As Thatcher loyalist and scourge of the trade unions dies at 94, one former Tory PM delcares: 'They don't make 'em like Norman any more'

LORD Tebbit was hailed a hero of the Conservative party yesterday, with former prime minister David Cameron saying: “They don’t make “em like Norman any more.”

- By David Williamson Chief Political Commentator

Tory leaders past and present led tributes after it was announced that the legendary former Tory chairman had died peacefully aged 94.

Norman Tebbit was Labour's worst nightmare — a working-class striver who decided that it was Margaret Thatcher, rather than the likes of Neil Kinnock, who offered the best hope of prosperity.

A giant of Thatcherism who defied terrorists and militant Left-wingers, he won cross-party respect for the years of loving care he devoted to his wife after an IRA bomb left her disabled.

Yesterday Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the nation had lost “one of its very best”. She added: “He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised.”

As Mrs Thatcher’s employment secretary in 1981, he made his famous speech in which he told how his unemployed father “got on his bike and looked for work”.

Ex-PM Boris Johnson said: “That wasn’t a heartless thing to say, as the Labour party claimed.

“It was because he believed in thrift and energy and self-reliance.

“It was because he rejected a culture of easy entitlement.”

Mr Johnson said Lord Tebbit “tamed the union bosses” and “helped pave the way for this country’s revival in the 1980s and 1990s”. He added: “At a time when the Labour government is now disastrously reversing those crucial reforms, we need to remember what he did — and why.”