Disloyalty is the secret weapon of the Tory Party.

After his retirement he was expelled from the mainstream Conservative party for backing the Pro-Euro Conservative Party in the 1999 European Parliament election. In 1980 he sparked controversy by writing an anonymous article in The Observer signed 'by a Tory' in which he criticised Thatcher's 'A level economics' and called her 'didactic tart and obstinate'. He died the next year in Hereford from prostate cancer aged 69.