Chris Patten was the star of the 1979 intake of Conservative MPs. In today’s unattractive phrase, he ticked all the boxes. Head of the Conservative Research Department at the absurdly early age of 27, he acquired an early and easy familiarity with power and the powerful that sat attractively with his relatively humble origins and reassured the rest of us that the nation and the party were indeed open to all. His public manner matched his charm in private: a sort of demotic Balliol punctuated by an occasionally menacing and explosive laugh. He could be ‘gobsmacked’, but he can translate Thucydides. He also possessed all the political accomplishments most of the rest of us lacked. He shone brightly in the firmament.

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