Remembering Brian Niblett

I was very sorry to learn of the death of Brian Niblett from the excellent obituary on Liberal Democrat Voice.

My chief memory of Brian is of an afternoon I spent driving around rural Leicestershire with him and his wife.

I was helping them find some of the more obscure addresses of Liberal Democrat members so they could deliver Brian's campaign literature as he strove to be first on our East Midlands list for the 1999 Euro elections.

As Lib Dem Voice says, he was the early frontrunner in that contest. But he was to be overtaken by a smooth young Eurocrat called Nick Clegg.

If Nick had not been first on the East Midlands list he would not have got into the European parliament. That, in turn, would have made it much harder for him to inherit Sheffield Hallam from Richard Allan.

On such things do the history of political parties turn.