Tributes to Charles Kennedy

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I first met Charles Kennedy on his first day in the House of Commons, when I entered the Members’ Dining Room and saw a young man looking forlorn and lost, wandering around and wondering what to do. I asked him to join me for lunch and I found out who he was. As the youngest Member of the House of Commons, he was not going to assert himself at that stage, but he knew why he was here: to stand up for certain principles about which he felt strongly. He stood up for those principles in the House and outside it from that first day right through to the end. He had strong views, but he was never vindictive and never malevolent in expounding them. He knew where he stood, he worked out where he should stand, and you knew that when Charles Kennedy spoke he had thought it out and thought it through, and that he would not budge unless you could argue him out of a position—and his positions were pretty strong.

It has rightly been mentioned again and again that he opposed the Iraq war, which at that time was not an easy thing to do, and it was not the view of the overwhelming majority of the House of Commons, but if Charles had worked out a position and he believed that position to be right, he would not budge.

He was always genial, always fun, and it was good to be in his company. You rarely saw him without a smile on his face, but that smile was not a smile of appeasement; it was a smile of geniality and it was a smile of good will. I knew him over the years and always valued his company and his opinions. I join with the rest of the House in expressing my profound sympathy to his family. We shall miss him.