Popular and cheerful party chair under John Major whose career fell victim to vicious infighting over Europe The once…

The once promising political career of Jeremy Hanley, a cabinet minister in his role as chair of the Tory party, who has died aged 80, fell victim to the vicious Conservative infighting over Europe that characterised the years of John Major’s government.

Promoted by Major in 1994 to run Conservative central office, he was expected to restore its finances and the morale of the party faithful – both in effect bankrupt – while simultaneously seeking to repair the widening schism on Europe and whip the organisation into election-winning shape.

Major privately described Hanley’s task as “the hardest job in politics”, and the new man’s surprise appointment prompted headlines in the biggest reshuffle of that government.

He was chosen because he was clever, popular and cheerful, a pro-Europe loyalist who did not plot and who got on with everybody. But his elevation to such a high-profile post with a seat in the cabinet after less than four years as a minister was risky. Before accepting the post, he had been the first to question his own suitability, and his doubts were widely shared in the Westminster talking-shop.

Eight weeks into the job, Hanley committed a spectacular unforced error, mistakenly dismissing a ringside riot at a boxing match as “just exuberance”, apparently not realising the prime minister had hours earlier called for an end to “yob culture”. Although he swiftly admitted the blunder – “caught on the hop”, “new to this game”, “made a mistake”– it was already too late. Thereafter his every utterance was parsed by the press in pursuit of possible perfidy.

In addition, the anti-European faction within the Conservative party saw this as an opportunity to foment further problems for Major, the man who had put him in the post. “Some of the ‘bastards’ [as the prime minister had been inadvertently recorded calling his own party critics] thought he was too supportive of John Major and didn’t give sufficient attention to their own concerns,” according to one of Hanley’s friends. He was caught in the crosshairs of the European infighting and subject to constant sniping.

After a number of other infelicitous comments the new chair was nicknamed “the Gaffer” and “hapless Hanley”, and consequently suffered a personal loss of confidence that was irrecoverable.

Major was sympathetic about the impact of the media intrusion on the Hanley family, telling his beleaguered colleague “he knew what we were going through”, but Hanley was still hurt when he was inevitably moved less than a year later, despite having cut the party overdraft by £4.5m.

Replaced by Brian Mawhinney, a more acceptable choice to the party Eurosceptics, he accepted demotion from the cabinet to become a minister of state at the Foreign Office, a post he held until the 1997 general election tidal wave swept him from his marginal constituency. Thus the casual cruelty of politics, so often a side-effect of the turntable of luck, ended his parliamentary career at the age of 51.

Until that point, Hanley had been popular enough to hold the seat of Richmond and Barnes in south-west London for 14 years, from its inception in 1983, when he had won it with a tiny majority over the Liberal candidate. At the time it was rated the third most winnable seat by the then alliance of the Liberals and the emergent Social Democratic party: but Hanley not only won it but subsequently twice increased his majority.

The seat was redrawn to the Conservative’s advantage for the 1997 election and renamed Richmond Park, but he knew before polling day that he would be beaten by the national swing towards Tony Blair’s New Labour.

He was awarded a consolatory knighthood in Major’s retirement honours and returned to his previous business career as a chartered accountant and chartered secretary. He led a number of international trade and investment missions, acquired a host of directorships and was active as a City liveryman, serving as master of the Chartered Accountants’ Company in 2005-06.

Born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, Jeremy was the son of two actors, Jimmy Hanley, who had starred with Jack Warner in The Blue Lamp (the TV film that became the inspiration for Dixon of Dock Green) and Dinah Sheridan, star of the movies Genevieve and The Railway Children. He had an elder sister, who died three days after birth, and a younger sister, Jenny Hanley, who subsequently became a television presenter. Jeremy was four when his parents’ marriage ended. He had a poor relationship with his stepfather, Sir John Davis, the president of Rank Organisation, from whom his mother was later divorced on grounds of cruelty.

Jeremy was discouraged from acting by his mother, and he joined the accountancy firm Peat Marwick Mitchell at the age of 18, from Rugby school in Warwickshire. He qualified as a chartered accountant in 1969 and became a lecturer in law, taxation and accountancy, co-founding in 1973 the Financial Training Company, once coaching a young Mark Thatcher for an examination, and serving as its deputy chair until 1990.

Becoming a supporter of the Bow Group conservative thinktank in 1974, he also started to become active in Conservative politics in London. He fought the Lambeth Central byelection in 1978 and the same seat in the 1979 general election, losing on both occasions to Labour’s John Tilley.

In 1981 he was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond, having campaigned vigorously on local issues such as aircraft noise and transport to secure the seat, and he then became chair of the Conservative Candidates’ Association in 1982-83 before his win in the renamed seat of Richmond and Barnes.

On more than one occasion during his political career Hanley deployed his famous mother to political effect, sending her in his place to party events he was unable to attend. Margaret Thatcher also came to his aid, at the 1983 general election, by visiting his constituency seat, to which he was returned with a 74-vote majority. When Thatcher threw an impromptu victory party after that 1983 triumph, Hanley thanked her for helping to get him over the line, to which she retorted briskly that “you won the 74 votes Jeremy; I won the other 20,000”.

At Westminster he was a member of the home affairs select committee from 1983 to 1987, and after increasing his majority 20-fold to 1,766 in the 1987 general election, he became parliamentary private secretary to the arts minister, Richard Luce. In 1990 he was briefly PPS to Chris Patten, before joining Major’s government as a junior minister at Northern Ireland. In 1993 he was promoted to minister of state at the Ministry of Defence, with responsibility for the armed services and in charge of implementing a programme of forces’ cuts.

Hanley was a member of Mensa, a good chess player and a renowned mimic. In 1968 he married Helene Mason, from whom he was divorced in 1973, when he married Verna (nee Stott), a teacher, the former wife of Viscount Villiers. He is survived by Verna, their son, Joel, a stepdaughter, Sophia, and his son Jason, from his first marriage.