FREE from Camden Labour Party politics – and after the last week she probably wouldn’t be wishing for a swift return to that particular bear-pit – the formidable former Town Hall social services chief Maggie Cosin is back in public office elsewhere. She was elected to the parish council in Deal on Thursday night. It wasn’t the toughest win of her local government career, five of the six people who stood returned victorious. Highgate village was a much tougher tug-of-war back in the day.

But it wasn’t a clean sweep for Maggie, who I last ran into at the Labour Party conference in Manchester where she full of dewy-eyed disappointment for David Miliband’s failure to bag the leadership ahead of his brother. She also stood in district elections but Maggie and husband Ben were thumped – as expected, given the Dover constituencies – by the Tories.