Menzies Campbell: the ‘Flying Scotsman’ who led the Liberal Democrats from the front
Menzies Campbell was a thin special politician who was dressed like a Toray Grandee, with a certain proximity with the social democratic wing of the Labor Party, but always describing himself as a proud liberal and proud scot. And it was.
Although he was known and surrounded by equal talented Scottish workmanship figures that naturally make themselves more easily in dominant political power in the north of the border, John Smith – Campbell, who rises to party leadership, paid a certain price for his loyalty to liberal values. He became a deputy in a relatively mature age at the age of 41, and when he passed the prime minister at the age of 65 and he never took office, he rose to the party leadership.
Liberal Democrats may have had the opportunity to serve in a role when they tasted the national power in the 2010 Cameron -Congg Coalition Government, but in any case. Following the 2015 general elections, Lib DEMS could not be held responsible for the nuclear winter. At this point, they were curtains for many.
As with routine for an old party leader, Campbell took a pererage and stepped back from public life. But for decades, it was the thickness of politics. During his leadership in the 1990s, he was extremely close to Paddy Ashdown, and he tried to withdraw the Labor Party, and the liberal democrats were later closer to what was called “project ,, and would easily join the Blair cabinet. It didn’t have to happen.
He was respected, but he was not seen with great love by his parliamentary colleagues or a wider party, and when Ashdown retired from leadership in 1999, Campbell refused to run in the competition to accomplish him. He wasn’t ready for a fight or dissatisfied.
Charles Kennedy, who was easily winning on alcoholism, was presented to the use of Campbell, a successful leadership. Unfortunately, after only 19 months, Campbell was sacrificed to a palace coup led by Nick Clegg in October 2007.
We can never know how different things you may have chosen between Campbell’s Gordon Brown George Osborne’s Iliberal Correct squeezing regime, instead of keeping it in number 10. Actually, for Campbell – looking older than the years then – “declare your interest!” He was a Tor Backbencher shouting. Lib Dem, the leader of the state stumbled on a question about the future of the state pension. It was the beginning of the end, no matter what else he did.
For a long time, Campbell had been a spokesman for Lib Dem, and in serious news shows, he regularly had a stentorian voice, but the criticisms he received from the press did not continue after receiving the leadership mantle. He said he started to believe in his propaganda.
It was strange to say, to some extent, a tremendous promise life was never fully fulfilled. He had enjoyed a quiet but constantly rising reputation in Commons. Rapidly, known for a rapid competence, Steel began to be seen as a very reliable man during the Ashdown and Kennedy period – in fact, at least as someone who could lead the party.
Born in 1941, another Glaswegian talent Walter Menzies Campbell joined the Great University of this city before moving to Stanford, although it was a product of the Glasgow Academy’s Smith/Irvine/Dewar route. A liberal of university days, despite the ILP/labor history of his family, first athletics, then in law outside the politics.
The 220 -meter runner joined the 1964 Olympics and 1966 Commonwealth Games, seized the British Athletics team in 1965 and 1966, and from 1967 to 1974, the British 100 -meter record. He was called to the Scottish stick in 1968, dived into the advocate in 1977 and took silk in 1982. Then he would have a good mouth determination.
Politics in this previous life was a kind of silent decoration for a name made elsewhere. “Ming” was the president of the Scottish Liberal Party between 1975-77, as Campbell has always been called.
Later, despite the minimal border changes, it would hold the seat in the North East Fife – a combination of St Andrews, Cupar, legendary Auchtermchyty, and a combination of the third Football Club that usually fights.
Campbell immediately counted at the party. For most of the 1980s, the old liberal party was curled in the grief of the mutation: Should he throw his hand with SDP, beautiful Shirley Williams, eye -catching sinister Dur David Owen and other traveling people, dangerously escaped from a left -winged business party?
To an old party – small but perfect authentic – he chose to be liberal instead of gaining emotional ties and power. At least this extent can be called a career. Pragmatic, reliable sense, in 1988, he discussed the connection between the social democrats and the liberals in 1988 with the habit of the unity between the social democrats and liberals.
But beyond that, the liberals, a unilateral vessel, were suddenly furiously boiled at the 1986 conference, when they were not essential for the approval of the non -nuclear road.
This issue has long been important in labor and liberal debates, but Tor has served as more information for a real benefit to the missile democracy for the scary propaganda. Considering that the rejection of the CND was an important part of what the SDP was about with Europeanism, the explosion of moral sensitivity of the coast could not be worse.
Campbell, like most mainstream, saw the movement as a political disaster that made David Steel’s tired inertia possible. When the policy was reversed at the next year’s conference, Campbell was Campbell, who acted positively to the podium (the current author’s definite remembering) to present the hard line on defense to lead liberals with a majority of four and to lead to fusion with SDP.
The impact was measured by the official shadow portfolio, which was initially sports, and now in 1988 he quickly adopted the defense. In 1994, it became defense and external relations; After 1997, he was called Foreign, Defense and European Chief Spokesperson.
Campbell’s stand on nuclear defense put him in the right wing Pro-US camp. However, the measure of his good sense of his good sense was that in different conditions, a US government would show a non -critical bond that had misunderstood things.
During the spring and summer, Campbell, Campbell, the most influential critic – Robin Cook, would work as the most influential critic – Robin Cook – during the spring and summer 2003. In 1986, the same clarity, which perceived peace therapy, bites Blair on his article that he was strengthened through war.
NATO’s supporter was not affected by the British’s matching accessory role.
Part of Campbell’s power was that he was an expert: Foreign and defense attracted attention and spoke with expert knowledge on them. On the other hand, early sympathy for merging with the SDP was repeated in 1998 with a rare trial for Ashdown’s poorly thought-out association-association-public and/or possible union-partying new labor force.
This was more about the nature of Blairism, Ashdown’s personal loyalty as a senior parliamentary lieutenant, and perhaps his sudden death in 2000, Smith, a major loss to progressive politics at all levels, and his beloved friend Donald Dewar, Donald Dewar, was rather naive.
Despite the opposition to the Iraq War, Campbell was always an Atlanticist, and he returned to a better American states than Neo Conservatives and George W Bush. Most of them did not fully share Lib DEMS’s private Europeanism and received serious concerns about the proposed European Constitution – and chose a referendum on this issue.
His marriage to Elspeth Urquhart was important beyond his inner success. Elspeth proved a serious PA and a party headquarters worker in Edinburgh, but the adoption of a great General’s daughter (Famous in his father Arnhem) by a very big friends’ circle may have been far from a kind of coarse population that would make Campbell Charles Kennedy so attractive.
A divorce with a son married in 1970, and in June 2023, he had a long marriage that resulted in his 83 -year -old death. Many saw him as the driving force in his life.
Campbell’s length increased greatly throughout the party with its fragile courage in the horror of cancer and chemotherapy in 2002. It was opened to the public on almost all the facts and appeared in television, gaunt and desperate, her hair passed through treatment.
When the Iraqi crisis offered him a parliamentary challenge, which was generally thought to have been met brightly, healing from the disease was barely achieved. It was the best time.
Politician Walter Menzies Campbell, who was born on May 22, 1941, died on September 26, 2025
