Peter Lilley: Anything To Declare?

“We came to think that it didn’t matter what people thought about you as long as you got the right results,” he says. “It didn’t matter in that period if people disliked us as long as they feared Labour more than they disliked us.

“While Labour was unable to win elections, all it could do was attack the Conservatives’ motive and character, and we didn’t even bother to defend ourselves.”

Mr Lilley suffered more than most from some of that hostility. Although he insists he was never aware of being personally unpopular, he recalls he was the victim of vicious and inaccurate rumours put about in Westminster that he was secretly gay.

While his glamorous artist wife Gail dismissed them at the time, saying she found it “hilarious,” Mr Lilley never commented on the rumours, which helped ensure that no newspaper printed them and they did not gain wider currency in the country.

Discussing them for the first time, he seems more troubled than upset, saying he never understood where the stories emerged from.

“I didn’t like the rumour-mongering,” Mr Lilley says. “I didn’t mind so much for me but for my mother and sister and wife, it wasn’t nice. I never found out why [the rumours were put about].” ...

Daily Telegraph.

Maybe cos everyone thought you were bumming Michael Portillo...