Cecil Parkinson, former Tory cabinet minister and favourite of Margaret Thatcher

Died: January 25, 2016

CECIL Parkinson, who has died of cancer aged 84, was a Conservative politician who will be remembered as the comeback king of British politics. Twice he was brought back from the wilderness to high political office - once when William Hague appointed him as party chairman on taking over the leadership from John Major in 1997 and, of course, when Margaret Thatcher brought him back after the Sara Keays affair.

Just before the Conservative Party conference at Blackpool in October, 1983, it emerged that Parkinson's former Commons secretary was expecting his child and, despite a fierce rearguard action by senior party figures to try to save his career, Parkinson was forced to resign from Cabinet on the last day of conference.

He had widely been regarded as the architect of Thatcher's General Election victory that year (they were famously pictured waving to the crowds outside Conservative Central Office on election night) but he resigned after only four months as Trade and Industry Secretary and his political career seemed over.

The events at Blackpool were dramatic and were to haunt Parkinson well into the 1990s. The Keays affair also deprived him, arguably, of the chance of obtaining the two offices he really wanted, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor, the former of which was thought definitely to be within his grasp.

Mrs Thatcher accepted Parkinson's resignation just after 8am in her Blackpool hotel suite after an agonised night. Six hours later she was trying to rally her party in what should have been a triumphant conference speech, but the Parkinson/Keays affair overshadowed the day, Thatcher making one reference to not forgetting the man who "brilliantly organised" the election campaign.

Miss Keays had torpedoed the attempt to rescue Parkinson by issuing a statement to the press just after midnight when the Prime Minister was working on her speech.

Mr Parkinson and his wife Ann, who remained loyal to him throughout, had gone to bed. At a small private party earlier, the general relief that Parkinson and Ann had survived their own conference ordeal on the Thursday with dignity was shattered by Miss Keay's statement of what she called the "full facts".

She claimed that he first refused to tell the Prime Minister of their relationship before she formed her new government; that he asked her on polling day, June 9, to marry him, and that he was going to tell Mrs Thatcher that he wanted a divorce.

Miss Keays claimed, however, that nothing happened until September 1, after Parkinson had been away on holiday with his wife, when he reneged on his promise of marriage. "My baby was conceived in a long-standing and loving relationship which I had allowed to continue because I believed in our eventual marriage," she said.

At 2am Parkinson asked for a meeting with the Prime Minister in the Imperial Hotel. They had both studied the full text of Miss Keays's statement. They spoke only briefly and Mrs Thatcher told him to go back to bed and get some sleep before any final decision was taken about his future.

By breakfast time it was clear Parkinson could not be in a position to rebut Miss Keays's claims about his conduct if he remained in office. Soon after 8am Downing Street announced his resignation and the conference was told at 10.30.

Parkinson and his wife headed back down south for consultations with lawyers but, in the longer term, Parkinson must have felt he was doomed to a life on the back benches.

It was not to be, however. Such was Mrs Thatcher's regard for him that she brought him back as Energy Secretary from 1987-89 and then moved him to Transport from 1989-90, when he resigned as soon as Mrs Thatcher was deposed.

At Energy, he played a significant part in privatisation of the electricity industry, but he never seemed comfortable in the job and, indeed, was criticised by the cross-party Commons Energy Select Committee over evidence on the true costs of nuclear power.

His problems at Transport included dealing with the on-going aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and the row over funding of the Channel Tunnel rail link, but the resignation of the arch-Thatcherite when John Major became Prime Minister came as no surprise, and he proceeded to become something of a thorn in Mr Major's side.

In 1991 he became chairman of Conservative Way Forward, a Thatcherite pressure group within the party, and even went so far at one stage as to say that, under John Major, the leadership seemed to have lost control.

He went to the Lords in 1992, being raised to the peerage as Baron Parkinson of Carnforth in the County of Lancashire but, to the general raising of eyebrows all round, was plucked from relative obscurity by William Hague for a second stint as party chairman in 1997. It was thought at the time that Mr Hague wanted someone with experience to sort out a Central Office and party machine shell-shocked by the Tories' massive election defeat that year.

Cecil Parkinson's abilities were recognised early in life. The son of a Lancashire railwayman, he won a scholarship to the Royal Lancaster Grammar School and from there went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he won a blue for athletics.

He became a chartered accountant and a director of many companies, but was not always a true blue, having joined the Labour Party at school and campaigned for it in the 1950 General Election.

By 1970, however, he was standing as a Tory hopeful in the safe Labour seat of Northampton. He trimmed the Labour majority to 1,000 and was rewarded for a fine performance by being chosen, and elected, in a by-election at Enfield West later that year after the death of the Conservative Chancellor Ian Macleod. He went on to be MP for Hertfordshire South from 1974-83, and Hertsmere from 1983-92.

In the Commons, he was a whip in the mid-1970s, both in government and opposition, was made a trade minister in 1979, and was Paymaster General from 1981-83.

Parkinson never appeared to have a great intellect, nor was he a particularly effective performer at the Commons despatch box. But he always appeared calm, relaxed and in control during television and radio interviews. Above all, however, he was charming - a facet of his character which may at once have proved to be a blessing and a curse.

He married Ann in 1957 and they had three daughters.