Paddy Ashdown was such an inspiration to all those who knew him or knew of him. He had immense energy and enthusiasm for politics and for helping people, winning respect within and outside the party, and was always looking to the future and how to improve it.

His legacy is immense, and will live on in the strength of the party he led, rescued and grew into a powerful force in British politics, in the local party he built into a real force in Yeovil constituency and South Somerset district (which has been Liberal Democrat for over 30 years), in the constitutional reforms he helped make reality in the late 1990s which modernised British democracy, in the lives he saved and the peace he worked to build in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the inspiration he gave to so many of us to campaign and work for a better society.