In article ,
T.C.Roll-Pickering@qmul.ac.uk (Tim Roll-Pickering) wrote:

> Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
> 
> >> Kennedy's drinking had not even been a secret since 2002
> 
> > It wasn't a secret in 1999 either, for that matter.
> 
> Well it may not have been hidden but my recollection is the media 
> only took hold of the story and ran with it around that time after 
> Paxman quizzed Kennedy directly in a general interview with the 
> question (paraphrase) "How do you feel that we've spoken to several 
> MPs, including some from you're own party, and they've all said 
> 'You're interviewing Charles Kennedy? Hope he stays sober long 
> enough,'?" 

Lots of politicians have been known, at lest in some circles, as having a
weakness for alcohol. It's something of an industrial disease of the
Westminster village. I remember a then (Tory) MP for Cambridge turning up
worse for wear at a councillor's funeral. Nobody said anything because it
wasn't important enough for the occasion. He was a very good MP despite
all the media knowing his weakness.

What matters is how well they can perform despite their weaknesses,
unless you are another of the tabloid vermin who expect angels only to
apply. Luckily the vermin didn't exist in earlier generations or we
wouldn't have survived the war.

-- 
Cllr. Colin Rosenstiel
Cambridge                    http://www.rosenstiel.co.uk/
Cambridge Liberal Democrats: http://www.cambridgelibdems.org.uk/

Colin Rosenstiel wrote:

>> Well it may not have been hidden but my recollection is the media
>> only took hold of the story and ran with it around that time after
>> Paxman quizzed Kennedy directly in a general interview with the
>> question (paraphrase) "How do you feel that we've spoken to several
>> MPs, including some from you're own party, and they've all said
>> 'You're interviewing Charles Kennedy? Hope he stays sober long
>> enough,'?"

> Lots of politicians have been known, at lest in some circles, as having a
> weakness for alcohol. It's something of an industrial disease of the
> Westminster village. I remember a then (Tory) MP for Cambridge turning up
> worse for wear at a councillor's funeral. Nobody said anything because it
> wasn't important enough for the occasion. He was a very good MP despite
> all the media knowing his weakness.

> What matters is how well they can perform despite their weaknesses,
> unless you are another of the tabloid vermin who expect angels only to
> apply. Luckily the vermin didn't exist in earlier generations or we
> wouldn't have survived the war.

I think Churchill's finances in the 1930s would have proved easier pickings 
for modern tabloids than his drinking (and he drank a lot but he could also 
absorb it). Like many a Chancellor of the Exchquer he was rather more 
creative with his own finances than with the nation's.

But it comes back to the point that Kennedy could easily have survived that 
problem if his colleagues had rallied round him and given support, not run 
to any TV studio that would take them to mouth off on air, whilst also 
lacking the balls to resign by themselves, instead having to sign mass 
letters and act in numbers. If Clement Davies had waited to find some 
colleagues to co-sign a letter with him, rather than resigning alone from 
the Liberal Nationals in late 1939, it's possible that Neville Chamberlain 
would not have fallen in May 1940 (or not - I'll get back on this one) and 
highly probable that the Liberal Party would not have got through the 1940s 
and early 1950s at all.