Even for those who knew Derek Draper only very slightly, the news of his passing is immensely sad. Because of his public profile and the celebrity of his wife Kate Garraway, the suffering he experienced as a result of long Covid was inevitably very much in the public eye. The abiding image most of the public have of him is of a man struggling incredibly hard against his frailty, rather than the vigorous person he was before he was so unluckily struck down by the coronavirus. That should not be the lasting impression of a man who lived a full life. Had things turned out a little differently, he could easily have scaled the heights of political office.
When I came across Draper, he was in his pomp. He was a young man working with Peter Mandelson in the New Labour project, during and after the 1997 election landslide – lively company, dedicated, thoughtful, and obviously gifted with a high level of what you might call “political intelligence”.
