Political Career
Morrison was first elected to the House of Commons in the general election of February 1974 for Chester. He had been one of the first backbench MPs to urge Margaret Thatcher to stand for the Party leadership in 1975. He was Deputy Conservative Party Chairman under Norman Tebbit, having been previously a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister of State in the Department of Employment. In 1987, he was Minister of State for Energy.
He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and was the leader of her campaign team in the Conservative leadership election in the same year. He was relaxed about Thatcher's prospects and predicted an easy win for her. Alan Clark went to visit Morrison one afternoon during the campaign and found him asleep in his office. Morrison claimed that he had enough MPs down as Thatcher supporters to ensure she would win. After the first ballot among Conservative MPs had shown that Thatcher did not have enough votes to win outright, Morrison suggested to her that she should consult the Cabinet one-by-one to gauge support. He said to her: "Prime Minister, if you haven't won then there are a lot of Tory MPs who are lying". He stood down at the 1992 general election, being succeeded as MP for Chester by Gyles Brandreth.
Morrison died of a heart attack early in the morning of 13 July 1995, aged 51.
Read more about this topic: Peter Morrison
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)