The Spectator’s Notes | 14 January 2006

This column’s theory that, post-devolution, it is harder for Scottish MPs to lead a British political party seems to be taking some time to come true. Sir Menzies Campbell is considered just the ticket. He looks dignified and trustworthy. Rather as Colin Powell said that he benefited because he was ‘not that black’, Sir Ming is not that Scottish. There is only a slight accent, just the reassuring, prudent yet kindly tone of the lowlander who looks after the family money. Friends in Fife North East, where Ming is the Member, tell me that his imitation of the least threatening sort of Tory is brilliant and that his wife, Elspeth, is even better. If you look up Sir Ming in Who’s Who, you will see his wife described as ‘Elspeth Mary Urquhart or Grant-Suttie, d. of Maj.-Gen. R.E. Urquhart, CB, DSO’. At first I thought that the ‘or’ must be a misprint for ‘of’, being one of those Scottish surnames like Macpherson of Cluny. But no, it turns out that Elspeth was once married to a Mr Grant-Suttie, but Sir Menzies eventually replaced him. At their wedding in 1970, when Ming was still famous as an Olympic athlete, the speaker declared that ‘the fastest man in the world has married the fastest woman’.

In the wake of Charles Kennedy’s announcement that he had a drink problem came a good deal of public anger at the fact that this had been an ‘open secret’ in Fleet Street. ‘Why was this important truth withheld from us?’ people asked. Actually, there had been plenty of published press discussion of the subject for years, mostly jokes and slight hints, sometimes direct accusations. But the full story was never told because of lack of proof. The episode illustrates the sharp difference between a fact that ‘everyone knows’ and an actual admission by the person involved.