Rennard skips chapter about his real ‘fame’

LIBeraL Democrat Lord rennard boasts repeatedly in his memoirs about his importance to British political life. never knowingly modest, he says in the book that he’s often described ‘as the most important person in Westminster you’ve never heard of’.

elevated to the Lords when he was 39, rennard says: ‘ My political reputation was largely based on 13 parliamentary byelection victories I helped oversee during the leaderships of Paddy ashdown, Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell.’

Yet in the 368-page Winning here: My Campaigning Life, the insufferably smug rennard devotes but a handful of paragraphs to the one subject most people know him for: his suspension from the party for eight months in 2014 for allegedly being a sex pest.

his conduct and the fallout from it triggered the resignation of several senior women from the party. a Lib Dem inquiry concluded the claims were ‘broadly credible’, but had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. rennard apologised if he had ‘inadvertently encroached’ on the ‘personal space’ of the women.

Bizarrely, he is planning a second volume of his memoirs in which, he says, he will address the suspension. If it is ever published, will he tell us why Lib Dem leader sir Vince Cable has ruled out giving a job to the most important person in Westminster you’ve never heard of?