Charles Kennedy, then the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was a late addition to the list of speakers. There was some media speculation that he only decided to speak after a lead article in The Guardian was critical of his absence from the planned speaker list.[45] There had been some controversy within the StWC over allowing Kennedy to speak since his party was committed to opposing the war only in the absence of a second UN resolution, but the coalition decided that failing to invite him "would have been divisive for the movement and would have fragmented anti-war opposition to the war."[2]