Sir Menzies Campbell: 'A turbulent period has drawn to a close. There's a sense we are back in business'

The Monday Interview: Leader of the Liberal Democrats

Sir Menzies Campbell looks with amused disdain at a cartoon of himself with Zimmer frame in hand and a glass of false teeth by his side. "First of all, I've got all my teeth," he jokes.

The 64-year-old Liberal Democrat leader happily shrugs off unkind comments about his age, with a well-rehearsed line about Senator John McCain, at 69, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

"If Adair Turner's proposals are going to be implemented we are all going to have to work to 67, 68 or 69," he adds.

Sir Menzies is looking relaxed, three full days into his new role as leader of the Liberal Democrats; a secure victory behind him and a successful spring conference well under way in the snowy spa town of Harrogate.

He survived a snowball during a walkabout in the icy streets of the North Yorkshire town and, more importantly, won a totemic vote over plans for the part-privatisation of Royal Mail.

Sir Menzies has a difficult time ahead. The former Olympic sprinter, Edinburgh lawyer and MP starts his fourth career at the head of a party still bearing the scars of the coup that ousted Charles Kennedy and the revelations about the sex lives of two of the candidates who hoped to succeed him.

His colleagues on the front bench are desperate for an injection of professionalism, and worried about the squeeze coming from David Cameron's resurgent Conservatives.

Sir Menzies - universally known as Ming - is obviously delighted at his new role. "I'm in equilibrium. I'm absolutely whacked, but euphoric, so I'm in balance for the moment.

"A turbulent period has been brought to a close, helped by the campaign, helped by the generosity of Chris Huhne and Simon Hughes after the result and all helped, perhaps more than anything else, by Willie Rennie's by-election victory [in Dunfirmline and West Fife on 9 February]. When you put all that together there is a sense that we are back in business."

Sir Menzies started his tenure by winning strong support for one of the party's most contentious policies, the proposed sale of a minority stake in Royal Mail, a policy that was ditched by the rank and file in September and is seen as a first test of the ambitious young economic liberals against the party's more left-wing traditionalists.

His audience did not applaud when he publicly backed the policy in his first speech to Liberal Democrat activists on Friday. But on Saturday, the measure sailed through on a large majority. Just hours later, Norman Lamb, the party's trade and industry spokesman, who shepherded the proposals, was rewarded with the role of the new leader's chief of staff.

"I was determined to make clear that on issues where the spokesman had done his or her duty, the leadership would be right in there. A lot of the time, I have been talking about fresh ideas and innovation. It would have been pretty curious not to be supporting it."

Friends and allies say there is already a feeling of a "strong new broom" in the Liberal Democrat high command, speaking with relief at being able to talk to their new leader, swap ideas and have him take some of them up.

Sir Menzies is planning new initiatives on taxation, and devolving power to local communities. "I really want the party not to be afraid of challenging orthodoxy. In health and education, we talk about localism but we have to say what we mean."

He is adamant that the old charge that the party has one message for one audience and quite another on the other side of the country must be slaughtered. "We have often been poor at explaining that ours is a party where decisions are made locally. We have to introduce a sense of responsibility. People have to understand that the effect of a decision made locally can go beyond their borders."

Uncomfortable times lie ahead for the Liberal Democrats. Sir Menzies diplomatically heaps praise on his predecessor. But he insists that his party machine must match the professionalism of the rival Tory and Labour operations.

"If we are serious about three party politics, we have to compete with the others. For the foreseeable future, we will not be able to compete financially, so we have to compete with efficiency, intellectual rigour, consistency. These are the necessary components of credibility."

A shake up of the Liberal Democrat organisation will come within months, and a policy review will start outlining the new platform on which Sir Menzies will take on David Cameron and Gordon Brown. He wants the party to learn from Democratic campaigns in the US and develop new technology for reaching voters, particularly the young.

Even now the battle lines are becoming clear: he brands David Cameron as a superficial newcomer to fashionable causes such as environmentalism, and derides Gordon Brown for micromanagement.

Sir Menzies will face Tony Blair for the first time as leader on Wednesday at Prime Minister's question time. He was obviously stung by the howls of laughter at his first outing as acting leader when he raised the subject of schools that cannot find permanent head teachers.

He puts that failure down to a lack of preparation, a flaw he says he has rectified. "I've got someone I call the Elephant Man. Someone whose job is to look for elephant traps, which is what we didn't do that first time out."

David Cameron's astonishing success at creating a new image for the Tories is the talk of the party, producing muttering among Liberal Democrats about how they were there first on environmental issues and the rest.

Sir Menzies insists he will not get into the image game, instead contrasting his experience with the Tory leader's youth: "I am what I am. I'm a product of the West of Scotland. My parents were both highly intelligent people who ought to have gone to university but didn't because they were brought up in the depression."

"I'm conscientious, I'm hard working - you don't succeed at the Bar unless you are - and I'm determined," he added. "You don't win the most Tory seat in Scotland after 11 years and three elections without determination."

He hesitates: "I want people to understand that I understand real life. My professional practice was not rarefied tax practice or anything approaching it. My practice was criminal prosecution and defence and matrimonial too.

He describes himself as an "occasional Presbyterian" but unlike Tony Blair, religion is no great motivator for him. He sets out his stall as an internationalist, revealing that he even contemplated applying for US citizenship when he was at Stanford 40 years ago.

One thing that will probably be sacrificed because of its image is his beloved, 20-year-old Jaguar XJS; its 5.3 litre V12 engine simply too environmentally unfriendly after Sir Menzies' pledges to develop green policies. It is sitting in a barn unused, although it is not clear that Sir Menzies can bring himself to part with it.

Addressing his troops for the first time on Friday, Sir Menzies declared: "Nothing less than political power will satisfy me and nothing less will satisfy you."

I ask whether he believes Liberal Democrats will be in power at Westminster in his lifetime. "If I didn't think that I wouldn't be here," he says, "It's like John Prescott said, the tectonic plates are shifting." With that, Sir Menzies is off to his next meeting. He turns as he strides through the door and adds: "You should know, I'm enjoying this."

The CV

* BORN: 22 May 1941

* FAMILY: Married to Elspeth, Lady Suttie, daughter of Major General Roy Urquhart, in June 1970. No children.

* EDUCATION: Hillhead High School, Glasgow; MA Glasgow University; Law Degree; Post graduate international law, Stanford University.

* SPORTS: 1964 Sprinted for the UK in the Olympic Games in Tokyo; 1966 Captain of the Scotland team at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

* CAREER: 1968 Faculty of Advocates; 1975 Chairman of Scottish Liberals; 1982; Queen's Counsel; 1987 MP for North East Fife; 2001 Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman; 2003 Deputy leader; 2004 Knighted; 2006 Leader.

* OTHER: 2006 Chancellor of University of St Andrews.