Today the country lost a great patriot and I lost a great friend, writes Nadhim Zahawi

Norman Tebbit was the first amongst his cohort to congratulate me on my selection as an MP back in 2010, and he was a frequent strong supporter ever since. I shall miss the frequent meetings, and will forever admire the deep love of Britain and its prosperity that characterised every single interaction with him.

Official obituaries will chart the incredible journey he undertook, and the way he brought both muscle and heart to the Thatcher Revolution that saved this country in the 1980s. What I want to focus on is one story that summed up the great man I was proud to know. Norman invited me on a shoot with several of his friends, and I learned that he was an unbelievably good shot. Much as in politics, he didn’t miss.

I asked him what his secret was. “I call every target Tony or Gordon and I always hit them”. Politically incorrect, funny, with an underlying steel, it summed up almost everything about the man.

But not quite everything.

After a day in the field, when we returned to our families for dinner, I watched the way he tended to his beloved wife, Margaret Tebbit. He was so gentle, so utterly in love and so diligent in the way that he cared for her, even decades after the disgusting IRA attack that left her so injured.

That was Norman Tebbit – ferocious enough as Party Chairman to dominate the media agenda from Sunday mornings right through the week; and gentle enough to be a caring, compassionate husband. Far from the leather jacketed caricature as seen on Spitting Image, he was a deeply intelligent, capable organiser who was dedicated to his country, his party, his family. Norman Tebbit set the standard to which all subsequent Chairmen of the Party, not to mention all members of the cabinet, should aspire in their loyalty, seriousness, and capability to just get things done.

His great colleague and ideological ally Margaret Thatcher once joked of Willie Whitelaw that every prime minister needs a willy; I think every prime minister needs a Norman Tebbit. May he rest in peace, and be reunited with his beloved wife.

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Nadhim Zahawi is a former Conservative minister and MP for Stratford-on-Avon.

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