The son of a Spanish Republican refugee and a Scottish progressive schoolteacher, Michael Portillo is a very different sort of idealist. Passionately opposed to a United Europe, totally devoted to the integrity of the United Kingdom, fierce advocate of an ultra-low-tax economy, he may be the son of a socialist but he's Thatcher's child. A teenage fan of Harold Wilson, Cambridge turned him blue. Three years at Peterhouse, the playground of the Powellites, groomed him for politics. After a wayward year he joined the Tory Party as a backroom boy and rose to become the confidant of Thatcher, Parkinson and Lawson. In 1984, aged only thirty-one, he entered Parliament in a by-election caused by the murder of the sitting MP by the IRA.The man Chris Patten called 'The Castilian' was a favourite of Mrs Thatcher's court: he was by her side when she won the General Election in 1979 and was the last to insist she should stay. Now, as the most controversial man in the Cabinet, he has inherited her certainty, her elan and her many enemies. Since he entered the Cabinet, he has also inherited Michael Heseltine's position as darling of the conference - and is the choice of many as the flamboyant leader of the future.This is the first biography of Michael Portillo.
