Early on May 8, a few hours after losing his Parliamentary seat, Charles Kennedy drove to his whitewashed crofter’s cottage in the Highland village of Caol. His mood, during the two-hour journey from Dingwall, where the count had taken place, was one of sadness and reflection. It was, after all, the end of a distinguished 32-year Commons career which had spanned almost his entire adult life. That the development came three weeks after the death of Kennedy’s beloved father, Ian, who had lived next door, only added to his melancholy. Yet if the former Liberal Democrat leader expected to spend the ensuing hours grieving in peace, he would be sorely mistaken. For as he pulled up outside the tidy cottage, built a stone’s throw from the river Lochy by his late grand-father, Donald, he came across what appeared to be a nasty ‘welcome home’ present. ‘It was a Friday morning, when the rubbish gets taken out in and around Fort William,’ recalls Kennedy’s campaign manager, Conn O’Neill.Kennedy was the victim of extensive personal attacks from SNP loyalistWaged on cyberspace and on the streets of his Highland constituencyOn social networking sites, trolls called him a traitor and a drunkard
Ms Roddick, for what it’s worth, is constituency assistant to Fergus Ewing, an _ member of the Scottish Parliament. From the earliest stages of the campaign, _ activists had repeatedly sought to hijack his public appearances, with an onlooker at a Highland event in March reporting: ‘Charles Kennedy.