For years I saw Malcolm Rifkind as an unusually principled politician, one of the very best and brightest talents in the Conservative Party. After the rout of Scottish Tories in 1997, he decided to stay and fight for his old seat, Edinburgh Pentlands, rather than follow Michael Forsyth and Ian Lang along the high road to the House of Lords.
I was working covering Scottish politics for The Times then, and during the 2001 campaign I had a chance to see how hard he worked at at a time where he had little national profile. He was giving his all, fighting for Scotland at a time when his party had pretty much given up on it. Had 900 people voted a different way in Edinburgh, he would have succeeded in fighting his way back to parliament in 2001. It would have been an incredible comeback.
Stature, grit, oratory, courage — I became quite a Malky fan, and saw him as a potential Tory leader.
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