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THE MORAL MAZE
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 Wednesday 8.00-8.45pm |
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Michael Buerk chairs a live debate examining the moral issues behind one of the week's news stories: combative, provocative and engaging, |
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Michael Portillo |
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Michael attended a grammar school, Harrow County, and went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a first class degree in History.
He left Cambridge in 1975, and for a year worked for a shipping company. He moved to the Conservative Research Department in 1976, where he spent three years. At the General Election in 1979 he was responsible for briefing Margaret Thatcher before her press conferences.
He joined the Government in 1986, and remained a member until 1997. He was a whip, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Social Security, Minister of State for Transport, Minister of State for Local Government and Inner Cities; and as a Cabinet Minister was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Employment, and Secretary of State for Defence. He was admitted to the Privy Council in 1992.
After his 1997 electoral defeat, Michael turned to journalism. He wrote about walking as a pilgrim on the Santiago Way, and working as a hospital porter. He had a weekly column in The Scotsman. He had a three part series for Channel 4 about politics Portillo's Progress, and a programme in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½2's Great Railway Journeys series, which was partly a biography of his late father, and radio programmes on Wagner and the Spanish Civil War.
Michael was re-elected to Parliament in a by-election in Kensington and Chelsea in November 1999 and was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer February 2000 - September 2001. Following the Conservatives' election defeat in 2001, Michael unsuccessfully contested the leadership of the party. In 2005 Michael left the House of Commons.
He has made a number of television programmes for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½2 including Art That Shook the World: Richard Wagner's Ring.ÌýIn 2003 he began the weekly political discussion programme This Week on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½1 with fellow presenters Andrew Neil and Diane Abbott MP. Beginning in 2004 Michael became a weekly columnist on The Sunday Times. |
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Listen again no longer available
Michael has presented The Moral Maze since it began in 1990.