Lord Menzies Campbell, who has died at the age of 84, was a top-class sprinter before embarking on a marathon political career that included a brief and testing period as leader of the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third-largest party.
Campbell played a key role in helping his centrist grouping capitalise on public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war under Labour prime minister Tony Blair in the early 2000s. In the 2005 and 2010 general elections, that discontent secured the Lib Dems what were then the best results for a centre party in a UK general election since 1923.
However, while his era as foreign affairs spokesman was critical to the party’s electoral success in the 2000s and he came to be regarded as a beloved elder statesman of the Lib Dems, he proved less capable of the cut and thrust of party leadership. He stood down after less than two years.
Known as “Ming”, from “Mingis”, the Scots pronunciation of his first name, Campbell served as MP for North-East Fife in east-central Scotland for 28 years from 1987. In that time, he focused his attention almost entirely on critiquing the military and foreign policy stances of successive governments before entering the House of Lords in 2015. But despite more than three decades in Westminster, full-time politics was some time in coming.
Born in Glasgow, Campbell read law at Glasgow university. While there, he met and befriended John Smith, Donald Dewar and Derry Irvine. The three would go on to be, respectively, a future Labour party leader, the first minister in the first devolved Scottish government and Lord Chancellor under Blair. Campbell followed up his undergraduate studies with a degree in international law from Stanford university in California.
As a student, his running ability set him apart. Campbell represented Great Britain in the 200 metres and as a member of the 100-metre relay team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In 1967, he twice ran 100 metres in 10.2 seconds — a record which legend says led to him being termed the “fastest white man on the planet”. He was fond of recounting how, in one of those personal bests, he beat the subsequently notorious OJ Simpson, then an aspiring athlete.
After finishing his studies, Campbell trained as an advocate, the Scottish equivalent of a barrister. An invitation from Nicholas Fairbairn, a fellow advocate and future Conservative solicitor-general for Scotland, led to an evening’s dancing with Elspeth Grant-Suttie, who had just divorced her first husband. Campbell proposed within two weeks, and the pair were married for 53 years until Elspeth’s death in June 2023.
She was “bright, beautiful and witty”, said Campbell in a tribute. “My constant political companion, always my encouragement and forever my first line of defence.”
When Campbell joined what was then the Liberal party, it was a marginal force in Scottish politics, taking one seat in the country in the 1959 general election and just three seats in 1970. He first stood for parliament in the February and October 1974 general elections in the shipbuilding constituency of Greenock and Port Glasgow. Campbell recalled the experience as “very challenging”, describing how he would have to address angry, often foul-mouthed crowds outside shipyard gates.
After standing unsuccessfully in elections in 1979 and 1983, Campbell finally won North-East Fife from the Conservatives in 1987. He held the seat first for the Liberals and then the Lib Dems, which emerged from the 1988 merger of the Liberals and Social Democrats.
The new MP first drew widespread attention as his party’s defence spokesperson, questioning the handling of the “Iraqi supergun” affair by the Conservative government. The scandal involved two British companies’ exporting to Iraq parts for an alleged “supergun” planned by the country’s then dictator, Saddam Hussein, to launch ballistic missiles.
That success opened the way for a series of posts covering defence and foreign affairs issues. In particular, Campbell probed the decision by Blair to join the US invasion of Iraq. His stance was crucial in helping the party to secure 62 seats at the 2005 general election and 57 in 2010.
Campbell’s most fateful decision was to seek election as party leader, at the age of 64, after alcoholism forced the resignation of Charles Kennedy in January 2006.
Campbell defeated Simon Hughes and Chris Huhne to win the role but quickly faced questions about his suitability, with particular concern about his sometimes lacklustre performance at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions, when the leader of the Commons’ third-largest party is granted only two questions.
Campbell later suggested that representing a Scottish constituency put him at a disadvantage because he had to join influential Sunday TV talk shows from a remote studio, rather than in London. Critics contended he was simply too old.
One Lib Dem insider said he had proved less gifted at the highly political task of leading the party than at the more forensic task of pulling apart government policy failings. That showed up particularly starkly at PMQs.
“His style was courtroom and rhetoric, and it wasn’t the brutal attack bit that sometimes stepping up as a third-party leader at Prime Minister’s Questions requires,” the person said.
Following incessant internal criticism, Campbell resigned in October 2007, handing over to Nick Clegg, who went on to become deputy prime minister in the coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives after the 2010 general election.
Campbell largely maintained a diplomatic silence about the Lib Dems’ role in the coalition, which proved electorally disastrous for them, and he stepped down from the Commons ahead of the 2015 election. His seat, like all but three parliamentary constituencies in Scotland, was captured by the pro-independence Scottish National party.
Nominated as a peer, Campbell became Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, a picturesque fishing village in North-East Fife. He served on the National Security Committee — a joint committee with the Commons — between 2017 and 2021, and was also his party’s defence spokesperson in the Lords from 2017 until 2019.
In 2006, Campbell received a lifetime appointment as chancellor of the University of St Andrews — the titular head of the university, located in his North-East Fife constituency, in whose name degrees are awarded.
While Elspeth had a son by her first marriage, the couple had no children of their own. In a joint interview the couple gave in 2008, she said her husband’s achievements were “worthy of admiration”.
“He’s achieved so many things — a top-class athlete, a very fine lawyer, an eminent politician — and all from a tenement flat in Glasgow,” she said.