[3] He progressed rapidly in the CRD, acting as ‘external affairs adviser’ to Official Opposition leader Edward Heath.

[4] After the elevation of Robert Carr to the peerage in 1976, Forman was centrally recommended and selected as his replacement for the resultant by-election.

All three major parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal) had entrenched support and Forman's lead looked vulnerable to tactical voting.

In 1980 he spoke for greatly increasing child benefits and James Prior’s attempt to have member votes bind trade unions through their voluntary agreement to do so.

In February 1981, Labour MPs cheered him in the House when he asked the Chancellor (Howe) to act to halt the rise in unemployment.

In a 1983 Times piece senior Labour MP Gerald Kaufman noted that Forman had been overlooked for promotion and that his obvious abilities were not being used.

In 1984 Forman stood for chairman of the Conservative backbench finance committee, as a moderate "one nation" Tory – against incumbent right-winger Sir William Clark.

This made Forman an acceptable candidate to many local voters who refrained from tactical voting to oust him.

Forman won 54% of the vote, on high turnout,[5][6] His political fortunes seemed to be in the ascendant.“Has Chancellor Nigel Lawson gone soft?

As recently as last year, Nigel Forman, vice-chairman of the party's backbench finance committee, was publicly calling on the Chancellor to 'give top priority to the unemployment challenge'.

The year before, in Mastering British Politics, he wrote: 'Occasionally, in the course of its long history, the Conservative party has been swept along on the wave of some particular ideology, but such periods have not usually lasted or brought enduring political success'.” – "Rising Damp", The Times, June 1987.The ideology Forman referred to was the then fashionable combination of supply side economics, monetarism, deregulation and privatisation known in the 1980s as Thatcherism.

[7] “The omission of Nigel Forman, from successive ministerial reshuffles over the past few years has surprised many at Westminster when several apparently less talented politicians have secured top posts.

[9] At the 1997 general election, Forman lost his seat to the Liberal Democrat candidate Tom Brake.

In 1999 he joined the faculty of Wroxton College, the UK (Oxfordshire) campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU).

In the last year of his life he was reported to have been dismayed by the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum and to have stated that the UK had become a country he hardly knew.

However, obituarists drew attention to his comment (quoted above) published thirty years earlier concerning the tendency of the Conservative party to be occasionally swept along in particular ideologies.