John Cole

Born: Novemeber 23, 1927; Died: November 7, 2013.

JOHN COLE, who has died aged 85, was the BBC's political editor between 1981 and 1992, covering the sweeping and controversial changes wrought by Margaret Thatcher's government, during which time his even-handed reporting and Belfast accent made him a household name.

But Cole's journalist career extended back decades, at the Belfast Telegraph, The Guardian and as deputy editor of The Observer before he moved into broadcasting. Nor did he stop working for the Corporation after reaching the mandatory retirement age, continuing to contribute to radio and television.

Unlike many print journalists, Cole was a broadcasting natural; the knowledge and rigorous accuracy he had developed on newspapers translated, on screen, to an authoritative command of the story, a scrupulous neutrality and a gently incisive interviewing style. Even his voice, sent up by Private Eye in its satirical political column which often began "Hondootedly Mossis Thatcher…" and later by Spitting Image's puppet, became - by the strange quirk that the British public apparently thinks regional accents indicate probity - a mark of his trustworthiness.

John Morrison Cole was born on November 23, 1927, in Belfast, where his father George ran a small electrical firm. Though the Coles were a Unionist family, many of his father's employees were Catholics and, as his son later wrote, while schools were segregated and he had only a few Catholic friends in childhood, Nationalist and Loyalist frictions were minimal during the 1930s and 1940s. He was not unaware of past Troubles, however, having been told by his mother how she cradled a dying man in her arms after he had been shot outside the shop where she worked.

John was educated at Belfast Royal Academy and was a keen member of the Boys' Brigade and supporter of Distillery FC. At 17 he became a cub reporter on the Belfast Telegraph, where he obtained an early scoop by interviewing Clem Attlee, then Prime Minister, as he crossed the border, beating reporters who were waiting elsewhere for a press conference to the deadline for the evening paper's final edition.

Cole was impressed by Attlee's ability to speak in finished paragraphs and "decided there might be more to journalism than reporting the agricultural estimates at Stormont for all eternity". He spent 11 years in Belfast, becoming industrial correspondent and picking up a degree (from the University of London, externally) before moving, in 1956, to the Manchester Guardian.

The Suez crisis loomed over the by-elections he covered in his early months, and a rash of strikes that summer led him to write about trades unions. In turn, it prompted a move to London the following year as Labour Correspondent of The Guardian (as the paper was shortly to become). Though Cole wrote opposing the union block vote as early as 1957, Hugh Gaitskill had suspicions that he was a Trotskite or, worse, a Wilsonist. Though Wilson was a valuable early contact, he became less useful as party leader. It gave Cole an early lesson: that while all politicians think journalists prejudiced, their only real prejudice, in his view, is "for discovering news ahead of their rivals; and being proved right".

Cole became news editor in 1963 and, after spells in America as an Eisenhower fellow and to cover elections, became, by the 1970 general election, deputy editor to the former Herald journalist and later controller of BBC Scotland Alastair Hetherington.

In 1975, after publishing The Poor of the Earth, a book commissioned by the UN's International Labour Organization, he took up the same role at The Observer under Donald Trelford, having been passed over for the editorship of his old paper. But in 1981, after he had given evidence to the Monopolies Commission against the paper's new owner, Tiny Rowland, he was, out of the blue, offered his role at the BBC.

Though Cole never made any secret of his general support for trades unions and the Labour Party, his scrupulous impartiality on camera soon won him respect from politicians and viewers alike. That his interests were to prove the central battleground for the Thatcher government's policies gave his reports yet more authority and, though he offered candid opinions on the likely outcome of political events, he never failed to distinguish between reporting and comment; his judgments were delivered as assessments based on the facts, and never skewed by his own beliefs.

That judgement was spectacularly vindicated by his assessment, in November 1990, that Mrs Thatcher might stand down rather than risk defeat in the final ballot for the Conservative leadership, something he had first suspected the previous October, and which he confirmed by assiduously sounding out backbench Tories. Others, less well-informed, openly questioned his conclusions, but he was vindicated.

All the same, Cole had a healthy regard for the Tory leader, whom he described as "at her courageous best" when he interviewed her on the pavement the morning after the Brighton bomb. Cole had only just returned to work, after suffering a heart attack at the Commons eight months before, but stayed up all night to cover the story.

Despite his retirement, and further health problems, he continued to work for the BBC covering the Major government, contributing to Today and Newsnight and producing a political memoir, As It Seemed To Me, in 1995. In 2001 he published a novel set in Ireland, A Clouded Peace.

In person, Cole was highly determined and could be slightly abrasive when thwarted, but was exceptionally good company, thriving on political gossip over a drink. He accepted that his family had had to put up with an "obsessional" when it came to his work.

In his later years Cole took up golf and travelled. He was a committed member of the United Reform Church in Kingston-upon-Thames, near his home in Surrey (he was a familiar sight on the late-night trains from London, usually reading Hansard on his way home).

He is survived by his wife Madge, whom he married in 1956, and four sons.