Lord Spicer obituary

In his role as the Conservative party’s backbench ‘shop steward’, Lord Spicer supervised the election of three Conservative leaders. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Rex/ShutterstockA single politician has seldom made as much individual impact on the leadership of a political party as did Michael Spicer, Lord Spicer, former chairman of the Conservative 1922 Committee, who has died aged 76. During four turbulent years that followed the 2001 general election, in his role as the party