Lord Holme of Cheltenham: Lib Dem strategist who chaired the party's 1997 election campaign

On 4 November 1997, Richard Holme was one of the five-strong Liberal Democrat team on the Lib Dem/Labour Joint Cabinet Committee, when the Prime Minister Tony Blair concluded the meeting with an announcement that he was seeing Jane Fonda next. We were all duly impressed, which was no doubt the intention.

And sure enough, as we filed out of the Cabinet Room, there she was sitting outside, looking very Jane Fonda-ish with long hair, a rather daring skirt and a very long pair of boots. I am not sure that the word "ogle" is one you could apply to Bob Maclennan, Ming Campbell and Alan Beith, but we were certainly transfixed and even more so when Richard walked over to her to say hello and she immediately recognised him from poolside parties in their anti-Vietnam war days in 1960s California.

Few lives are so broad that they can encompass the Cabinet Room at No 10 and the poolsides of 1960s Hollywood. But Richard Holme's was one such. I do not believe there have been many British liberals, elected or unelected, who have enjoyed a wider range of respect, had a more varied life, or achieved a greater influence, not just on the course of liberalism, but also on the course of government and politics in Britain, than Holme. And there are probably none, beyond a tiny handful, whose range of contacts and achievements in Britain and abroad have been more extensive.

Born in 1936 and educated at the Royal Masonic School in Bushey and at St John's College, Oxford, where he read Jurisprudence, Holme did his National Service in the 10th Gurkha Rifles, an experience which left him with a certain debonair quality, and just the tiniest hint of military bearing, which gave him real presence, supplemented by an intense personal charm. He was, quite simply, one of the most persuasive people I have ever met.

Like many of us, he was inspired by Jo Grimond, joining the Liberal Party in 1959 and swiftly becoming one of its most influential thinkers and strategists. He was President of the Liberal Party in 1980-81, during the crucial years of the formation of the Liberal-SDP Alliance and one of David Steel's closest advisers during the period of his leadership. He performed the same function for me when I was elected as the first leader of the then floundering Liberal Democrats in 1988 and was, I believe, one of the two or three key reasons for the party's survival in those early years.

He used to joke that I was Commando-trained and so knew only one way to deal with an enemy; by fixing bayonets and charging at them. But being a Gurkha he knew the value of stealth. I cannot count the number of times when he saved me and the party from some disaster which would have probably befallen us all if my instinct for immediate action had not been tempered with his wisdom and foresight.

His greatest gift to the Liberal Democrats was probably his management of our 1997 general election, when, on the basis of only 17 per cent of the vote and in the face of the Blair landslide, he delivered the party's greatest ever election advance, doubling our Westminster seats and establishing us in our present pivotal position in British politics. Although he could, from time to time, be quite abrupt and acknowledged that he found it difficult to tolerate fools easily, he was greatly loved by all he worked with in the party and beyond it, for his clarity of vision and for his team-building abilities.

He was one of the key masterminds behind the partnership between the Liberal Democrats and New Labour before and immediately after the 1997 election, which not only helped turn a Tory defeat into a Tory rout, but also helped deliver (albeit in a manner more flawed than we would have wished) many of the constitutional changes for which Liberals had fought, but never achieved, for over a hundred years, such as devolution for Scotland and Wales, the first breakthroughs introducing proportional representation into British elections, the incorporation of the European Bill of Rights into British law and a Freedom of Information law.

If the partnership government for which Tony Blair and I originally planned had come about, he would undoubtedly have been a cabinet minister in it and I am confident that his would have been a powerful voice arguing against many of the wrong turns which the Blair and Brown governments have taken, especially on human rights and constitutional issues, over the last 11 years.

A highly accomplished wordsmith, Holme also wrote the Liberal Democrat manifesto of 1992 and published many pamphlets and articles covering the whole wide range of his interests.

But Richard Holme was no armchair Liberal. He took on his first parliamentary seat, East Grinstead, in 1964, when being a Liberal was an almost certain route to losing your deposit. In all he fought five parliamentary elections, culminating in Cheltenham in the 1983 and 1987 elections, where he laid the foundations for the eventual Liberal Democrat victory in that seat in 1992.

Richard Holme's contribution to British political life, however, extended far beyond his attachment to the Liberal Democrats. He was, at the core of his being, a small "l" liberal in the best traditions of British liberalism and brought these values to bear in the very wide range of national and international public bodies to which he contributed, often as chairman or vice-chairman. These included the House of Lords Constitutional Committee (he was created a life peer in 1990 as Baron Holme of Cheltenham), the Constitutional Reform Centre, the Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the World Business Council on Corporate Responsibility (a favourite subject), the Hansard Society (another passion), the UK and Ireland Advisory Board, the British American Project, Transparency International, the Overseas Development Institute, the BBC Charter Committee, the ICC Environment Commission, the Royal African Society and many many others.

A man of enormous energy, he also found time between politics and the public service to be a highly successful businessman, with a very wide range of engagement in commerce and industry, especially in the publishing sector.

He was appointed CBE for public service in 1983 and a Privy Counsellor in 2000.

His last speech in the House of Lords was given on 1 May 2007, when he introduced the report of the House of Lords Constitutional Committee which he had so skilfully chaired, recommending that parliamentary approval should be required before a government took the nation to war. The ravages of the cancer which eventually killed him were all too tragically evident. But his courage, eloquence and passion shone through, unconquered and undiminished.

Liberalism in Britain has lost a great champion, the Liberal Democrats a great advocate and our public life a great servant.

Paddy Ashdown

Richard Gordon Holme, politician and publisher: born London 27 May 1936; Vice-Chairman, Liberal Party Executive 1966-67; Director, Campaign for Electoral Reform 1976-85; Secretary, Parliamentary Democracy Trust 1977-2008; President, Liberal Party 1980-81; CBE 1983; Chairman, Constitutional Reform Centre 1985-94; chairman, DPR Publishing 1988-98; chairman, Black Box Publishing 1988-95; chairman, Hollis Directories 1989-98; created 1990 Baron Holme of Cheltenham; chairman, Brassey's Ltd 1996-98; Chairman, Broadcasting Standards Commission 1999-2000; Deputy Chairman, ITC 1999; Liberal Democrat spokesman on Northern Ireland, House of Lords 1992-99; Chairman, Liberal Democrat Election Campaign 1997; PC 2000; Chairman, Select Committee on the Constitution, House of Lords 2004-08; married 1958 Kay Powell (two sons, two daughters); died Lurgashall, West Sussex 4 May 2008.