wotiwrote

Much is being made of Charles Kennedy's 'drink problem' in relation to his fitness to lead the Liberal Democrats. He has seemed a strangely ineffective leader over the past couple of years but I would think that his recent admission of the problem, coupled to a determination to continue as leader of his party, would signal a strength and honesty both worthy and sadly rare in British politics. I'm sure Kennedy would find it as hateful as anyone to be compared with the Shrub in the White House but if that man can be elected leader of the most powerful nation on the planet - a nation with the most reactionary views about personal behaviour - when he is a declared alcoholic and his brain has obviously suffered serious damage from drinking, I would have thought that remaining leader of a middling British political party was not much of a problem. It's all part of the hypocrisy of alcohol consumption in this country: the omnipresent promtion of drinks as a necessary accompaniment to pleasure and as a sign of adulthood side by side with stories of binge drinking and youthful excess. To admit you don't drink is often seen as a sign of weakness at best, as something more sinister at worst. To admit you can no longer drink puts you in a place where people dismiss you as someone with no will power or as a freak. So, Charles Kennedy, stay on as leader but for god's sake use the clarity of mind that comes with sobriety to make a better fist of challenging Blair and don't let the bloody Tories sneak back to being the credible opposition. OK?