Ming Campbell: Why Lib Dem politician Sir Menzies was known as 'the fastest white man on the planet'
Menzies ‘Ming’ Campbell, who has died aged 84, was not just a respected politician - but had an estimable sporting past.
Campbell once admitted that sport was his “real obsession”, and with some justification, as he was a top-level athlete before entering politics - a career which saw him become the leader of Liberal Democrat party.
At university he refined his sprinting technique and he the 53-year-old Scottish 300 yards record in 1961, which had been set by Olympic gold medalist Wyndham Halswelle.
This proved a springboard that saw Campbell compete for the Great Britain team - long before it was known as Team GB - in the 200 metres and 4×100 metres relay at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
He also captained the Scotland team at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica, and captained the Great Britain athletics team in 1965 and 1966, going on to hold the British 100 metres record from 1967 to 1974. His prowess was such that he was called "the fastest white man on the planet" - with a fascinating side note that in one 1967 race he beat OJ Simpson, who was an athlete before becoming an American football player, actor and later facing an infamous charge of murdering his wife.
Campbell was born on May 22, 1941 in Glasgow in the midst of the Second World War. He later claimed he was delivered in an air raid shelter while his father, a joiner, sat outside drinking from a bottle of whisky.
He attended Hillhead High School, then a fee-paying local authority school, from where he won a place to read law at Glasgow University, where his friends included the future Labour politicians John Smith and Donald Dewar.
Having also found time to join the university Liberal Club – in part as a reaction against his parents’ socialism – his interest in politics fell away after leaving university and he embarked on a career in law. It was not until the 1970s that he was drawn back in, becoming chairman of the Scottish Liberal Party at the age of 34, although it was only in 1987 that he finally gained election to Westminster – at the fourth attempt – as MP for North East Fife.
By that time he was married – his wife Elspeth was the daughter of the war hero Major General Roy Urquhart, who commanded the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem, and had a son from a previous marriage.
He said that initially he only intended to serve two terms at Westminster but once there he became “hooked”.
Following the merger of the Liberals and the Social Democrats, his talents were quickly recognised by new leader Paddy Ashdown, who in 1992 made him the party’s foreign affairs spokesman – a brief he was to hold for 14 years until he became leader himself.
With his forensic eye for detail it was a role in which he excelled, holding ministers’ feet to the fire over the Matrix Churchill arms-to-Iraq scandal when the Tory government was accused of supplying military equipment to Saddam Hussein in breach of their own guidelines.
When Mr Ashdown finally stood down, Mr Campbell was seen as a potential successor but chose not to run, in part because he was seen as being too close to Mr Ashdown’s secret negotiations with Mr Blair to bring their two parties closer together.
It was perhaps ironic then that it was his opposition to the Blair government over the invasion of Iraq that really brought him to the fore. He and leader Mr Kennedy agonised before committing the Lib Dems to all-out opposition of the war which Mr Blair and US president George W Bush said was necessary to remove Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
“There were some sleepless nights for me and for Charles. All it needed was a company of American marines to discover two tanks of anthrax – our position would have been wholly undermined,” he later recalled.
“So it was a big risk, but we thought it was right and we thought (the war) wasn’t legal.”
Having been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma – a form of cancer – the previous year, Mr Campbell was still recovering from chemotherapy as he watched the TV footage of the tanks rolling in.
“I was a thoroughly informed armchair general and politician,” he remembered.
With the Tories supporting invasion, the Lib Dems became the principal mainstream voice of opposition to the conflict, giving them a rare prominence which Mr Campbell – who was also elected deputy party leader – and Mr Kennedy exploited to the full.
Their position was vindicated as the allied forces failed to find any evidence of Iraqi WMD and the 2005 general election saw them return with 62 seats – the highest tally for the third party since 1929 – while Labour’s majority was slashed.
Behind the scenes, however, there was trouble.
Even as they were opposing the war in Iraq, Mr Campbell had become aware that the charismatic Mr Kennedy had a serious drink problem. While he remained hugely popular with voters, there was growing concern within the party that it was eroding his ability to do his job.
Matters finally came to a head in January 2006, when Mr Kennedy sought to pre-empt a report by ITN by summoning a press conference to admit he had been receiving treatment for alcoholism. With Lib Dem MPs in open revolt, two days later he quit.
Sir Menzies, who was knighted in 2004, was immediately seen as one of the front-runners to replace him, but even before the contest was properly under way things started to go wrong.
Standing in for Mr Kennedy at PMQs he sought to press Mr Blair on the shortage of school leaders – prompting hoots of derision from Labour and Tory MPs who made hay mocking the Lib Dems’ own lack of a leader.
It was a deeply uncomfortable experience for a man more accustomed to being treated with respect in the Commons chamber, and while he went on to top the ballot of party members, it set the tone for much of what was to follow. Even after his election he continued to struggle at PMQs, a forum he did not enjoy, complaining: “It’s theatre, not debate.”
Meanwhile Labour received a boost with the transition from Mr Blair to Gordon Brown, while the youthful Mr Cameron was making waves for the Tories.
With the Lib Dems sliding in the opinion polls, Sir Menzies increasingly found himself facing questions about his age, even though the mid-60s were, in historical terms, hardly unusual for a party leader.
The final straw came when Mr Brown, having toyed with the idea of a snap election, announced he would be carrying on, meaning Sir Menzies could be 69 by the time the country next went to the polls, bringing the age question into even sharper focus.
With rising discontent among Lib Dem MPs – and party president Simon Hughes publicly warning he needed to “raise his game” – on October 15 2007 he announced he was standing down, the first elected Lib Dem leader not to take his party into a general election.
Nick Clegg, who went on to succeed him, said he had been treated “appallingly” and the subject of “barely disguised ageism”. Sir Menzies carried on as an MP until the 2015 general election, when he was made a life peer as Baron Campbell of Pittenweem.
Elspeth died in 2023, after more than 50 years of marriage.