The veteran Liberal Democrat politician Menzies Campbell, who has died aged 84, was briefly the party’s leader for 19 months from March 2006, before falling prey to a whispering campaign by colleagues claiming he was too old, at 66, for the job. Not too old, however, to serve another eight years as an MP.
Even at that age, Campbell could probably have outpaced most of his younger critics, having been a world-class sprinter in his youth and captain of the Great Britain athletics team. Closer to the truth was that he was not particularly happy or comfortable as a party leader: in an earlier era his sagacity and expertise would probably have been revered and respected but Gordon Brown, then the Labour prime minister, was a decade younger than he was, and the Tories had just elected David Cameron, who was a quarter century younger. Campbell gave way gracefully to be succeeded by Nick Clegg, nearly 26 years his junior, who at that time had been in parliament for little more than two years.
