Tributes have been flooding in after ex-Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy dies at the age of 55
Mr Kennedy was leader from 1999 to 2006, including 2005 when the party got its best ever result
Under his leadership the party opposed the 2003 Iraq War
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith says:
Quote Message“For me and for many others he was a good friend – he was a courteous friend and adversary and always good humoured at the most difficult times. I know I personally will miss him a lot."
Anna Soubry, Conservative minister for small business, was one of the first journalists to interview Mr Kennedy when he was elected in 1983. Speaking on BBC Radio Nottingham, she says she thought he was elected "completely to his surprise".
"Already it was quite obvious that he was a real star and it's a real loss. I'm very, very sad that he's gone," she says. "I saw him about two months ago and he wasn't in great shape truthfully but he'll be very sadly missed because he was very, very able. A real talent."
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Charles Kennedy was the only leader of a major political party to oppose the Iraq war, and the only Lib Dem MP to refuse to go along with the coalition with the Conservatives.
Nick Robinson says these two facts alone make him a "unique figure in history".
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BBC Radio 4
BBC political editor Nick Robinson says Mr Kennedy's character was "unlike any in this era of professional politicians".
He says Mr Kennedy - despite being a professional politician - connected with voters "effortlessly".
Mr Kennedy "had the House of Commons as his life, as his family" from the time he was elected at the age of 23.
Mr Kennedy wrote in 2010, external about why he "couldn't support" Nick Clegg's decision to take the Lib Dems into coalition with the Tories.
Image source, PAFormer prime minister Tony Blair says:
Quote MessageCharles' death is an absolute tragedy. He came into Parliament at the same time as me in 1983. He was throughout his time a lovely, genuine and deeply committed public servant. As leader of the Liberal Democrats, we worked closely together and he was always great company, with a lively and inventive mind. I am very saddened indeed by this news."
Lib Dem MP Tim Farron says:
Quote Message“Charles was a friend, colleague and personal mentor. I am desperately saddened by news of his death this morning. His gentle good humour, combined with real courage, enabled him to engage with people who might otherwise have had little interest in politics, and he gave voice to the views of millions as the only mainstream party leader to oppose the Iraq war. His loss will be sorely felt today."
Lembit Opik, who was a senior Liberal Democrat MP during Charles Kennedy's leadership of the party, says he was concerned about Mr Kennedy's well-being.
"When he lost his seat, I said to people - as recently as last night - this guy has got to get in the House of Lords because he has spent 32 years of a 55-year existence in Parliament," he says.
"Without that support, he is in real danger of dying. We talked about it as openly as that. I was really concerned, because that was the support mechanism for him."
Former Labour strategist Alastair Campbell writes, external :
Quote MessageCharles Kennedy was a lovely man, and a highly talented politician. These are the kind of words that always flow when public figures die, often because people feel they have to say those things, and rightly they are flowing thick and fast today as we mourn an important public figure, and a little bit of hypocrisy from political foes is allowed. But when I say that Charles was a lovely man and a talented politician, I mean it with all my heart."
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Norman Lamb says Mr Kennedy was a "great European" who would have "passionately" argued for Britain to stay in the EU at the forthcoming referendum.
He also says Mr Kennedy was "very brave" to make a stand against the Iraq war under "extraordinary pressure from every direction".
Image source, PAMr Kennedy's last tweet, posted two days after he lost his seat at the general election, included the words: "Thank you to the generation of voters, and then some, who put their trust in me."
The Lib Dem MP tells BBC Breakfast:
Quote MessageHe was one of the great talents of his political generation - a wonderful communicator, a fundamentally decent man, never lost his cool. I spent a lot of time working with him. [He] never got angry with people but was immensely persuasive and he will be known, for example, for his stand against the Iraq war."
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Norman Smith
Assistant political editor
Charles Kennedy was one of the most influential politicians of his generation. He led the Liberal Democrats to their best ever election result in 2005, carved out a distinctive position for his party on the left of British politics and perhaps most significantly ensured his party was at the forefront of opposition to the Iraq War.
Charles Kennedy also brought a different style of politics to Westminster; more informal; relaxed and outgoing; generous to opponents, warm to friends and not one for the more bitter, dark arts of politics. He was a politician as much at ease in the television studios as in the Commons Chamber and struck a chord with the public in an age when politicians were more reserved and removed.
He sought to fashion a different way of doing politics: "The Lib Dems are nobody's poodles....but we're not rottweilers either. We don't savage on command. That's the old politics".
Never the most organised of politicians, he found the business of leadership more onerous and that, coupled with his drinking problems fuelled disquiet within the Parliamentary party that was eventually to lead to his toppling in 2006.
Uncomfortable with the coalition with the Conservatives, in recent years he became a more distant figure at Westminster, but as a committed pro-European who was never shy of making he case for Europe he had hoped to take a prominent role in the forthcoming EU referendum campaign.
Less than a month ago Charles Kennedy said that serving as an MP had been the "greatest privilege" of his life. After 32 years in the House of Commons, the 55-year-old was ousted from his Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency as the SNP swept the board in May's general election.
After the result was announced, he said be would "personally be sorry not to be a voice in the Commons" before adding that he intended to "contribute in whatever way possible to the wider political debate and the activity of the Liberal Democrats".
He added:
Quote MessageThe greatest privilege of my public life over these past 32 years has to be being entrusted with the responsibility of representing this constituency. That is thanks to a generation and more of voters who have extended that trust to me and I hope, looking back over those 32 years, they will feel that it was trust well placed."
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