Click here to see the inner circle who contrived to keep party and public in the dark about alcoholism
LATE ONE quiet Friday afternoon, Charles Kennedy’s closest staff and advisers slipped away from the House of Commons to reconvene in the privacy of his mansion flat behind Victoria Street in Westminster. There, the Lib Dem leader was joined by Tim Razzall, his principal strategist; Dick Newby, his chief of staff; Anna Werrin, his assistant and closest ally; and Jackie Rowley, his press secretary. Over glasses of Diet Coke and mineral water, they reached a momentous decision: he should make public the corrosive secret that threatened to destabilise his leadership.
It was July 4, 2003, three months after the initial phase of the Iraq war had ended. They agreed that he should hold a press conference and set the record straight on years of rumours about his drinking. Kennedy, they decided, would say that this had been the subject of a great deal of speculation; much had been printed on the subject, some of it untrue, some of it exaggerated. But, he would say, he wished to stress clearly that he did indeed have a drink problem and was seeking to address and resolve it. This was an oblique reference to the professional help for alcoholism that he had been receiving for more than a year.
The group knew that he was taking a risk. He planned to make clear that he would remain as leader; commentators would question his fitness to do so, and might subject him to endless questions about drinking. Henceforth he would be watched like a hawk for the slightest sign of a lapse. His inner circle calculated, however, that by making such a public admission he would stop the continual innuendo of press stories linking him to alcohol. He might even elicit public sympathy by finally being open about his condition.
Having taken the decision, the group determined to act almost immediately. The press conference was scheduled for late the following morning, July 5 — a Saturday — at the Liberal Democrats’ headquarters at Cowley Street, twelve days before Parliament rose for the summer recess. Since it was summer, if the weather was fine Kennedy would make his announcement from the steps outside Cowley Street; if it was overcast or raining he would do so inside in the boardroom. Menzies Campbell, the deputy leader, who had travelled home to Edinburgh for the weekend, would be asked to return to London and stand behind Kennedy or sit at his side during the press conference in a demonstration of support. After about an hour the meeting broke up as the team dispersed to make preparations for the biggest personal gamble of Charles Kennedy’s career.
On receiving the summons, Campbell cancelled his weekend engagements and, on Saturday morning, caught the early train from Edinburgh to King’s Cross to attend the press conference. His journey was well advanced when he took a call on his mobile telephone from Anna Werrin. She told him that Kennedy had changed his mind. Having slept on it, he had decided that he no longer wished to go through with such a public declaration and would deal with his condition in his own way, she said.
Campbell, having braced himself for a momentous event, got off the train and caught another back to Edinburgh, saying nothing.
Charles Kennedy struggled with a severe alcohol problem throughout his period as leader. He did not drink excessively every day, colleagues said, but every so often would go on a spree of very heavy drinking. Contrary to a mythology drawn from a caricature of a Highlander, whisky was not his tipple of choice. Nor did he care for champagne, despite at times being dubbed “Champagne Charlie”. He drank gin and tonic, or wine. On the occasions when Kennedy drank to excess his condition might simply manifest itself with a pungent smell of alcohol around him the next day. After more serious episodes his hands would shake, particularly in the morning, and he would perspire, take on an unhealthy pallor and suffer from flu-like symptoms. At its most acute, his drinking would from time to time leave him obviously unfit to perform in public.
His staff quickly learnt to throw a protective shield around him during such periods and, where possible, keep him completely from view. For the first three or four years of his leadership they were largely successful, although increasingly chinks in his armour began to show. As rumours of drink-related incidents started to circulate at Westminster, a private medical condition took on a political significance. In fact Kennedy was progressively drinking less, not more, but its political importance grew as the secret of his alcoholism slowly seeped out.
“I don’t know when heavy drinking, which a lot of people do, suddenly becomes problem drinking,” said Werrin, who was his closest assistant and friend over 23 years. “It is something that you see in retrospect. I cannot tell you when he started to have a drink problem.”
Her own concern at his drinking stemmed back, she said, “well before he became leader”. “I think the difference between pre-leader drinking and leadership drinking was that he drank less,” Werrin said. “I think he drank heavily as a young man and a student, and he was elected when he was very young and he was single and he was enjoying a young, very male, single life, predominantly in London, and he carried on with his student-type drinking. The truth of the matter is I could not tell you necessarily what the pattern of his drinking was. He wasn’t somebody who was drinking all the time in the office. He drank in private, by and large, and drank more than he ought.”
Stories of drinking attached themselves to Kennedy throughout his political career. It was not until the mid-1990s that those who worked closely with him noticed some of his brilliance as a speaker and performer had dulled.
The mid-1990s was also a very unsatisfying period for Kennedy in political terms, after he stood down as president of the party and no longer had a key frontline role. This was when a serious lack of self-esteem became apparent to some of those around him. Alcohol may have been a symptom rather than a cause. Becoming leader certainly heightened the pressure upon him. For one thing, as a large fish in the Liberal Democrats’ small pond, he had been able to live on his wits, sail through media interviews and give plausible Commons performances with minimum advance preparation and without exerting himself hugely. While he was a frontbench spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, still then very much a minority party, it did not really matter. Once he was the party’s leader, suddenly it did. Intellectually he was subjected to a much greater level of challenge and scrutiny, more from the media than in Parliament. At times, especially in the early years, he doubted his own capability in the role.
In the months since abandoning his plan for a public announcement acknowledging his alcoholism, Kennedy did cut back his drinking but severe lapses continued. Werrin said: “There were obviously days when he had been drinking. He has acknowledged that, I am not going to pretend that these days didn’t exist. He drank less when he was married and he stopped living that single man’s lifestyle, he had a home that he wanted to go home to.”
As his own MPs became more conscious of its symptoms, but remained unaware of how exactly he was seeking to deal with it, the danger grew that any mishap, however accidental, would be assumed to be drink related.
The night before the Budget statement in March 2004, Kennedy stayed at the Commons until 8.30pm working on his draft response, one of the most testing duties of an opposition party leader. The next morning he failed to arrive for work and members of his staff were unable to reach him by telephone. A young assistant, Gurpreet Dosanjh, was dispatched to his town house in Kennington, southeast London, to bring Kennedy to the Commons. The pair finally arrived at the Commons after 11am, with less than an hour until Prime Minister’s Questions and the Budget statement immediately afterwards. It was obvious that Kennedy was very ill.
“We dragged him in and we said: ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’” Werrin said. “And he said, ‘I knew I had to do it. I have to do it’.” She told him he was in no state to sit in the Commons chamber for more than two hours. Both of them knew, however, that his absence would set off a frenzy of speculation that he was incapacitated by drink. The discussion delayed them still further.
When they at last agreed that he should not attend, she telephoned Campbell with barely half an hour’s warning and asked him to stand in at Prime Minister’s Questions.
By another unhappy coincidence, the Lib Dems’ spring conference fell four days later at Southport, at which the leader had duties throughout, culminating in a platform speech. On Sunday, the day of his speech, Kennedy looked gaunt and pale, and clearly far from well, as he struggled through the text. His performance in the hall itself was laboured but adequate; the television pictures, however, were terrible. Under the heat of the stage lights, his perspiration was cruelly magnified, as were his shaking hands. Clips of him mopping his forehead as he struggled through the speech were shown remorselessly on news bulletins.
Some MPs and senior party figures feared that there was a possibility that Kennedy’s illness was such that he might have to stand down as leader. With a general election expected in 14 months’ time, this was not a moment to spend three or four months on a leadership election.
Menzies Campbell was urged to be prepared to take over as acting leader to steady the ship and, if necessary, steer the party through for an interim period until perhaps six months after the election. Simon Hughes told Campbell that, in such circumstances, he would not oppose him as a candidate in a leadership contest. The party’s MPs appeared ready, if required, to offer Campbell a “coronation” in the same way that Conservative MPs had anointed Michael Howard unopposed as their leader the previous autumn.
The following morning came the moment every leader dreads. A delegation of senior party office holders filed awkwardly into his Commons room to confront Kennedy about the issue he had avoided discussing with them for four and a half years. It comprised Campbell, Matthew Taylor, Andrew Stunell and Chris Rennard: the party’s deputy leader, parliamentary party chairman, chief whip and chief executive. Charles Kennedy, seated to the side of his desk as the others perched on chairs and his green two-seat sofa, was in a very low state. Menzies Campbell, looking uncomfortable, said little, as did Stunell, and the discussion was led by Rennard and Taylor.
Rennard pressed his leader to talk not about the previous week’s illness but the underlying problem of his drinking. At first Kennedy was unwilling, but Rennard pushed him again and again, saying that they needed to know what the problem was.
Finally, Rennard asked him directly: “You are an alcoholic, aren’t you?” After a pause, Kennedy replied with a single word.
“Yes,” he said.
He did not use the word himself, but it was the first occasion he had made such an admission beyond his tight circle of staff and advisers.
Rennard told him: “What the party wants, what the party needs, is to have you as leader, but without alcohol.”
Taylor was harder, telling his leader: “You must never drink again. The next time you pick up a drink, you give up being leader.”
They told him that the party could not afford a repeat of such a leadership crisis linked to his health; he must get himself well and look after himself. Critically, however, they said that they would support him in doing so. Given the gravity of the circumstances, it was a remarkably friendly and constructive meeting. The immediate crisis had passed but, to survive, Kennedy had been forced to confront his demons. The onus was now on him to slay them.
Extracted from Charles Kennedy: A Tragic Flaw by Greg Hurst, to be published by Politico’s on September 18, price £18.99. Available from Times BooksFirst for £16.99 (0870 1608080) © Greg Hurst
DIARY OF DECLINE
‘He wasn’t somebody who was drinking all the time in the office. He drank in private, by and large, and drank more than he ought’ Anna Werrin
August 1999 Elected leader
2000 Internal complaints about his drinking
2001 Urged by party figures to get treatment
Early 2002 Sought professional help for first time
July 2002 Challenged on Newsnight about drink
June 2003 Rumours after missed Commons statement on euro
July 2003 Planned then cancelled statement admitting drink problem
March 2004 New health fears after speech in Southport
March 2004 Admitted to party delegation that he was alcoholic
