Sir Teddy Taylor obituary

The former Conservative MP Sir Teddy Taylor, who has died aged 80, was not just a Eurosceptic but a Europhobe; almost a single-issue politician defined by his passionate and lifelong opposition to the European Union. Admirers warmed to his eloquent, quickfire attacks on the European project, but to others he seemed obsessive, and in 1996 he admitted: “I am the biggest Euro-bore there ever was.” Nonetheless, few doubted his courage or the sincerity of his views, which did not help his career prospects.

Having entered the House of Commons in 1964, Taylor was given a junior post in Edward Heath’s government, but resigned in 1971 when Heath applied for entry to the European Economic Community. That act set the stage for his later rebellions over contributions to the EEC budget in 1985, the Single European Act in 1986, entry to the European exchange rate mechanism in October 1990 and the Maastricht treaty during 1992-93.

He was also one of the eight Tory MPs who had the whip withdrawn when they refused to support John Major’s government on a vote of confidence in 1994, and voted for John Redwood when he challenged Major in a leadership contest in 1995. As a result of such dissent, Taylor spent almost his entire 40-year parliamentary career on the backbenches.

He was born in Glasgow to Minnie and Edward, a stockbroker’s clerk, and educated at Glasgow high school and Glasgow University, where he studied economics and politics and became involved in Conservative political affairs. From 1958 he worked for a year as a journalist on the Glasgow Herald, and then spent five years as an industrial relations officer with the Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association. A fluent communicator, he stood unsuccessfully for the Conservatives in the Glasgow Springburn seat in the 1959 general election, aged just 22. The following year he was elected a councillor in the working-class Cathcart ward on Glasgow city council, and he won the Cathcart parliamentary seat in the 1964 general election.

The youngest member of the Commons at the time, Taylor soon attracted attention with ready quotes for the media, and opposition to sanctions on Rhodesia, following Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence in 1965, and to David Steel’s abortion bill the following year. He was a tough-minded Tory, regularly calling for the restoration of capital punishment, birching and stiffer prison sentences, as well as a more conciliatory stance towards apartheid South Africa (in the 1980s he called for Nelson Mandela to be shot, though later said he had been joking).

He espoused traditional values, opposing Sunday trading, abortion and the legalisation of homosexual acts in Scotland, and was an elder in the Church of Scotland. Though he was on the losing side in many of the causes he advocated, on Europe the Conservative party had moved in his direction by the time he retired in 2005.

Taylor was instantly recognisable in the House of Commons. Short, stocky, bald and dressed in a pinstripe suit, he always seemed poised for a chat – or a more vigorous exchange of views. He was an early and long-serving member of such rightwing groups as the Monday Club, the 92 Group and the John Buchan Society, and helped found the European Reform Group. There was something of Nigel Farage about him, although minus the pint of beer, as he did not drink. His plans to create a Tory Teetotal Club in 1997 foundered because nobody joined. Three years later he urged the closing of all the bars in the Palace of Westminster, suggesting that a “dry” House of Commons would never have voted to enter the EEC.

In 1976 Margaret Thatcher had made him shadow Scottish secretary, on the resignation of the incumbent, Alick Buchanan-Smith, after she had abandoned the party’s support for devolution. She appointed Taylor “in desperation”, according to her biographer, Charles Moore, only after others had turned the post down. Even so, Taylor entertained the idea that he would become the actual Scottish secretary if the Tories came to power after the general election of 1979. But he lost his seat in Cathcart to Labour’s popular John Maxton; his defeat was on the largest anti-Conservative swing in the country and was the party’s only loss in Scotland (overall, it gained six seats). Thatcher appointed a more patrician kind of Tory, George Younger (Winchester and Oxford) to the post that Taylor coveted.

He returned to the Commons in 1980 at a byelection as member for Southend East, but by then his time had passed. Even though he shared many views with Thatcher, she never again considered him for office. Colleagues suspected that he had leaked shadow cabinet matters to the press and were concerned that he was too much the populist authoritarian.

Despite his regular defiance of the whips, Taylor still thought he deserved a post in government, and his rightwing admirers canvassed unsuccessfully for him to be home secretary. Eventually he complained to a whip that he could not see the point in carrying on unless he was promoted, but he remained an MP nonetheless.

Receiving a knighthood in 1991 did not appease him. Yet only weeks earlier he had announced that he could not accept a political honour because his wife would stop him.

Also that year, he visited Libya and obtained an apology and a cheque for £250,000 from its government in recognition of the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in front of the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. However, the Foreign Office reacted coolly and Fletcher’s mother said that a gift of “blood money” would be no substitute for the killer being placed on trial.

Outside parliament he held a number of directorships, including at Shepherd’s Foods, the grocery firm owned by his friend and fellow Tory MP Sir Richard Shepherd. In 2008 he published an autobiography, Teddy Boy Blue.

He is survived by his wife Sheila (nee Duncan), a childhood friend and former social worker whom he married in 1970, and by their two sons and one daughter.

• Edward Macmillan Taylor, politician, born 18 April 1937; died 20 September 2017