Jacqueline and I were shocked and deeply saddened to hear yesterday that our friend Wayne Casey had died at such a tragically young age. Our thoughts are with Pauline, his family and friends.
I adored Wayne over many years and he was among the funniest and cleverest people I will ever know. I have rarely laughed harder than in his company and there was no better dinner companion. I often cite things that Wayne said to me in conversation and my thinking continues to be influenced by his observations about politics, history and life.
He was a man I turned to for advice on personal matters, and he was that rarest of things: someone whose assessments of other people combined sparkling wit with compassionate insight.
Wayne was also a superb public speaker and I can say with confidence that Barnet's council chamber will never again be the setting for speeches that are so killingly funny as Wayne's were. His mastery of political communication led the Lib Dems to storm the citadel of staunchly Tory Mill Hill, where he enjoyed huge support as a local councillor. His style and panache made the most boring of political issues and activities fun, and the prospect of his company was always an incentive to take part in things that might otherwise have been dauntingly dull. Certainly, the most fun I ever had politically was working with Wayne and others to elect Duncan Macdonald in the High Barnet by-election in 2005, when the Lib Dems came from third place to capture the safest of Tory council seats.
Wayne was always willing to criticise the Liberal Democrats and was at his funniest on that subject. His intellectual honesty led him to sniff out the cant and hypocrisy of many anti-Israel campaigners in his own party and beyond, and he was an active fighter against antisemitism. He was also utterly scathing about anything that involved the rancorous noise of blogs and social media, so I hope he wouldn't have minded this piece.
He was someone whose interests and enjoyments ranged far beyond mere politics. For some years, I knew that Christmas had begun when I had arrived at Wayne's home for wine and delicious snacks on Christmas Eve, an occasion always marked by the sparkling bonhomie that Wayne so often generated. With Wayne, one had the sort of conversations that characters have often in drama, but rarely in life. It was as if Josh Lyman from The West Wing had been merged with Dorothy Parker. It was also such an honour to be asked to serve as an usher at his wedding to Pauline in 2007.
It was Wayne who asked me in 2009 to stand as the Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate for Hendon at the 2010 General Election, when he was my agent. A glance at the figures from the previous election showed that, statistically, I had less chance of being elected MP for Hendon than I had of winning the National Lottery or being cast as James Bond. That was not the point. The point was that he knew that I would enjoy it and that having me as Parliamentary candidate would give him one less thing to worry about as he campaigned (sadly unsuccessfully) to re-elect Lib Dem councillors in Mill Hill in the local elections that were on the same day. He was right, as I did enjoy it, as he had done when he was the Parliamentary candidate for Hendon himself - and he would have made a great MP had he been elected.
I saw less of Wayne most recently as he had been living in Northampton, but we had just recently been corresponding about meeting for a drink. I will always remember him as a tremendous friend and as an example of how to live my own life.
