Former Defence Secretary John Nott dies aged 92

Sir John Nott, who served as Conservative defence secretary during the Falklands War, has died aged 92.

Following the Argentine invasion of the South Atlantic islands, Sir John twice offered to resign.

Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to accept, and he stayed on until the conclusion of the war after which he stepped down to focus on his business interests.

During a political career that spanned almost two decades, he also worked in the Treasury and trade department, as well as representing the Cornish constituency of St Ives.

However, he became better known for storming out of a television interview, when broadcaster Sir Robin Day pressing him on defence spending cuts referred to him as a “here today, gone tomorrow politician”.

Removing his microphone, he muttered “I’m sorry, I’m fed up of this interview. It’s ridiculous” and left the studio.

Recalling the interview in 2002 he told the BBC that Sir Robin “was just looking, as interviewers do, to create trouble”.

“I was thinking of my farm, and the harvest and the green fields of England and half my brain was saying, ‘why do I have to sit here listening to all this ridiculous questioning’.

“I just got bored with it and just walked out.”

He retained a sense of humour about the incident, later entitling his memoir ‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow’.

Born in 1932, he attended Kings Mead Schools, Steaford, Bradfield College and Trinity College Cambridge.

He also served as a lieutenant in the Gurkha Rifles, fighting in the Malayan Emergency, a communist-inspired revolt against the British colonial authorities.

In the 1966 election, he won St Ives for the National Liberals, a party which merged with the Conservatives two years later.

He slowly climbed the parliamentary ladder and in 1981, Margaret Thatcher appointed him as her defence secretary.

Over a year into the job he, along with the rest of the British government, was largely taken by surprise when the Falkland Islands where attacked by Argentina, who claim the territory as their own.

Sir John faced fierce criticism in the House of Commons for failing to foresee the attack and leaving the islands vulnerable to invasion.

Already bruised by rows over defence spending cuts the year before, he pleaded with Thatcher to be allowed to step down.

While she accepted the resignation of Lord Carrington, foreign secretary at the time, she refused to let Sir John to go saying “she could not possibly accept” when the British taskforce was still carrying out its operation to retake the islands.

Initially Sir John had been sceptical that the UK could regain the territory, however, his doubts were soon dispelled and later praised the deployment as “a remarkable achievement”.

Speaking to the BBC in 2002, he rejected criticism of the infamous sinking of the Argentine ship, the Belgrano, during which 323 sailors died.

“We didn’t start the war, – there was a great army of people who tried to somehow blame the war on us. (But) we were negotiating peacefully with the Argentinians,” he said.

“It was a terrible tragedy. I was shocked when all those Argentinian soldiers died. It was terrible really.”

However, he said that after that the incident the Argentine Navy was never put to sea, adding: “If we had had to contend against not only the very brave Argentine pilots but against the Argentine navy it would have been very much more difficult.”

Following Britain’s victory June 1982, Sir John again asked to be allowed to resign and eventually got his way in 1983.

He returned to banking, a career he had pursued before entering Parliament, taking up the chairmanship at Lazard Brothers.

He continued some involvement in politics and in 1999, then-Conservative leader William Hague, put him in charge of a commission to opposed the UK adopting the Euro.

During the 2016 Brexit referendum, he quit the Conservative Party in protest at what he called a “tirade of fear” coming from then prime minister David Cameron.

Later in life he took up writing, producing not only a political autobiography but two further books about the “adventures of an old age pensioner”.

Mr Wonderful Takes a Cruise and its sequel Mr Wonderful Seeks Immortality detail his trips to, among other places, Bromley, Balham and the nightclub Spearmint Rhino.

He is survived by his wife and three children including Sasha Swire, author of the memoir, Diary of an MP’s Wife.

Swire paid tribute to her father in a social media post: “RIP my beloved father, John Nott, protector, politician, farmer, me.”

Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said: “John Nott was an inspiring defence secretary and politician who stood up, alongside Margaret Thatcher, to aggression.

“His resolute determination to free British sovereign territory from tyranny is as important today as it was during the Falklands conflict.”