Humble Charles insists he's still the man for the job

Charles Kennedy comes in out of the rain with his driver, a young lad who was making small talk about the long, tiresome road from Lochaber.

It was the first time I had been introduced to the popular politician and the encounter, just two days before his dad Ian died, found him polite and obliging, but tired and a little withdrawn.

We step out into the Dingwall drizzle to have photographs taken and walk under the wee tunnel that links his parliamentary office at MacGregor’s Court to the High Street. The rooms have been open for the constituents of local MPs since the 1960s.

“I’m feeling under the weather,” he says. “Just can’t seem to shake it.”

Our chat about his flu bug takes us to the town clock where a handful of people are milling around.

Mr Kennedy chats to several people about the SNP challenge. Polls predict he will have to fight hard and even then he may still lose the seat.

He poses for some photographs and we head back to the constituency office to find what I hope will be a quiet corner. I soon realise we’re blessed with a small audience including a beady-eyed press officer – the antithesis of a good journalistic interview.

We discuss the SNP challenge for his seat. He says it’s on a par with the 1997 general election when the celebrity candidate Donnie Munro of Runrig was contesting his seat for Labour while Tony Blair was sweeping into power and Gordon Brown and Robin Cook were mingling with shoppers on Dingwall High Street on polling week.

“Is it the toughest? I don’t know," he says. "But it’s certainly different in its nature. You’re dealing not just with a political party in the political sense, but with national sentiment, and I think you’ve just got to be absolutely honest with people about that. Folk are not stupid out there. Everybody knows what the nature of this contest is. We’ll just have to see.”

SNP rival Ian Blackford claims he’s picking up support from voters who don’t want Scotland to be independent.

Mr Kennedy says his message to those individuals is simple.

“Well, if you vote for the SNP you are voting for independence,” he says. “It’s straightforward. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

He hopes, “without being immodest”, that the people he has represented since 1983 consider him as someone with a proven track record, someone they can rely on to stand up for the Highlands and Islands.

He seems puzzled by a recent critical press report in which the SNP attacked his low voting record in the Commons. He says he believes in English votes for English MPs only – and insists something would be amiss if he hadn’t spent most of last year north of the border battling to save the union.

“Touch wood it turned out my small contribution was, I hope, helpful and supportive. So it would have been kind of bizarre if I didn’t spend a lot of time here,” he says.

The SNP’s mantra that a load of their MPs in Westminster can only be a good thing is turning heads. But Mr Kennedy believes the "centralising hand" of SNP ministers is the last thing people in rural Highland communities want or need.

“I don’t see any evidence in a political sense that you’re going to get any reversal of that with a stronger SNP presence at Westminster. If anything you will get a reinforcement of that and I don’t think that’s healthy at all,” he says.

The 55-year-old father-of-one insists that he is the right candidate to negotiate with Westminster more powers for the Highlands.

“We know that whatever the outcome, the next House of Commons is going to have to legislate for the Smith Commission in terms of handing more powers to Edinburgh,” he says.

“I think the big argument to be made from our point of view in the Highlands and Islands is that those powers should not stop in the Central Belt.

“We have actually got to make the argument for more powers to come back to the Highlands and Islands persuasively, and people have got to ask themselves, well how best can that be achieved.”

Regional issues aside, Mr Kennedy believes the NHS, education, transport and communication links, and improving job prospects are “absolutely fundamental” to local people.

“The unemployment level in this constituency has gone down dramatically,” he says. “It’s one of the lowest in the UK. That has not always been the case. When I was first elected in the aftermath of the Invergordon smelter closure there were streets and communities in Alness and Invergordon which were in the constituency in those days where the level of adult male employment was over 25 per cent. It was horrendous.

“Thank God we’re not looking at that any more, but that’s not to say that we can be complacent.

“I think having a sensible approach to the economic policy of the country is crucial to people and it affects everybody’s well-being from one end of the UK to the other, and I’m going to be unashamedly putting that forward.”

Asked if it troubles him that just across the Kessock Bridge his fellow Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander has secured a hefty donation of £50,000 from Orion Engineering owner Alan Savage,

He laughs.

“Maybe I’m not worth as much. One’s got to be humble about these things, you know.”

He recalls a slogan that goes back to his early days, which says “A party that’s in nobody’s pocket is one that dips into its own.

“There’s an awful lot of truth in that,” he says.

I then ask if it troubled him when national news organisations made assertions that he had been drinking before going on Question Time last month.

“No. I’ve had more than 10 years of this kind of thing. The one lesson I’ve learnt about that is the minute you respond, you make the story another story. If you get embroiled in that sort of thing at all you’re on a hiding to nothing. So I don’t complain, I don’t deny, I don’t accept. I just let it be and let people make their own minds up."

You’ve obviously had a very fulfilling career?

He raises his eyebrows.

“It’s not been without its moments.”

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