We need to talk about Sarah Teather

In order to actually understand why so many left-wing and socially progressive people are horrified at the elevation of Jo Swinson to the Lib-Dem leadership, it's useful to look beyond her outrageous voting record, and consider the fate of Sarah Teather.

Sarah Teather

Teather, who was the youngest MP elected to the 2005 parliament, was once touted as a potential future leader of the Lib-Dems, and for around two and a half years she served in the Coalition government, but then she finally did the decent thing and resigned in protest.

The specific issues she raised were the xenophobic anti-immigrant policies being pushed by Theresa May's Home Office, David Cameron's imperialist war-mongering in Syria, and the continual assaults on poor, disabled and vulnerable people orchestrated by Iain Duncan Smith through relentless vandalism of the social safety.

She was sick of rubber-stamping this bombardment of Tory malice, and one day she finally got up off her knees, did the decent thing, and resigned, explaining how her party's collusion with the monstrous Tory agenda left her feeling "desolate" and "depressed".

It can be argued that her resignation came far too late (which is exactly how I felt at the time) but the reality is that at least she eventually did the decent thing, and doing the decent thing ended up costing her her political career.

She was marginalised and ostracised, just like the minority of other decent Lib-Dems like Charles Kennedy who recoiled in horror at what the party had been enabling, and she left politics entirely in 2015.

Jo Swinson

Swinson remained an ultra-loyal government minister throughout the Austerity Coalition, and in 2013 she had her opportunity to stand up and and oppose over the issue of anti-worker Tribunal Fees (which was such a despicable policy it was ruled unlawful in the Supreme Court in 2017).

Swinson now loves to claim that she fought back against these outrageous £1,200 upfront fees, designed as a barrier to the justice system to protect bad bosses from paying compensation to the low-income workers they've been exploiting and abusing.

But the reality is that she actually voted in favour of the anti-worker attack she now claims to have opposed, and even praised the policy in interviews and press releases at the time.

As Employment Minister in the Austerity Coalition she could have made a real impact by resigning over this attack on workers' rights, but she chose not to, because to resign as a government minister would have meaint forfeiting her six figure ministerial salary, her ministerial car and all the perks.

But more importantly she would have put herself on the blacklist of disloyal Lib-Dem MPs, meaning she'd be permanently out of favour with the Lib-Dem hierarchy, which would have delivered a massive blow to her ambitions to one day lead the party.

She put her own material circumstances, and her own political ambitions above the right of millions of British workers to seek justice from bad bosses when she voted to unlawfully scrap it., and now she lies through her teeth to pretend that she didn't.
The contrast

Had the Lib-Dems chosen someone like Sarah Teather to lead their party then it would be possible to see it as an act of contrition, a demonstration that they want to move on from the terrible crimes they committed against the British people between 2010 and 2015 (similar to the way the election of the anti-war campaigner Jeremy Corbyn illustrated the Labour Party membership's contrition over the devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003).

But the Lib-Dems didn't choose someone from the principled sidelines. They chose one of the worst and most unapologetic workers' rights-attacking, austerity-enabling, wage-repressing, welfare-vandalising, public service-slashing, bought and paid for nasties from the worst period in their political history.

They cast Sarah Teather adrift for her disloyalty to the party leadership and their neoliberal agenda, and they've amply rewarded Swinson for her slavish loyalty.

It's absolutely horrifying to see so many self-declared "centrists" falling for the absurd Lib-Dem portrayal of the rise of Swinson as some kind of new dawn for the party, when in reality it's nought but their reward to her for her slavish subservience to the old order.

Had she ever actually stood up and fought for the rights of ordinary people during the Austerity Coalition era, she would have been marginalised by the party leadership, ostracised, and almost certainly prevented from trying to win back the seat she lost to the SNP in the 2015 Lib-Dem wipeout.

She would have suffered the same political fate as Sarah Teather.

If the Lib-Dems were willing to demonstrate that they were actually sorry and genuinely intended to change, then they'd still have a lot of work to do to earn back the trust they burned to ashes in return for a tiny taste of 2nd hand Tory power, but at least we could accept their intentions in good faith if it involved picking a new leader who either stood up and opposed austerity fanaticism (or who became an MP after the austerity-collusion period ended in 2015 at the least).

But as it stands now their insincerity is absolutely obvious.

And it's especially obvious given the fact they've picked a leader who was slavishly loyal to Tory austerity fanaticism, and insists on repeatedly deflecting from criticism of her voting record with absurdly dishonest claims that she opposed sicking and unlawful anti-worker legislation that she actually voted in favour of!

If they'd elected Sarah Teather as their new leader instead of marginalising her for her disloyalty, then I'd understand people giving them a second look.

But the election of Swinson is spit in the eye of everyone who suffered the dire consequences of all the austerity fanaticism, and wage repression, and privatisation mania, and attacks on workers' rights, and disability persecution, and infrastructure under-investment, and social security vandalism that she wilfully rubber stamped in return for keeping herself in the Lib-Dem inner circle.

So despite wracking their party to the edge of destruction, the Lib-Dems still insist on demonstrating that self-serving expedience is a virtue to be rewarded in their ranks, while displays of integrity and moral decency are aberrations that need to be punished and driven out.

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OR

Lib-Dem Iraq whataboutery is the pinnacle of hypocrisy

A lot of people seem to have incredibly short political memories so it's important to remind anyone about the Lib-Dems disgusting and deeply illiberal track record in government between 2010 and 2015 and all of the vile policies they supported.

Policies like austerity fanaticism, tripled tuition fees, turning Libya into a lawless terrorism breeding ground, Theresa May's racist "Hostile Environment", inflicting the worst period of collapsing wages since records began, disability persecution, devastating public service cuts, Secret Courts, police cuts, the gagging law, the Royal Mail privatisation scam, increased snooping powers, welfare vandalism, infrastructure-underinvestment, the sanctions regime, the 2012 NHS-privatisation-by-stealth act, workfare, prison and probation privatisation, unlawful Tribunal Fees, overseeing the lowest peace time house building rate since the 1920s, Bedroom Tax, and all the time lavishing massive tax cuts and handouts on corporations and the mega-rich.

It's also worth reminding people that it was this vile combination of hard-right Liberal Democrat-endorsed policies that trashed our living standards and caused the furious public backlash that manifested in the 2016 Brexit vote.

It's absolutely stomach-turning to see smug unapologetic Lib-Dems now appealing to the politically gullible by posing as noble white knights to save us from Brexit without even apologising for the crucial role they played in creating Brexit in the first place.

But whenever you point stuff like this out, the Lib-Dem tribalists have one stock response, and it's every bit as cynical and dishonest as positioning themselves as the "stop Brexit party" after they wilfully helped the Tories lay the groundwork for Brexit to happen in the first place.
 

An example of Lib-Dem "Iraq whataboutry" from a thread
about the 130,000 people pushed into early graves
by Tory/Lib-Dem austerity fanaticism.

  This stock response is to go "but what about Iraq?"

They know that this is unbelievable disingenuous because Labour members have showed contrition over Iraq by electing one of the few Labour MPs who vehemently opposed the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Alongside the fact that Jeremy Corbyn was the only anti-austerity candidate in the 2015 leadership election, the fact he was a principled opponent of possibly the biggest error of judgement in Labour's entire history was a major factor in him becoming party leader.Huge numbers of people would never have been drawn back towards the Labour Party without contrition over the Iraq catastrophe, and Corbyn's move away from pathetically imitating economically illiterate Tory austerity fanaticism to actually oppose it.

The Lib-Dems on the other hand have shown absolutely no contrition whatever over their role in trashing our living standards.

In fact they're so lacking in remorse that they sent a massive "fuck you, we're not even remotely sorry" to the entire nation by picking Vince Cable as their leader.

Vince Cable willingly served as one of George Osborne's austerity hatchet men at the Treasury for the full five years, and he also personally orchestrated a massive fraud against the British people by flogging off the Royal Mail portfolio to city speculators at a tiny fraction of its true value, at a cost of literally hundreds of millions of pounds.

And then just look at their new leadership contenders Jo Swinson and Ed Davey.

Their despicable voting records between 2010 and 2015 show that they were actually more loyal to the pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-worker, welfare-vandalising Tory whip than the Tory leadership contenders Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove!

These weren't just "junior partners" in the austerity coalition. They were such enthusiastic participants that they voted through even more Tory malice than two of the highest profile Tory ministers in the austerity government!

They're still not even remotely sorry, and they're still saying "fuck you" to the British public by fielding these despicable austerity-enablers.

Yet with their other face they're harking back to the disastrous Blairite invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2013 despite knowing that the Bairites lost control of the Labour Party years ago, and it's now led by a guy who stood alongside their former leader Charles Kennedy when he took his brave and principled stance against war-mongering in Iraq.

But bringing up something that Labour have shown remorse over as blatant whataboutery to distract from something that demonstrably causes no pangs of conscience whatever to the Lib-Dems isn't even the worst of it.

The worst of it is that in 2011 the Lib-Dems, (including their current leader Vince Cable, and their two new leadership contenders Swinson and Davey) voted in favour of doing exactly the same thing to Libya as Blair did in Iraq.

The Lib-Dems know that they shat all over Charles Kennedy's legacy by voting to turn Libya into a vast lawless terrorism breeding ground just like the Blairites voted to do to Iraq eight years previously.

They know exactly what they did, and that the blowback included the appalling Manchester Arena bombing carried out by a terrorist from the Libyan chaos they created, but they're absolutely 100% unrepentant because they insist on picking the very people that did this as their current leader, and as his successor too.So these despicable hypocrites will use the catastrophe in Iraq to crudely deflect attention away from their complicity in the ruinous austerity coalition that laid the groundwork for Brexit, but to do this they have to completely ignore the fact that they voted in favour of their own chaos-causing, terrorism-fuelling, refugee-creating disaster in Libya.

They're actually using their historic opposition to the Iraq catastrophe under Charles Kennedy's leadership to deliberately distract attention away from the fact that they bulldozed his centre-left anti-war legacy into a pit and burnt it to ashes by propping up a disgustingly illiberal hard-right Tory government, and voting in favour of their war-mongering exploits in Libya.

Yes, the ongoing chaos and suffering in Iraq is an indelible stain on the history of the Labour Party, but you couldn't think of more hypocritical and unprincipled people to point this out than those who outright refused to learn the lessons from that imperialist war-mongering catastrophe, shat all over their principled former leaders' legacy, and voted to do exactly the same thing again to Libya in 2011.

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OR

Nick Clegg has got a book to sell

The former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has a book to sell.

Some of the criticism of Tory politicians that Clegg and his fellow Lib-Dems enabled into power is quite extraordinary, and raises the obvious question of why on earth he didn't speak out at the time.

Take this extraordinary quote as an example:

"Welfare for Osborne was just a bottomless pit of savings, and it didn't really matter what the human consequences were, because focus groups had shown that the voters they wanted to appeal to were very anti-welfare, and therefore there was almost no limit to those anti-welfare prejudices"

George Osborne repeatedly inflicted harsh welfare spending cuts (especially on disabled people, the working poor and children) whilst simultaneously handing out tax breaks to corporations and the super-rich. Between 2010 and 2015. He could only do this because Nick Clegg and his fellow Lib-Dem MPs voted in favour of one savage piece of Tory anti-welfare legislation after another.

Clegg now admits that he knew all along that George Osborne's cuts to social security were not driven by necessity but actually by a desire to appeal to a small savagely right-wing demographic of voters.

He also admits that the cuts were made without regard for the catastrophic human consequences of huge numbers of vulnerable people and children being driven into absolute destitution.

Clegg has openly admitted that he and his party voted in favour of policies despite knowledge that they were being implemented without regard for the human consequences.

Between 2010 and 2015 Nick Clegg could have spoken out at any time; He could have taken a stand and instructed his MPs to vote against some of Osborne's most brutal welfare cuts; He could have said tax cuts for the rich were completely unacceptable in the same budget as harsh welfare cuts for the poor; He could have crossed the floor and opposed Osborne's socially and economically destructive austerity agenda at any time - but he chose not to. He chose to go along with things that he knew to be wrong so that he could stay in power for a bit longer.

Clegg also laid into Theresa May accusing her of pandering to "the cardboard-cutout prejudices that large parts of her party have about Europe" and repeatedly trying to insert false statistics into official reports (tampering with official reports is Clegg has accused her of in the past too).

Nick Clegg and the so-called Liberals had plenty of opportunities to actually stand up to Theresa May by refusing to vote in favour of appalling illiberal legislation that came out of the Home Office. Some of the most egregiously illiberal things that Clegg and the Lib-Dems helped Theresa May to impose were Secret Courts (so a person can now have their fate decided in a courtroom they are not allowed to enter, on charges they are not allowed to know, based on evidence that they are not allowed to see), DRIPA (hastily covering up the unlawful activity that the UK secret services that was exposed by the Edward Snowden leaks) and minimum income thresholds for UK spouses (extremely discriminatory legislation designed to rip apart thousands of British families from poor and ordinary backgrounds).

Had Clegg and the Lib-Dems rebelled against any of this appallingly illiberal nonsense from Theresa May instead of actively voting in favour of it perhaps Theresa May's coronation as Prime Minister wouldn't have been such a foregone conclusion? 

In the Guardian article publicising his book, the three main regrets that Clegg has about his participation in the coalition government are detailed as the "punch in the face" he delivered to Lib-Dem voters by helping the Tories to erect a massive social mobility barrier by hiking  tuition fees (aspiration tax) to £9,000 per year, his appallingly pally press conference in the garden of 10 Downing Street when the Coalition deal was announced and his agreement to sit next to David Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions.

The first regret is so obvious that even someone like Clegg had to admit it. Stabbing one of your most loyal core demographics in the back is such a staggeringly inept move that it's extraordinary that nobody in the Lib-Dems (barring a tiny minority like Charles Kennedy) tried to stop it.

The other two regrets appear to stem more from Clegg's own vanity than any real introspection about what went wrong. Of course the gleeful press conference is excruciating in hindsight. Of course it was embarrassing to have sit next to David Cameron every week as he evaded questions, regurgitated scripted put-downs and lied incessantly. But the idea that these are two of the most important things he got wrong is ridiculously self-absorbed.

• By agreeing to throw Proportional Representation on the scrap heap and accept a referendum on an Alternative Vote system that he himself had described as "a miserable little compromise", Clegg massively let down people who want to see the UK electoral system made fairer and more representative.

• Clegg also let down political modernisers when he failed to secure the democratisation of the House of Lords. Instead of delivering an elected and accountable upper chamber, Clegg gladly sat back and watched David Cameron stuff almost 200 unelected peers into the £300 a day for life club. The Lib-Dems who ostensibly oppose the unelected House of Lords are now left in the ridiculous position where they have just 8 elected MPs, but 105 unelected peers in the bloated House of Lords.

• Clegg and the Lib-Dems didn't just vote through a load of George Osborne's savage welfare cuts, they also worked as ministers in Iain Duncan Smith's DWP. Anyone who witnessed the Lib-Dem MP Steve Webb's excruciating performances trying to defend Bedroom Tax will know how much damage that did to the party. 

• The failure of the Lib-Dems to challenge Theresa May on savagely illiberal legislation like Secret Courts, her toxic anti-immigrant ranting or her track record of incompetence was completely unacceptable. Had the Lib-Dems tried to hold her to account for her extremism and incompetence instead of biting their tongues for five long years, perhaps this inept and fanatically right-wing authoritarian woman wouldn't now be considered "a safe pair of hands" by quite as many people.

• Anyone who started following the Lib-Dems because of Charles Kennedy's principled opposition to the invasion of Iraq must have been horrified by the Lib-Dems involvement in the mess in Libya. Imagine the levels of delusion necessary to believe that Libya is now better off now that it's civil society has been reduced to ruins and the country has been overrun by ISIS.

• Andrew Lansley's top-down reorganisation of the NHS designed to carve it up into little pieces and then give them away his private sector mates (who donate hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Tory Party) was only passed thanks to Lib-Dem votes in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The facts that such an NHS privatisation-by-stealth policy was not included in the manifesto of either coalition party, and that David Cameron had explicitly ruled out a top-down reorganisation of the NHS didn't bother the Lib-Dems at all. Handing huge slices of the NHS to a bunch of Tory donors was part of the price they were willing to pay for a tiny taste of second hand Tory power.

• Before the 2015 General Election Vince Cable was popular because he talked a bit of economic sense. After the General Election he switched to parroting George Osborne's austerity gibberish. Switching from talking sense to repeating the exact kind of rubbish he was criticising before the election was one of the most infuriating U-turns I've ever seen, and clearly motivated by political expediency rather than any genuine conversion to austerity fetishism.

• Another staggering Lib-Dem U-turn was delivered by the Lib-Dem energy minister Ed Davey, who went from saying "In addition to posing safety and environmental risks, nuclear power will only be possible with vast taxpayer subsidies or a rigged market" in 2006 to lavishing heaps of praise on Cameron and Osborne's crackpot price-rigging scheme to bribe the French and Chinese into building a new nuclear reactor in 2013. 

The betrayal over tuition fees was clearly the most visible of the Lib-Dem sell-outs, but it was far from the only one they needed to do in order to keep their six figure ministerial salaries and their chauffeur driven cars. They sold out on pretty much all of their core principles. They betrayed the students, they shafted the political reformers, they abandoned economic sense to endorse Osborne's destructive austerity agenda, they drove away the anti-imperialists that Charles Kennedy attracted to the party, and they assisted Iain Duncan Smith in his mission to trash the welfare state that was originally envisaged by the Liberal MP William Beveridge.

It's incredible that the Lib-Dems betrayed so many of their core demographics, drove away two thirds of their voters and pretty much wiped themselves out in their traditional strong areas of Scotland and the south west of England, yet Clegg is so self-obsessed that he cites that excruciatingly chummy press conference with David Cameron as one of his biggest regrets.

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OR

Criticism of the Iraq invasion doesn't stem from "hindsight"

Tony Blair and his allies have some incredible gall to try to dismiss the findings of the Chilcot report as being based on "hindsight".

Back in 2003 when the likes of Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Alistair Campbell were incessantly propagandising in favour of British involvement in George W. Bush's imperialist warmongering, there were plenty of people pointing out the flaws in their case for war.

The claim that our criticisms of their warmongering have solely sprung up solely through the wisdom of "hindsight" is a disgusting display of attempted revisionism as I will demonstrate using quotes and evidence from before the first shot was even fired.

The February 15th protests

On February 15th 2003 people protested all over the world against the invasion of Iraq. The protest in London was attended by far more than a million people (or just three men and a small dog if you believe the official estimates). I arrived on one of the hundreds of coachloads of protesters from all over the country. I had two principal reasons for opposing the war. I believed that the case for war was based on fabricated and exaggerated evidence (like the ridiculous claim that Iraq could attack the UK within 45 minutes), and I believed that the war would lead to a power vacuum in Iraq which would dramatically increase (not decrease) the threat of sectarian violence and terrorism.

The wave of sectarian violence that hit Iraq after the war and the rise of barbarous Islamist fanatics like ISIS are clear demonstrations that my second concern was valid, and the findings of the Chilcot Report vindicate my suspicions that the Blair government were deliberately overstating the intelligence case for war.

It's clear that other people attended the Stop the War protest for different reasons to mine, but one thing is undeniable; Tony Blair and his clique just ignored our concerns. In fact they didn't just ignore us, they smeared and belittled us. I remember getting home after the long coach journey back to Yorkshire to see mainstream media coverage of Tony Blair dismissing all one million+ of us as just a bunch of Saddam Hussain apologists.

Robin Cook

In his famous resignation speech Robin Cook pointed out a number of things. One of the most important themes was that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would represent an appalling failure in British diplomacy.

"I do not think that anybody could have done better than the Foreign Secretary in working to get support for a second resolution within the Security Council. But the very intensity of those attempts underlines how important it was to succeed. Now that those attempts have failed, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.  

 France has been at the receiving end of bucketloads of commentary in recent days. It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac. The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner—not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.  

 To end up in such diplomatic weakness is a serious reverse. Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever have imagined possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition. The US can afford to go it alone, but Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened: the European Union is divided; the Security Council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of a war in which a shot has yet to be fired."

Charles Kennedy

The Chilcot report found that the peaceful options had not been exhausted before Bush and Blair rushed into war. Charles Kennedy made this point in a passionate speech against the invasion.

"Before launching an almighty assault upon Iraq, is it not better to pursue the course of disarmament on the ground in the presence of weapons inspectors? No matter how sophisticated modern technology, even compared with at the time of the last Gulf war, is it not more precise to have weapons dismantled in the presence of inspectors rather than so-called precision bombing trying to take them out?"

Jeremy Corbyn

As the democratically elected leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has a much higher profile in 2016 than he did back in 2003 when he opposed the invasion of Iraq (he can be seen sitting behind Robin Cook during his resignation speech).

One of Corbyn's criticisms of the rush to invade and occupy Iraq was the legacy of violence that it would create. Trying to shout down anyone who points out the rise of ISIS with accusations of that they're using "hindsight" is appalling when Jeremy Corbyn said this before a shot was even fired.

"It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression and the misery of future generations."

Tony Benn

Of all of the opponents of Blair's insistence on helping the United States with their invasion and occupation of Iraq, Tony Benn was the most eloquent and compelling. 

As with David Kelly, Robin Cook and Charles Kennedy, Tony Benn didn't live to see the day that he was completely vindicated by the findings of the Chilcot Report, but he will always be fondly remembered by those of us who had the foresight to see that Blair's warmongering would result in a catastrophe, because he was one of the principled minority of politicians who gave us a voice.

"All war represents a failure of diplomacy."

David Kelly

The biological weapons expert and former weapons inspector in Iraq David Kelly paid for his evidence based opposition to the invasion with his life. Whether you believe the official suicide verdict, or that there were more sinister forces at play, what is undeniable is that he died just two days after being ruthlessly bullied by a bunch of Blairites in a Foreign Affairs Select Committee lynching for having dared to speak confidentially with a member of the press about Blair's "dodgy dossier" being based on exaggerations and misrepresentations.

Hans Blix

The head of the UN weapons inspection team spoke directly to Tony Blair back in February 2003 to cast doubt on the so-called WMD intelligence that Blair built his case for war on. The Chilcot report makes it clear that Blair and his allies misrepresented and over-stated the intelligence case, which is precisely what Blix said to Blair before the invasion was even launched.

Trying to pretend that flaws in the intelligence case for war were only exposed after the war is appalling revisionism when they were clearly being warned about the flawed evidence by experts like Hans Blix before the war even started.

Conclusion

The fact that Tony Blair and his cronies have come up with these ludicrous claims that criticisms of the Iraq invasion are based on "hindsight" is actually quite telling. The Chilcot Report  exposed the fact that they were willing to distort evidence to promote their war back in 2003, and their fabrication of this ridiculous "hindsight" argument just goes to show that they still have the exact same mentality.

As far as they're concerned the real facts and evidence don't matter. The only thing that matters is concocting justification stories for what they want, which in 2003 was the invasion of Iraq, and in 2016 is avoiding prosecution for war crimes.

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OR

Farewell Charles Kennedy

I never had the pleasure of meeting Charles Kennedy but I did feel almost as if an old friend had died when I heard about his premature death. It would take a spiteful spirit indeed to contest the general consensus that UK politics has lost one of its very few genuinely good guys.

It would take a poor article indeed not to mention his principled opposition to the murderous folly that was the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Back in 2003 he was the only UK wide party leader to stand in opposition to the invasion (Plaid Cymru and the SNP voted against it too). Charles resolutely stuck by his principles despite despicable efforts to smear his stance as some kind of unacceptable anti-British treachery by his political opponents (especially from the Tories and the right-wing press), and the pleading from many within his party for him to abandon his anti-invasion position.

It doesn't matter so much that he was completely vindicated when the case for war unraveled revealing little but lies, spin and imperialist posturing.

And it's no reward that we were proven right when the invasion gave birth to the predictable wave of appalling sectarian violence, culminating in the rise of ever more extreme Islamist terrorism cults like ISIS.

It's no reward that we were right and the majority of the British establishment were wrong, because hundreds of thousands of people have died and literally millions have been displaced by the devastating instability wrought by those who ignored us. 

What matters is that Charles Kennedy dared to give us a voice, albeit a marginalised one, in the halls of power. Those of us who actively opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq will never forget Charles Kennedy's principled stance in the face of such vicious criticism.

Another illustration of Charles Kennedy's principles is the fact that while many of his fellow politicians were gaming the parliamentary system to the max by claiming all manner of luxury items, and even using their so-called expenses as a free taxpayer subsidy to fund their speculative property investments (second home flipping), Charles did nothing more than make a few minor oversights. While so many of his peers were enriching themselves to the tune of tens, or even hundreds of thousands of pounds at the taxpayers' expense, the biggest sum he was made to pay back was just £35.75 for some confectionery he'd accidentally claimed.

One of the saddest spectacles in British politics was seeing Charles Kennedy get hounded out of his job by his own MPs, who orchestrated a campaign of leaks and smears relating to his alcohol problems, eventually culminating in the majority of his shadow cabinet forcing him out of his job. When they should have been rallying around to support him in his hour of need, they turned on him and humiliated him. When Margaret Thatcher's MPs turned on her like a nest of vipers, there was some justice in it, for she worshipped at the alter of self-interest, so to see her MPs turning on her and vying for position within the party was just her acolytes following her philosophy of ruthless self-interest to its logical conclusion. There was nothing just about the way the Lib-Dems turned on a good man; a man who turned out to be by far the best and most popular leader they ever had.

In 2010 Charles Kennedy once again proved to be a lone voice of reason, this time counselling against a binding coalition agreement with the Tories, but this time he was ignored, and the Lib-Dems, giddy with opportunism and short-term personal ambition, formed a consensus in favour of such a strategically inept move.

What followed was a five year long vindication of Charles Kennedy's decision to speak out against entering a pact with the Tories (the tuition fees debacle,  secret courts, "Bedroom Tax", the gagging law, Theresa May's grotesquely illiberal immigration laws, DRIP, the complete failure to deliver political reform ...). 

There are many within the Lib-Dem bubble who, despite all of the damage to their party, still stubbornly refuse to see what a catastrophic strategic error their deal with the Tories was, but many of us outside the party can see that Charles Kennedy was right and that the Lib-Dems ended up getting ragdolled almost out of existence by the Tories and their chums in the right-wing media because of it.

Charles Kennedy was one of the only Liberal Democrats I was genuinely saddened to see loose his seat in the 2015 General Election. It clearly wasn't his fault that the party he once led had abandoned his commitment to social justice in favour of the sickening Orange Book Toryism that has driven the party to the absolute brink of ruin, but he still paid the price for it at the ballot box, just like so many other decent hard-working Lib-Dem MSPs MEPs and councillors paid the price too.

In my view it was a measure of his great loyalty that he stayed with the party at all. 

He'd been hounded out of his job, marginalised and ignored by them, but he stuck by them even when he would surely have had more personal success by joining a group of genuine liberals in a breakaway group from a party that had so clearly abandoned all pretence at social liberalism in return for a tiny taste of second hand Tory power. 

Perhaps he just couldn't bear the thought of tearing apart the party he'd worked so hard to build up? 

Or perhaps he was just too loyal to even contemplate abandoning his friends and colleagues, even though several of them had ruthlessly stabbed him in the back in his hour of need, and almost all of them had gone along with the terrible error of judgement he'd explicitly waned them against?

Returning to his much publicised alcohol problems. I think it's worth noting that Charles Kennedy managed to be the best party leader the Lib-Dems ever had, retained more integrity than the overwhelming majority of his political peers, and was an exceptionally popular man for a politician. And he achieved all of this even though he was often heavily drunk. 

Despite his problems, he stood head and shoulders above his political peers, and stood especially tall against his sickeningly unprincipled successors at the top of the Liberal Democrat pyramid.

I can only hope that there are some sensible people within the party who are willing to accept that Charles Kennedy was right; that the austerity pact with the Tories was a terrible mistake; and that the Lib-Dems were at their absolute best when they had a principled leader with the strength of character to stick by his convictions.

If the future leaders of the party use the memory of Charles Kennedy as an inspiration, there might be some small chance of a Lib-Dem fightback.

If they want to regain any ground at all they've got to look back to the Charles Kennedy era and try to recreate the party that stood for social justice, progressive reform, and political integrity. Then they might just win back some of the hard earned-trust and respect that people like Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander, Jo Swinson, Steve Webb, Ed Davey and Vince Cable saw as disposable commodities in their quest for a taste of second hand Tory power.

If the Lib-Dems choose to continue with Orange Book neoliberalism, continue breaking pledges, promises and vows all over the place, continue pushing hard-right austerity extremism, and continue blaming everyone but themselves for their predicament, they'll deserve to suffer even bigger electoral defeats in the months and years to come.

Charles Kennedy's death is a great loss to anyone who appreciates integrity in public life, but an even bigger loss to the the Liberal Democrats. 

Just when they needed a voice of reason within their party more than ever to guide them away from the kind of toxic self-righteous drivel that is emanating from the Lib-Dem bubble; just when they needed to listen to their voice of reason and to rediscover the commitments to social justice, integrity and political reform that he championed; he's no longer with us.

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