Leila Roy

RAISE a glass for Leila Roy.

Raise a glass if you don’t want everybody in the council chamber to look and sound the same. Raise a glass for unconventional. For loose cannons. For silliness. For community.

For a lost friend.

Many will already have done so; a stiff drink prescription was needed after the upsetting news that the former councillor had passed away. This week was one of those when so many nice things were said about her, you’d wish she’d been able to hear them – in the choppy world of local politics, people weren’t always so kind. T

he term “force of nature” recurred. That’s right, she followed her own senses, proving to be both reliable and unpredictable for her local Conservative group, and had a strength of character which meant the patronising claims that this French revolutionary had joined the wrong party rarely left a dent.

It’s true that she probably didn’t agree with her party on everything, nationally at least – who does? – and she wasn’t a great fan of Brexit.

But she found a home with the Tories here, after a time before politics in which she felt the council in Camden had been cold to her and some of the people around her.

Her period as a councillor did not coincide with the calmest period for the Conservatives behind the scenes either, but she made lasting and strong friendships which, along with her young age and the suddenness, explain the scale of the grief this week.

There would be time spent as much as friends as political campaigners in the garden together where a shed was partly made of Boris Johnson’s old mayoral campaigns stakeboards.

A five-minute chance meeting in the street turned into hour-long chats as she detailed the latest problems of the world. She had trained as a journalist and while this was not really where her path led her in the end, she retained the trade’s basic skill: being nosey or, more politely, being interested.

To that end, she could also be a pest, albeit a nice pest. She would be a constant buzz of constructive criticism for most of us. And at the same time she would unfailingly ask how my kids were – she sent a card when my first was born. They are ingredients of a good councillor slash campaigner – empathy, interest… questions.

It was never scripted, though.

There would be times where I’d be trying to ambush a minister at a conference and, like a frantic scene in a Hitchcock film, she’d suddenly step across me and waylay the operation with a harangue about a campaign to save a shrub or why a harp should be made available to all primary school music lessons.

The minister would escape, but at least you’d know that Leila’s latest chicks had hatched.

SEE ALSO TEARS AND TRIBUTES FOR THE UNFORGETTABLE LEILA ROY

If we are honest, one or two of the voices among the tributes came from people who wouldn’t be able to admit now they laughed at her sometimes left-field contributions in council meetings.

There was an occasional dismissive “it’s only Leila being Leila” or “what’s she on about now”. But when she invested in local campaigns, she could often prove people wrong: Tesco never made it into that old bank in Haverstock Hill. With her son never far away, almost making a double act with her, she could whip up a storm.

As with so many of the escapees, whenever I met her after she left the Town Hall, she seemed healthier than ever, sparkier. She still had many projects on the go, still had all the gossip.

“Her death will deprive Camden of one of its strongest voices, one of its most determined campaigners and certainly one of its most popular community leaders,” said a statement from the local Tories. “This is a loss not just to the Conservative Party but to us all.”

That’s spot-on, whichever party you support or none at all. Because Leila being Leila didn’t mean a game of point-scoring.

Instead she’ll better be remembered for helping residents sleeping on the leisure centre floor after the Chalcots evacuation; for trying to sort someone’s bin problem out; helping people who didn’t know how to complain about anti-social behaviour; finding a lost cat. Some pass through the Town Hall unnoticed but not Leila.

Whenever you want to, you’ll be able to close your eyes and hear her voice. I know I will…

”Oh you finally wrote something nice about what I’ve been doing! How are the kids?”

RICHARD OSLEY, deputy editor