Cllr Flick Rea

• THE life-time achievement award accorded to Cllr Flick Rea by her national party’s fitting recognition at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton last Tuesday was entirely appropriate.

And Flick’s generous acceptance speech, thanking her constituents in Fortune Green for keeping her on Camden’s council for 33 years, was gracious, humble and admirably succinct.

I have long regarded Flick as a great friend and my surrogate mother – indeed the mother of Lib­eralism in Camden. Back in Camden’s joint Tory/ LibDem administration in 2010 it introduced a rotating mayoralty for that non-political role.

Sadly this innovation was promptly reversed by Labour when back in power in 2014. In consequence, Flick Rea is the finest mayor Camden never had.

PAUL BRAITHWAITE
Bartholomew Villas, NW5