Lord Ming Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, has died at the age of 84, the party said.
His family said he died peacefully at the Kyn Hurlingham care facility in London, adding that one of his final days was spent watching the Lib Dem party conference.
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey described Lord Campbell as a “dedicated public servant, a tireless champion for Fife, St Andrews and the UK, and a true Liberal giant.”
Meanwhile, his grandson Gregor Grant-Suttie said: “Ming achieved a lot through his life, across sport, law and politics. But the myriad of accolades and awards he collected in his professional life paled in comparison to his achievements as a husband, father figure, grandfather, and friend.”
Lord Campbell was first elected to the Commons in 1987, winning the North East Fife constituency – a seat he held until he retired in 2015.
A renowned critic of the Iraq war, he became a leading Lib Dem voice on both foreign affairs and defence, acting as the party’s spokesperson on foreign affairs for fourteen years.
The politician later served as leader of the party from March 2006 until October 2007.
Before becoming an MP, Lord Campbell was an olympic sprinter, holding the UK 100m record from 1967 to 1974.
“He was a rare breed of Scotsman whose contribution and ideas spanned so much further than his home country’s borders; his level of thinking around issues that were international, particularly around defence, gave Scotland the ability to be extremely proud of one of their own, whose ideas were so much larger than narrowly focused UK politics”, Mr Grant-Suttie added.
“He was of a generation where hard work and improving oneself through education were prioritised, while the modern day notion of relative standards versus others was alien to him – in every step of his life he only ever compared himself against his own exceptionally high standards.”
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