Peter Morrison - Political Career

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.