Chris Leslie joins the bailiffs

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Sitting on the front bench, Tony Blair surveyed the massed ranks of his parliamentary intake and then lent over to Gordon Brown.

"It’s weird,” he said "but there’s a guy back there who’s the splitting image of the boy who does your photocopying." 

"That is him,” Brown replied. “He’s your new MP for Shipley."

That boy was Chris Leslie. So good was his photocopying that he was parachuted into the safe seat of Nottingham East after he lost Shipley and eventually became Ed Miliband's shadow chancellor.

Then he left Labour to join The Independent Group and scorned any thought of an electoral pact with the Greens or Liberal Democrats:

He said a tie-up with other pro-EU parties "wasn't ever on the agenda", adding: "I don't think it will ever be likely because we are starting something new. We are not joining the Liberal Democrats or the Green Party."

Instead, Mr Leslie urged Lib Dem members to switch allegiance and join Change UK, saying the "emergency situation" of Brexit required "a completely fresh overhaul of the centre-ground".

As it turned out, neither Leslie nor his new party, with its ever-changing name, proved attractive to Nottingham East's voters. In last year's general election he finished fourth with 3.6 per cent of the vote.

Now he has emerged as the new chief executive of the trade body for the debt collection industry, the Credit Services Association.

Brynley Heaven, who once wrote a guest post for Liberal England, comments on Twitter:

for a brief period, Chris Leslie was always in the media invited into studios to explain how cuts were unavoidable, Keynes was impossible and misery was the right medicine for the precarious and the poor. Now he has an exciting & poetic opportunity to see some of ideas bear fruit

— Brynley Heaven (@BrynleyHeaven) July 19, 2020