Eric Forth, the colourful and provocative hard-right Conservative MP who relished a reputation for representing the party's "Doc Marten tendency", has died of cancer aged 61. The child of a Glasgow tenement who became a teenage communist before working his way up the political ladder from an Essex council seat, he saw himself as a libertarian and outsider, and soon turned against his early enthusiasm for Europe.
Tory MP for the safe seat of Bromley and Chislehurst in Kent since 1997 (his majority last year was 13,342), he moved after having been displaced by boundary changes from Mid-Worcestershire for 14 years. Before that he was the MEP for Birmingham North (1979-84).
At a private dinner he once said: "All this sucking up to minorities is ridiculous. There are millions of people in this country who are white, Anglo-Saxon and bigoted and they need to be represented." But he was a more complex figure than his crafted public persona (complete with lurid ties and waistcoats) allowed, and tributes were paid to his assiduous work as an independent MP from all sides of the Commons.
MPs' tolerance was frequently tested during his career by his sadistic habit of killing innocuous private members' bills such as the fireworks bill, by shouting: "Object!" at the last minute, enough to block the bill. The hunting bill was another such target. It was Forth's sincere conviction that there is far too much legislation, most of it bad or pointless, under all governments, and he saw it as his mission to curb it.
Yet, despite his distaste for his party's public schoolboys, for Labour's left-wingers, for gay people or for women MPs, he was deft enough to be pragmatic in office, at times even progressive.
When under secretary for education (1992-95) and minister for state for higher education (1995-97), he was complimented on all sides for his handling of special education, in contrast to the brickbats showered on his boss, John Patten. He also sparkled as shadow leader of the Commons (2001-03).
After reaching Westminster in 1983, he quickly established himself as a Tebbit-in-waiting by calling for the restoration of hanging and the denationalisation of coal, rail, post and electricity. In his maiden speech he opposed the sex equality bill.
He opposed imposing anti-racist regulations on the police. Having backed the Rugby Union tour of South Africa, he was invited there by its government. He was one of 16 Tory MPs who defied the whip to vote against an increased contribution to the EU budget. He opposed spending vast sums on combating Aids, which was largely "self-inflicted".
In 1988 Margaret Thatcher promoted him to the Department of Trade and Industry, making him consumer protection minister. He developed a new technique when he did not agree with the policy he was espousing on behalf of the government, reading the speeches written for him by civil servants in a flat and halting monotone, like a schoolboy.
As one of the 25 Thatcherites in the newly formed "No Turning Back" group of rightwing ideologues, he was influential in 1990 (by now an employment minister under Michael Howard) in persuading other Thatcherites that John Major was her most suitable successor. Major switched him to education, still as an under secretary, in April 1992.
He thought of resigning over the EU Maastricht treaty but responded to Major's appeal for loyalty, partly because he liked his job.
After the 1997 Labour landslide he became a wild card. Having been frustrated by Michael Portillo's loss of his seat, Forth ran the leadership campaign for Peter Lilley in 1997, but then switched to backing William Hague, who won. By 2000 he was threatening to unseat Hague as leader unless he won 100 additional seats in the coming election, and abandoned Portillo over his friendly attitude toward gay people and ethnic minorities. After Hague's 2001 defeat, Forth and David Maclean ran the David Davis leadership bid on the heterosexual wing of the party. The winner, Iain Duncan Smith, named him shadow leader of the Commons. In a memo later leaked, he promised "trench warfare" against the Labour government and denounced "political correctness" even in the IDS camp.
Inevitably he became an anti-IDS plotter, one who also refused to back Howard's "coronation" when IDS fell in 2003 and Davis declined to stand - to his annoyance.
It was hardly surprising that he mocked Labour's parliamentary reforms, designed, he said, to turn the Commons into a legislative factory. He also confided that fashionable concern for constituency work merely encouraged voters to seek help. He claimed to hold no surgeries.
Having divorced his first wife, Linda St Clair, with whom he had two daughters, in 1994, he is survived by his second wife, Carroll Goff, whom he married in a no frills $25 ceremony in New Mexico.
· Eric Forth, politician, born September 9 1944; died May 17 2006