Meet UK lawmaker Oliver Letwin, the policy guru behind Brexit breakthrough bid

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Oliver Letwin, the Conservative backbench MP who has shaken up British convention by wresting control of Brexit from the government, has been quietly wielding political influence since the 1980s.

Letwin, 62, regarded as an intellectual, is often in the shadows but when he does surface, his interventions make headlines.

With British lawmakers deadlocked on the way forward over Brexit, Letwin tabled a winning amendment on Monday that allows MPs to drive the Brexit process rather than the government in the days ahead.

The unprecedented move will be used to test support for various alternative Brexit options, such as retaining closer ties with the European Union.

“One of the things we will all have to do is to seek compromise,” he said.

But a Brexit ministry spokesman warned that Letwin’s amendment “upends the balance between our democratic institutions and sets a dangerous, unpredictable precedent for the future”.

Thatcher protege

The son of two Jewish-American academics, Letwin was schooled at the elite Eton College and then the prestigious Cambridge University.

He was on prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit from 1983 to 1986.

A 1985 memo, released 30 years later, revealed his response to a deadly London riot, suggesting plans to support black entrepreneurs would result in the money fueling the “disco and drug trade”.

In 2015, he apologized unreservedly, saying his memo was “badly worded and wrong.”

After working with the N M Rothschild investment bank, he won the safe Conservative seat of West Dorset in 1997 and has retained the southwest England constituency ever since.

A junior Conservative finance spokesman during the 2001 general election, he said he would like to cut taxes by £20 billion per year rather than the £8 billion official party line.

He became the party’s interior affairs and then finance spokesman in opposition between 2001 and 2005, his main run on the front benches.

Despite his intellect, the party loyalist is prone to eye-catching gaffes.

In 2002, he let two confidence tricksters into his home at 5:15 am to use the toilet. They stole jewelry and other items.

“I am the sort of person, I suppose, who lets people use the toilet when they say they are desperate,” he explained.

In 2003, he declared he would “give my right arm” to send his two children to a fee-paying school and would rather “go out on the streets and beg” than send them to the local inner London state school. He later apologized.

Cameron’s fixer

Close to David Cameron, Letwin helped set up the coalition government in 2010 that brought the Conservatives back into power.

As prime minister, Cameron then created the post of government policy minister especially for Letwin.

He became Cameron’s problem-solver.

In 2011, Letwin was caught dumping documents about the rendition of terror suspects in a London park rubbish bin.

Cameron bumped him up to a full cabinet position in 2014, giving him overall charge of the Cabinet Office, the ministry which supports the government.

Although a convert to euroscepticism under Thatcher, he backed staying in the EU in the 2016 referendum on Britain’s membership, feeling Cameron’s renegotiation would keep Britain in an economic union but without the federalism espoused by some in Brussels.

Letwin returned to the backbenches when Prime Minister Theresa May took over in the wake of the seismic vote.

But the veteran fixer is now being dubbed by colleagues a self-installed casual prime minister at the head of a parallel government, attempting to steer Britain through the Brexit impasse.