I worked with Jeremy Hunt through thick and thin. The Tories are lucky to still have him

Tis the season for political obituaries, but in one shock result, Jeremy Hunt has narrowly escaped his own political funeral.

As his right hand woman in Government for a decade, I got a closer glimpse than anyone at successive PM’s favourite Cabinet Minister. Ask any Westminster insider and they will tell you: in a world of narcissim and vanity, Jeremy Hunt stands out for his decency and integrity, and now looks set to play a central role in rebuilding the Tory party.

Thanks to his huge personal following in Surrey – just watch his gracious speech at his count to get a sense of why he’s so well loved locally – he has narrowly avoided becoming the first Chancellor to lose their seat. So like Ken Clarke in 1997, he is now defenestrated as Chancellor having stabilised the economy, slayed inflation and delivered the soft landing that many predicted was impossible. At the same time, he quietly set in motion long term structural reforms on NHS workforce planning, sickness benefits and business taxation that will ironically assist Labour’s “growth mission” more than any of their own policies (with the possible exception of planning reform).

Step further back in political history, and as the longest serving Health Secretary he introduced rigorous, Ofsted style inspections for hospitals, care homes and GP surgeries that saw 2 million more patients being treated in good or outstanding hospitals by the time he left. Most poignantly for me as a mother of five, he introduced a laser-like focus on reducing baby deaths in the NHS – with stillbirths down 20% and neonatal deaths down 12% as a result. This is the equivalent of 2,910 lives saved or 770 fewer deaths per year.

When Jeremy was called upon to rescue the economy under Liz Truss, the historian Simon Schama described him as an “iron fist in a velvet glove”. I’ve never heard a better description. The steel in Jeremy Hunt’s spine has consistently been an under-appreciated fact in British politics over the last decade. He went toe to toe with the UK’s toughest trade union – the BMA – in the last doctors strikes, steadfastly refusing to blink as they ratcheted up the pressure with a series of A&E strikes. Only one of them was left standing: the junior doctors’ leader had to resign and Jeremy went on to become the longest serving Health Secretary.

I once witnessed him cut short a meeting and order a group of senior officials to vacate his office immediately because they had failed to prepare adequately. I also watched him calmly inform Liz Truss that he was planning to go on TV and state that she had made serious mistakes and he would have to put taxes up as a result of those mistakes moments after he was appointed as Chancellor.

He is no Tory wet, but what he does demonstrate uniquely is extraordinary humanity and empathy. When Jeremy encounters people suffering, he moves heaven and earth to assist them. James Titcombe, a bereaved father who lost his baby son, became a dear friend to Jeremy after they spent hours together working on patient safety reforms. As Foreign Secretary, he became close to Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe’s, her husband and her daughter – regularly staying in touch with them by phone and WhatsApp while she was in prison.

As Health Secretary, he introduced a new initiative to help the children of alcoholics as he was so moved by the testimony of then Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth, who had spoken out about his personal experience. I have lost track of the number of people who told me they were moved by Jeremy’s kindness after he sent hand-written letters to empathise in their moments of pain. Without fail, he meets everyone on a human level, from the most junior staff member to his Cabinet colleagues – remembering birthdays, enquiring about family members and exuding decency and integrity.

Jeremy simply refuses to engage in the gossip and backbiting that consumes most people in Westminster. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling’s seminal poem If: “being briefed against, he doesn’t engage in briefing, and being leaked about, he doesn’t give way to leaking”.

That’s one of the reasons that it’s never leaked before that he had to be talked down from resigning on four occasions during his recent Cabinet career – every time because his conscience struggled to reconcile the constraints of collective responsibility with his deeply held public service values. Scrapping nurse bursaries, failing to reform social care, scrapping HS2 and failing to invest sufficiently in the NHS all pushed him to the brink of resignation at various stages of his career.  I was the cynical political advisor urging him to prioritise living to fight another day at all costs; he was the principled public servant whose values were so strong that he struggled to live with himself when forced to compromise.

Warm words about senior Tories aren’t in vogue right now. The herd moves quickly; you can be Chancellor one day and footnote in history tomorrow. But we Brits are a generous and fair-minded people. Today let’s take a moment to recognise a good Cabinet innings from a classy, competent and compassionate public servant. A quiet yet steely reformer who stepped up to rescue the economy when his country needed him. He leaves a sound legacy of economic stewardship that we must hope Labour does not squander.

Christina Robinson was a special adviser to Jeremy Hunt