Page 757 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book
P. 757
6 February 2023
Robert Key, amiable Tory MP who championed
Salisbury and took up the cause of haemophiliacs
who had contracted HIV – obituary
He wanted the Army to take on the hippies at Stonehenge and supported tough action on squatters
and the return of conscription
Robert Key in 2000 CREDIT: Jeff Overs
Robert Key, who has died aged 77, was Conservative MP for Salisbury for 27 years; he was a junior
minister for the final weeks of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and for four years under John
Major, ultimately as Minister for Roads and Traffic.
Before entering politics, he taught economics successfully to the future Chancellor Alistair Darling
at Loretto, and less so to Mark Thatcher, at Harrow.
Tiggerish and amiable, Key shared the physical bulk of the Kent and England cricketer of the same
name. At the Department of Transport, his colleague Steve Norris christened him “the Colossus of
Roads”.
His election for Salisbury gave him Edward Heath as a constituent. Key served as his political
secretary for a year before breaking off the arrangement, reckoning that Heath’s judgment was
clouded by his personal animosity toward Mrs Thatcher. When she appointed Key an environment
minister in October 1990, Heath was heard to mutter: “Poor sod.”
