Kennedy offered chance to return to Lib Dems' front bench

Chris Huhne, one of the two contenders for the Liberal Democrats leadership, has promised a place for Charles Kennedy in his team if he wins the contest.

Mr Huhne and his rival for the top post in the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, are both claiming support from key allies of Mr Kennedy whose backing could determine the outcome of a close contest.

The former leader, who was forced to resign over his drink problems, still commands widespread popularity in the party.

In The Independent today, Mr Huhne says Mr Kennedy is too big an asset to the party to leave out. It is unclear whether Mr Kennedy would want a front bench post but having been against the war on Iraq, he could take over as Foreign Affairs spokesman, a post traditionally given to former leaders, such as William Hague in the Cameron shadow Cabinet.

"The party needs Charles to come back in a key front line role as soon as possible. He is far too big a talent for him to sit on the subs' bench rather than play on the field," said Mr Huhne.

Anna Werrin, Mr Kennedy's former secretary and closest aide for more than 20 years, will be the campaign manager for Mr Huhne. Other key former Kennedy aides who have joined the Huhne campaign include Candy Piercy, who ran Mr Kennedy's successful leadership campaign in 1999 and was second-in-command in the party's campaigns department for a decade, and Lord Newby who will be Mr Huhne's campaign treasurer.

Ms Piercy said: "I am delighted that Chris Huhne has decided to stand in this election. I recognise true leadership skills in Chris Huhne. He has the vision, the experience and the ability to communicate that marks him out as a born leader."

The Clegg camp also sought to claim Kennedy support by announcing that it had won the backing of Lord Razzall, the former leader's most senior strategist, and Baroness Bonham-Carter, a former communications chief for the party.

Mr Kennedy has all but ruled himself out of the race.

He warned them not to allow the contest to force them into opting for co-operation in a hung Parliament with either David Cameron, the Tory leader, or Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.

Mr Clegg's aides strongly denied the picture presented by the Huhne camp of Mr Clegg as a Lib Dem clone of Tory leader David Cameron. He will use the launch of his campaign tomorrow in London to underline his credentials as a Sheffield MP in reaching out to disadvantaged voters.

Mr Clegg, on the BBC AM programme, said he would "speak in a direct, plain-speaking way to people, to represent the great cities of the North but also appeal to rural and suburban parts of the South, to try to create a sense of dynamism and ambition in politics".

In his response to readers' questions, Mr Huhne denied that having got rid of two leaders in two years, the Lib Dems were becoming the "nasty party". However, members of both camps were complaining of signs that the fight is getting dirty.

Mr Huhne was faced with weekend reports that he had written an article as a student advocating tolerance of the use of opium and LSD. Also on the AM programme, he insisted he could not remember writing the article but did not deny authorship of the piece, which appeared under his byline in Oxford University student magazine Isis in 1973. "These are clearly not my views. Frankly, I certainly admit to being a revolting teenager in both senses of the word, so on that basis, I would simply draw a veil over it."

The Sunday Times printed extracts from the article, which said that opium, LSD and amphetamines should be "an accepted facet of our society".

Secret lives of potential leaders

Clegg's family tree littered with tales of espionage and romance

Notes on the life of Nick Clegg, favourite for the Lib Dem leadership, are taking on the air of a Bond novel after it was revealed that the multilingual former ski instructor is related to a former Russian spy.

Moura Budberg, Mr Clegg's great great-aunt, is a baroness who spied for the Soviet Union in the 1920s and was described by MI5 as "a very dangerous woman". She was a mistress of the science fiction writer HG Wells and the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, and Robert Bruce Lockhart, the diplomat and spy Britain sent to Moscow, said The Mail on Sunday. Budberg later restyled herself as a left-wing socialite, settling in Knightsbridge.

Mr Clegg's maternal family background is almost as exotic. His Dutch mother, Hermance van den Wall Bake, endured terrible privations as a child when her family was taken prisoner in Indonesia – then under Dutch rule – when the Japanese invaded in 1942. Mr Clegg's father-in-law is a former conservative senator in the Spanish parliament. The Lib Dem leadership hopeful met his Spanish wife, the lawyer Miriam Gonzalez, as a student in Brussels.

Huhne's history of student activism and drug liberalism is revealed

A former City editor of The Independent, who made a fortune in the City after being an MEP, he is an expert on the economy, and has faced a whispering campaign at Westminster for being boring.

But the Oxford Mail unearthed a photo of the Lib Dem wannabe leader using a bench to smash his way into the Indian Institute (now the history faculty) in support of students wanting a central student union for Oxford in 1973.

The photograph, used at the weekend by Sunday newspapers, was first published on the internet in January 2006 when Mr Huhne ran against Sir Menzies Campbell for the leadership.

An old student union article was also revived which said opium, LSD and amphetamines should be "an accepted facet of our society".

The article added: "There are a number of people who are open-minded about experimenting with drugs.

"This tolerance is welcome, and it is only with the aid of this tolerance that drugs can be put in their correct unsensationalist place as a social phenomenon with great and respectable antecedents."