Charlie's last chance

Owlish with fatigue and slurred of speech he may have been at yesterday's manifesto launch, but this time Charles Kennedy had a sound, though small, excuse. Dealing with the contents of Donald James's nappies will, the chubby Liberal Democrat leader believes, do him good. He says his cigarette habit is down to single figures, his drinks fewer.

Growing up at 45 may be taking the notion of prolonged adolescence to extremes, but Kennedy is, he promises, "an altogether new man".

Fatherhood, he said yesterday at his first press conference since the birth, was "the best feeling in the worrld". The Highland charm of a man who had barely slept for three nights was lost on an unsentimental Westminster press pack. "Wake up!" barracked the broadcaster Andrew Neil.

His return to the forefront of the campaign was not judged a success. After a week in which the Lib-Dem leader had enjoyed goodwill on the birth of his first son, the tables turned abruptly with a blunder over one of his flagship policies. A clearly exhausted Mr Kennedy became confused about the funding of a key pledge on scrapping council tax. An adviser had move quickly to limit the damage, saying that Mr Kennedy had been "extremely tired".

It was an unfortunate lapse for a leader who has higher poll ratings than in any general election for 20 years, supported by Labour voters disillusioned by Iraq and some disillusioned Ken Clarke-wing Conservatives. Past self-indulgence in Commons bars does Kennedy's reputation no harm in student towns like Cambridge, where the young, anti-war and anti-top-up fees, could swing seats. He may have the florid, knobbly face of a Pink Fir Apple potato and a mouth which hangs down like a stray peeling, but Kennedy looks real. Ben Page, director of Mori, has said polls consistently show he is the leader voters would most like to have round for dinner and drinks. But, he adds, "he's not seen as a likely Prime Minister."

The gap between approval of Mr Kennedy and a failure to take him or the party entirely seriously is the Lib-Dem's persistent bugbear - another reason why the costings lapse will mortify him. He knows that he presides over a party which longs for a new third-party breakthrough.

Can he deliver it? "For the party, making progress from 51 seats in the Commons to 65-70 would be a good result," says one Lib-Dem strategist. "The real question for his leadership is: have you made enough progress against Labour in the Liverpools, Durhams, Newcastles to undermine them - and make the big leap forward in 2009."

His greatest personal strength as a politician is being better rooted than many contemporary politicians. His brother drives snowploughs for the council in Kennedy's constituency of Ross, Skye and Inverness West. He grew up on a remote Scottish croft and went to a mixed comprehensive. He understands why student debt means some talented children will not risk university. The grandfather after whom baby Donald is named farmed near Fort William, now Kennedy's constituency base, with only six to eight acres of arable land.

"Big Kennedy was very independentminded, a typical Highland crofter who disregarded rules and authority if it interfered with his way of life," says John Farquhar Munro, Lib-Dem MSP for Ross, Skye and Inverness West. "He was a big influence on Charles."

KENNEDY'S mantra, that good teachers, not inspectors, make good education, sounds a banality. It is sincere. Robert Dick, his English teacher at Lochaber High, started a debating club to improve pupils' fluency. Passions ran high. "It was almost like a football match," says Mr Dick. Kennedy's talent, discovered there, transformed his life. He continued debating at Glasgow University - which launched him as a preternaturally young politician in the days of the Liberal-SDP alliance.

That led to a Westminster bachelor existence-with intermittent relationships - a long one with the literary agent Georgina Capel, shorter liaisons with Jane Bonham Carter - now a Lib-Dem peer herself. He retains a convivial network of friends outside politics, from broadcasters James Cox and Clive Anderson, with whom he often holidays in France, to the publisher William Sieghart.

His marriage in July 2002 to Lib-Dem activist Sarah Gurling was greeted with some relief by his advisers, anxious to bury his reputation as a bon viveur.

Kennedy certainly had an impressive capacity. One female journalist remembers going to the nearest hotel bar with him after a radio interview. "We started drinking wine in the afternoon. He was so engaging, spilling the beans and impersonating Westminster colleagues, that by 6pm I was still there," she says. "He'd had twice the amount I had. I had to sneak out and phone my editor to be rescued."

AS TO Kennedy as leader, however, Lord Razzall, close friend and chair of the election campaign committee, says Kennedy's "Prince Hal stage" is well behind him. He was elected so young that "a lot of adult development occurred in the public eye, but even in that period he never missed anything he was supposed to be doing. On some days he was better than others."

His opposition to the Iraq war is widely agreed to be his best judgment call. Opposition to ID cards and detention without trial have given the party a high profile on civil liberties. But he is less certain in handling domestic policy issues which could define a new liberalism - and seemed ill at ease when his party's Young Turks produced the "Orange Book", including more market-friendly solutions.

Yet beyond the war and terror issues he has made his own in this Parliament, some still ask what Kennedy's leadership stands for. One prominent Lib-Dem rang me back to say that, though she knew her leader well, she could think of, er, nothing to say about him at all.

As yesterday's faux pas showed, he is still inclined to veer between successes and embarrassments. But, then, the blip will be forgotten if he presides over an election which pulls the Lib-Dems closer to a significant role in British politics.

He may not always be the smoothest or most reliable performer on the political stage: but as one of his inner circle says: "Charlie's appeal has always been that he is not like all the rest."