Annette Brooke Photo: David Spender from United Kingdom CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Former Liberal Democrat MP, Annette Brooke, was an immensely popular Member of Parliament both as a constituency MP and within the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party. She came into parliament via the time-honoured Liberal and Liberal Democrat route of many years on her local Poole council, including a term as the town’s mayor. The town formed a significant part of the highly marginal Mid Dorset and Poole constituency, newly formed at the 1997 election. Poole also had a Liberal history having controlled its council briefly some years before. Being a new seat in which there were concerns that the Poole component would be too dominant, the Liberal Democrats selected Alan Leaman, an advisor to leader Paddy Ashdown, as its candidate at the 1997 general election. He came within 684 votes of winning the seat.
After fifteen years on the local council Annette Brooke rightly felt that she was the natural choice as Liberal Democrat candidate for the next, 2001, election and. despite his close result in 1997, Alan Leaman was kept off the party’s shortlist. She was one of only five women selected by the party in marginal seats. She won the seat by just 384 votes but increased her majority to 5,482 in 2005; however it fell to just 269 at the 2010 election. Partly prompted by health difficulties she retired at the 2015 election. Vikki Slade, another local councillor and a close colleague of Annette Brooke, regained the seat for the party at the 2024 election.
In parliament she was appointed by Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, as the party’s spokesperson on Home Affairs. She later moved to develop the party’s policies on children, schools and families, prioritising childen’s early years, stating that “We need to value the early years teachers more as they’re the most important teachers in a child’s life.” Also, her experience in local government politics was a useful background to her appointment as Deputy Whip.
She soon became a quietly effective constituency MP. Finding solutions to constituents’ problems was more important to Annette Brooke than party grandstanding. One such success came when, having been approached by the parents of a young blind constituent, she got the final Harry Potter book published in braille at the same time as in print. At the national level she felt it a great injustice that there were no medals for British service personnel who served in the Suez campaign in the 1950s. Shortly after meeting with service chiefs in November 2002 the government announced that there would be a Suez Canal Zone clasp. Her commitment and perseverance were recognised when in 2010 she was named “MP of the year” in the Dod’s and Scottish Widows’ “Women in Public Life Awards.” In 2005 she became involved with FINCA International a leading provider of microfinance aiming to help the world’s poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty.
Annette Brooke’s popularity with her fellow Liberal Democrat MPs was recognised by her being elected as the parliamentary party’s chair in 2013. She served on five parliamentary committees: Public Administration, Procedure, Public Accounts, Children, Schools and Families and Standards and Privileges. In the 2010 coalition government she did not become a minister but instead joined the Speaker’s Panel of committee chairs. During the coalition years she did not invariably toe the party line, not least on tuition fees. She was appointed OBE in 2013, made a Privy Councillor in 2014 and a Dame in 2015. She became the longest serving woman Liberal Democrat MP. She announced in 2013 that, partly prompted by health issues, she felt it was time to retire at the forthcoming election. Her successor as MP, Vikki Slade, had been drawn into the Liberal Democrats in 2000 when Annette Brooke persuaded her to “deliver a few leaflets.” She soon became a local councillor for the party. Ms Slade commented, “When she decided to retire she invited me to her house and asked me to stand. .... I agreed to consider it. From that moment until I finally took the seat ten years later, she supported, inspired and mentored me.”
She was born Annette Lesley Kelley in Essex in April 1947, to Ernest and Edna Kelley. Her father was a “Vellum Binder”, a producer of high class stationery books. She had an older sister, Patricia, who predeceased her. She attended Romford County Technical School and went on to the London School of Economics and Political Science, graduating with a BSc degree in economics. She continued on to Hughes Hall, Cambridge to take the Certificate of Education. Whilst at Cambridge she met Mike Brooke who became a geology teacher. They were married in 1969 and later set up a shop selling minerals and other items. She taught at a number of schools and colleges, and for twenty years at the Open University, before becoming involved in politics in the early 1980s. Mike joined Annette on the local council two years before she was elected as an MP; he became leader of the Liberal Democrat group before retiring in 2023. In 2022 the Brookes hosted a refugee family from Ukraine and campaigned for a change in the rules to enable such refugees to use cars from abroad.
Dame Annette Brooke is survived by her husband Mike, her two daughters, Caroline and Eleanor, and by a granddaughter.
