Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, today suffered the snub of being publicly depicted as a liability on the doorstep by one of his own parliamentary candidates.

Nasser Butt, the unsuccessful Lib Dem candidate for Mole Valley, told the party conference in Blackpool that he had had to waste too much time defending his party leader instead of promoting party policies.

The attack came two hours after the Liberal Democrat leadership received a bloody nose from delegates, who backed a rebel amendment in a debate on Europe.

"A lot of time was wasted and perhaps something wrong was coming across," said Mr Butt, during a question and answer session with the party leader.

Mr Kennedy replied that personal attacks on his leadership were inevitable at election time, that he had a thick skin and did not lose any sleep over it, and he advised others to do the same. He was then forced to field allegations that he had disappeared from the political radar since the May election.

Invited by debate chairman Simon Kelner to defend his energy and enthusiasm for the leadership, Mr Kennedy failed to say that he enjoyed his job. Instead he said: "If you weren't keen on that kind of life, it wouldn't take much persuasion to think you wanted to do other things."

Mr Kennedy's leadership was under criticism before today's acts of rebelliousness, which are being seen as undermining his position. A Times Populus poll this morning revealed that 35 per cent of the party want a new leader.

Greg Hurst, Times Political Correspondent, rated this morning's defeat as a "middling" defeat - not catastrophic, but certainly more than a scratch.

Hurst said that this afternoon's attack was humiliating. "I think it is embarrassing and also slightly demeaning for the leader to be faced with such a direct question about his personal qualities from one of his own candidates in full view of the conference hall," he said.

Earlier, in a debate on the European Commission's mushrooming budget, delegates ignored pleas from Vince Cable, the modernising Treasury spokesman, and fellow Kennedy loyalist Nick Clegg, not to give Brussels "a blank cheque book". Instead the members chose to support rebel amendments tabled by Chris Davies, the leader of the Liberal Democrat MEPs in the European Parliament.

Straight after the vote, Mr Cable tried to be philosophical. "There are a lot of our delegates here who feel very strongly that they don't like anything to be interpreted as giving succour to the Eurosceptic point of view," he said. "Elected MPs feel that Eurosceptic arguments have to be met head on, but conference came out with a different view."

He stoutly maintained that the defeat was not symbolic of doubts over the Kennedy leadership, or tomorrow's looming battle in a debate about privatising Royal Mail. "This is about Europe, it is not about post offices or the leadership," Mr Cable insisted.

But the result inevitably overshadowed a speech on foreign affairs by Sir Menzies Campbell, in which he called British troops "part of the problem" in Iraq and stated: "We must begin to bring this occupation to an end".

Mr Kennedy had hoped to use the Blackpool conference to impose some policy discipline on members, moving them towards more carefully costed and realistic positions. Organisers also hoped to spruce up Mr Kennedy's image with the party and with the public.

Instead, in a press briefing yesterday Mr Kennedy was three times forced to deny a report that he was considering standing down. He looked uncomfortable, sweated profusely, and later left his media reception early.

Today's poll by Populus (based on interviews with 1,007 adults between September 9 and 11) showed that while most voters approve of the Liberal Democrats and think the party shares their values, only a minority thinks the party is ready for power.

Three fifths of the public, including swing or floating voters, think that the Lib Dems are basically a protest vote party, because they have no real chance of ever winning, and a similar number regard the party as made up of "decent people but their policies probably don't really add up".

Just under a half of all voters, and even two fifths of non-Lib Dems, think that the party would do a good job of running the country.

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