Former SDP leader to quit Commons

Robert Maclennan played a key role in pre-election Lib-Lab talks

Liberal Democrat constitutional affairs spokesman and onetime leader of the SDP Robert Maclennan is to stand down from Westminster at the next election.

The former Labour minister, who defected to help found the SDP, has had an unbroken 34-year stint representing Caithness, Sutherland and latterly Easter Ross.

Before and after the 1997 election Mr Maclennan played a key role in forging the joint agreement on constitutional reform between Labour and his own party.

The 64-year-old revealed his intention to quit in a letter to constituency party convenor Viscount Thurso.

Mr Maclennan was a member of the joint Labour-Lib Dem cabinet committee convened by Mr Blair soon after the election.

Wafer-thin majority

But he started his political career in the Labour Party, first becoming an MP in 1966 with a wafer-thin 64-vote majority.

From 1974 to 1979 he was junior prices and consumer protection minister under prime ministers Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.

The MP had been growing increasingly disillusioned with Labour policy, though. In 1972 he had resigned from the opposition frontbench in protest at the party's pledge to hold a referendum on leaving the EEC.

As a minister he had also been shocked by the trade unions, as he described it, "telling us what we could do and what we could not do".

And so in 1981, two years after Labour's defeat by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives, he left to become a founder member of the SDP, joining the "Gang of Four" - Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley William and Bill Rogers.

Caretaker SDP leader

In 1987 the breakaway party, having failed to supplant Labour as the chief opposition to the Tories, voted to merge with the Liberals.

Like David Owen, Mr Maclennan had campaigned against a merger. When Mr Owen walked out, however, Mr Maclennan stayed put and became caretaker SDP leader.

He played a close role in the intense and complex negotiations that led to the formation of the Liberal Democrats - or the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD) as they were initially known - in 1988.

But after much consideration he decided not to run for the SLD leadership. Instead he threw his weight behind Paddy Ashdown.

He later admitted that he had burst into tears several times during the negotiations, explaining: "I have a Churchillian tendency".

Slow progress on reform

He went on to hold a number of Lib Dem frontbench positions, including Treasury and home affairs spokesman.

He also become Parliamentary leader and, in 1994, president of the Liberal Democrats.

In the run-up to the 1997 election, when speculation was at its height as to how far Tony Blair's Lib-Lab inclinations would take him, Mr Maclennan led the negotiations with Labour on constitutional reform.

The slow progress on the key points of the joint reform agenda - notably, electoral reform for Westminster - disappointed many Lib Dems.

Recently he has been understood to be keen, with a view to the possible result of the next election, for his party to reconvene talks with Labour regardless.