‘The stroke could have killed me’

When facing an audience of ambulance workers in a speech last Friday, Andrew Lansley had the ideal joke to warm them up. ‘People always imagine politicians are a bit brain dead,’ he said. ‘Well I am — and I have the MRI scan to prove it.’ He was being absolutely serious. In a freak medical incident while playing cricket in Kent 14 years ago, the shadow health secretary became one of the 150,000 people in Britain to suffer a stroke.

While he has made no secret about his condition, few in Westminster are aware of it. Yet plenty of clues exist for those with an eye to see them. Mr Lansley chairs the all-parliamentary group for stroke, and has bombarded ministers with questions on the subject for years. Even when he was a backbencher it seemed to be a preoccupation for him. Reclining in the chair of his sparsely decorated Commons office, he explains how his near obsession with the subject has been fuelled by more than professional interest.

‘All of us have journeys, some series of incidents in our lives which impact on us,’ he says. His journey dates back to the summer after the 1992 general election, when he was not the sensitive Tory moderniser he is seen as today. Then, he ran the Conservative research department and had a reputation as a right-winger in the mould of Norman Tebbit, whom he had served as a civil servant.

His all-star staff at the CRD included David Cameron as political secretary and Steve Hilton, now Tory communications director, as the graduate trainee. Ed Llewellyn, now Mr Cameron’s chief of staff, led the CRD’s foreign and defence section. Mr Lansley was running the group which is now running the Conservative party — and they had just helped John Major win a general election, against all expectations.