DID the Liberal Democrats really deserve such a leader as Charles Kennedy? He pulled up the party by its boot straps from a derisory representation at Westminster to 62 members.

Just look what has happened since. The party has careered downhill and now has just eight MPs – they could all climb into two London taxis with room to spare. They have lost to the Scottish Nationalists the coveted position of the third largest party at Westminster, with all the advantages that bestows.

Kennedy was booted out after one of the most shameful smear campaigns – conducted disgracefully by some of his own party colleagues – it has ever been my misfortune to witness. They were even whispering libels about him through cupped hands into my ears.

That is why some of the tributes paid to his memory in Parliament the other day struck me as beyond hypocrisy.

You don’t have to look very far to discover which one is the nasty party. I don’t know how Kennedy tolerated it.

I AM not in the least impressed by – indeed I am somewhat contemptuous of – those MPs who say sanctimoniously that they should not get a pay rise and that they are planning to give the £7,000 rise to charity.

Hang on a minute. This is our money – ie, taxpayers’ money. If they really do not want what we give them, then why cannot they simply hand it back to us, by repaying it to the Treasury?

There used to be some Members – perhaps there are still a few today – who refused to take any MPs’ salary at all. But I imagine they are very few and far between, given the antics of many of our parliamentarians playing fast and loose with public money for their own benefit over recent years.

How revealing it would have been to be a fly on the wall at internal meetings of the Labour Party leadership during the general election campaign. Although party grandees managed to adopt a reasonably brave face for public consumption, as it were, there must have been turmoil, strife and carpets liberally splashed with political blood behind the closed doors.

Things must have reached a pretty pass that one of Ed Miliband’s principal advisers, Greg Beales, was forced to tell the Labour leader and some of his squabbling henchmen: “Stop behaving like bl**dy children. We’ve got an election to win.”

He was not the only one to snipe at the Labour leadership. The outspoken Labour backbencher Simon Danczuk, who had his biggest majority ever at Rochdale in May, said the majority would have been even higher if the party did not have such a “rubbish” leader as Ed Miliband. Not a man to mince his words.

Lord Mandelson has also reappeared to criticise Labour’s campaign performance.

I remember Stephen Pound, now Labour MP for Ealing North, once telling me that when he was a member of a left-wing socialist group, they spent more time fighting among themselves than fighting the Tories.

The mainstream Labour Party leadership should not forget that.

WE started off with Charles Kennedy, so let’s end up with him. He used to tell a story that when he was canvassing for votes in a hospital, a man with a heavily bandaged head ran up to him, shook him warmly by the hand and said effusively: “Mr Kennedy, you are the finest leader the Liberal Democrats have ever had. Long may you remain in the job.”

Kennedy, suitably flattered by these comments, inquired of the man: “Why are you in hospital?”

His reply: “Major brain surgery.”