The leader of Britain’s second opposition party was fighting for his political life on Friday after an unprecedented admission that he has been battling alcoholism, at a time of fierce wider public debate over the use and abuse of alcohol.
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy (46) had repeatedly denied health problems despite some eyebrow-raising public appearances and media rumours.
Nicknamed ”Chat-show Charlie”, his television outings endeared him to the wider public.
Now the affable, flame-haired Scot’s dramatic revelation of effectively lying over his drink problem has put his future in jeopardy as colleagues decide if they have the nerve to call time on his political career in his hour of crisis.
The admission highlights concerns about country’s relationship with alcohol as Britain is in the midst of a nationwide debate about binge drinking.
The latest issue of the top medical journal The Lancet warned increasing numbers of Britons were drinking themselves to death as England and Wales adjust to new laws allowing pubs to serve drink around the clock.
Ministers admitted there was a particular problem among young Britons, but denied the new licensing extensions would exacerbate it, and its knock-on effects of booze-fuelled loutishness.
Kennedy said about coping with his addiction: ”I’ve come to learn through that process that a drink problem is a serious problem indeed.”
Amid growing speculation about his position, Kennedy came clean the day before the The Lancet said Britain has had Europe’s biggest increase in deaths from liver cirrhosis, a key indicator of alcohol consumption.
Investigators noted a huge increase in Kennedy’s native Scotland, where the death rate doubled among men during the 1990s, and among British women generally, where it rose by almost half during the same period.
Kennedy insisted he had been dry for two months. Whether or not he survives his personal crisis, it is now a front-page story in Britain’s daily newspapers and his battle with the bottle will be followed closely.
As far back as July 2002, Kennedy scotched suggestions he would finish a bottle of whisky on his own at night in a BBC interview.
But within an hour of the ITV television station threatening to detail his treatment for alcoholism, Kennedy decided it was finally time to own up.
He missed giving an important statement in Parliament in 2003 and the following March appeared ill and sweat-drenched while delivering a party conference speech.
The Times newspaper said senior colleagues marched into Kennedy’s office in June 2004 and ordered him to sort out his drinking.
During the May 2005 election, he got into a muddle over his economic policy at a morning press conference. That was put down to lack of sleep: his first child was born the previous day.
The Liberals, out of power since 1922, won 62 seats at the election, their best ever showing in their current guise.
But some within the party reckoned they should have done much better given their opposition to the war in Iraq.
Calls for Kennedy to quit intensified after the main opposition Conservatives picked David Cameron (39) as their new leader in December and headed leftwards towards the centre ground.
Cameron’s direct call to Lib Dem supporters, saying he now best represented their concerns, has seemingly left the party wondering where it stands as an alternative to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s governing Labour Party.