Having graduated from Cambridge in 1975 with a first-class history degree Michael Portillo rose quickly through the ranks of the Conservative Party as a researcher before winning the Enfield Southgate by-election in 1984. So began an equally meteoric rise to power – within four years Margaret Thatcher had made him a Minister and four years later John Major brought him into the Cabinet in 1992, the same year he was admitted to the Privy Council. Michael went on to suffer…