ve heard from us and, like it or not, succumb to the vapours or not, every syllable has been uttered with serious intent.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
‘Let’s set matters of taste aside – and the question of when matters of taste are irrelevant’
I’m not sure that I quite get the sense of this, but in terms of setting matters of taste aside, I’d ask ‘Why’?
The whole issue here is one of taste, and your failure to recognise that calls your own judgement into question.
You accuse those who have voiced disapproval of the article of ‘bleating’ and failing to respond to the issues you raised.
If your supposed ‘serious intent’ had been couched in terninology less demeaning of its subject, had your responses to criticism less pompous, and with even a vestige of contrition, then perhaps some of your readers might have taken your views seriously.
There’s an implication in your response that, because the reaction to your piece was not what you wanted, then those who criticise you are wrong and you are right.
Whether you accept it or not, this article is nothing better than character assassination, and the fact that it was based on a very dodgy premise devalues it even further.
This has been a sad episode, and you should learn something from it.
There’s an arrogance creeping into some of the material on this website which detracts from its ability to do real good in the local community.
A touch of humility wouldn’t go amiss. You have the potential to make something good from ‘For Argyll’; some of your coverage of local issues has been second to none (although I’m at a loss to establish the local relevance of this tale) but you really need to ask yourself if this sort of article enhances your publication or its reputation in the community it purports to serve.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
For Bill Jardine:You’re dodging the issues raised and taking cover in repetition. Let’s take it as read what you feel about the article but let’s hear what you think.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
There is an excellent, thoughtful and well-written piece on Charles Kennedy at http://www.scottishreview.net/ written by Kenneth Roy – a superb journalist.
The headline: A PERSONAL TRAGEDY.
Enjoy…
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
For Harry Wragg: A good article, well worth reading and thank you for pointing to it. For speed of access, the specific web page is: http://www.scottishreview.net/KRoy11.shtml
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
A good article indeed; well-written, and sympathetic – by no means a hatchet job.
Read and absorb. You should learn from it.
You accuse me of dodging the issue – it’s worth pointing out that virtually all the comments generated by this posting have been about its offensive nature.
If anyone is guilty of dodging issues, it’s certainly not me.
You want to know what I think about the other issues raised in the article?
Given that you appear to be impervious to criticism, why should I bother?
If you want to liberate a host of bees from your bunnet, who am I to silence their deafening buzz?
I really have nothing more to say.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
For Bill Jardine: Sorry, Bill, on a point of logic you are adrift here.
Just because others were equally more moved by the offence this article gave than by the situation that gave rise to it does not mean that ‘If anyone is guilty of dodging issues, it’s certainly not me’. You are not alone but you are – still – dodging those issues.
But the metaphor of the liberation of a swarm from our bunnet is fun. And we thought it was tinnitus.
The set of challenges we raised in our last substantive comment remain on the table and are there to be objectively addressed. If you don’t want to do this now or openly, perhaps you will quietly consider them in private when the heat has gone?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Can I ask for the author of the original article to be named?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Reply to “Newsroom”, August 23rd.
It’s reassuring to hear that:
“Our editorial policy is to publish comments from members of our audience in the belief that free speech is crucial”, although I think it’s unlikely that you’d profess any other view.
“In this case, we are fully aware that the piece on Charles Kennedy… was mercilessly unsentimental.”
No it wasn’t. It was needlessly vindictive and insulting. There is a difference between lack of sentiment and gratuitous personal invective. If you cannot see that, you have a problem.
You then go on to make some unsupported assertions (“There is no alternative” being my personal favourite, for the frisson of nostalgia it evokes). The problem is that it’s hardly possible to treat these seriously, coming as they do on the back of your outrageous personal attack.
I will do so, in another comment, but please understand that when you indulge in name calling then you generally put yourself beyond the pale when it comes to deserving reasoned argument in response. This is not a matter of taste, it’s a matter of judgement. You’ve chosen to place yourselves with the hounds, inviting the conclusion that you will only understand yaps in return.
A note too, on anonymity. There’s a great tradition of anonymous comment, running from Jonathon Swift to Guido Fawkes. However, if you choose not to invoke this tradition, it is far easier to see you as hiding behind it rather than dignifying it. I note that your “ForArgyll” page gives Lynda Henderson’s name as Managing Editor and main news correspondent. Can I invite you, Ms Henderson, to either admit to authorship or to comment, with your Managing Editor’s hat on, on the origin of this piece?
I’ll submit another comment later on what passes for the substantive points you’ve appended to the bile. Perhaps if they had appeared in the article, it might have encouraged contributors to engage with your argument rather than register there contempt for your writing.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0