Profile: Oliver Letwin

His latest emergence, blinking into the sunlight, is at least consistent with his past record. Mr Letwin enjoys a reputation more for foolhardy comments and gaffes than for his contribution – impressive though it may be – to political thought.

Throwing his documents into public bins is in line with some of Mr Letwin’s previous exploits. Most notably he was believed to be the Tory who said during the 2001 general election campaign that his party could slash taxes by £20 billion a year by 2006.

He was shadow Treasury minister at the time and the party leadership was forced to slap him down and order him into hiding for much of the remainder of the election campaign.

He also let a man into his home early one morning on the pretext that the visitor wanted to go to the lavatory. The man turned out to be a burglar whom Mr Letwin, dripping wet and clad only in a bath towel, chased down the road.

In October 2003 Mr Letwin, an Old Etonian, created a furore by saying that if necessary he would go out on the streets and beg rather than send his children to the local state school. He later apologised.

He has never fitted the typical Tory mould. From his schooldays, where he was known as “Oliver Leftwing”, he has always been something of an outsider.

And whereas most Tories would be mortally offended if described as a liberal, Mr Letwin positively wallowed in it. “Of course I’m a liberal,” he once declared.

When he became shadow Chancellor in 2003, he gave up his City portfolios after Labour MPs had claimed that they would be in conflict with his role at Westminster.

Mr Letwin was born in 1956, the grandson of Latvian Jews who had to flee the pogroms in Kiev for America before the First World War.

He worked as a merchant banker, a financial adviser and a journalist before entering parliament in 1997 as MP for Dorset West.