Like many of his generation, the former Labour junior minister Tom Pendry, who has died aged 88, was unlucky that after his election to parliament in 1970 his party was in opposition for all but five of the years until 1997. By the time Tony Blair then swept into office, Pendry was 63 and adjudged too old for the vibrant, zippy image of the new government heading into the millennium.
He had spent six years as a Labour whip in the 1970s, three of them in government, and a year as a parliamentary undersecretary in the Northern Ireland Office (as what was known as the “statutory Roman Catholic”) until 1979, but would later find his metier in 1992 when he became shadow sports minister. His lifelong enthusiasm for boxing and football and myriad connections in the sporting world had led him confidently to anticipate appointment to the same post in government when the opportunity arose five years later.
