Charles Kennedy was deluged with election abuse, friends tell BBC documentary

The “naked abuse and denigration” of Charles Kennedy weeks before his death have been revealed by friends and colleagues who say he was bombarded with aggressive notes left on his car and put through his letterbox.

Kennedy, who died in June 2015 aged 55, was the target of a bitter campaign during that year’s general election in Ross, Skye & Lochaber which “surprised and really worried him”, according to James Gurling, his friend and former brother-in-law.

Pitted against Ian Blackford, now leader of the SNP group in Westminster, Kennedy found himself traduced on social media and at his office by his opponents.

Brian Smith, Blackford’s constituency convenor, quit the party on the morning of Kennedy’s funeral after it emerged that he had sent the former