While I have been googling to find answers I came across a thread on another forum where someone had  one of these clips break, someone else said that they rust and eventually become brittle, nobody knows if mine became thin with rust and snapped or whether it failed for another reason.  The gearchange has always been a bit odd, you needed to be firm and decisive with the gear lever, if you were like that it was good but if you dithered it would always tend to baulk. To be fair I have only driven it once or twice since the beginning of February, since then we spent nine weeks in NZ and Oz followed almost immediately by my hip revision surgery which prevented me from driving until last Wednesday. In the meantime my wife has been using it almost daily until we lost or broke the clip. She has never complained about the gearchange other than it was "stiffer" than she would like. I am going to pursue the support bracket in the hope that will solve the problem. I have found the following this afternoon on the MGOC website;
"The poor design of the MGF & MGTF clutch slave cylinder mounting bracket allows for flexing of the slave cylinder body when depressing the clutch pedal, reducing the throw of the clutch arm and making gear changes less smooth. Over time the original mild steel locating bracket can fail preventing disengagement of the clutch. MGOC Spares is pleased to offer a Clutch Slave Cylinder Support Bracket, manufactured in the UK from stainless steel and designed to reinforce the slave cylinder location by securing the slave cylinder to the gear box bell housing. Supplied complete with stainless fixings and instructions".
And this on the Elise parts website; https://www.eliseparts.com/shop/gearbox-drivetrain/clutch-slave-cylinder-support-k-series/  It is interesting that they insinuate that 40% of the travel is lost.
The problem is that it doesn't fit cars with a PRT so I may have to make one up myself.

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