Hard man who dared face up to Thatcher

As a young man, Malcolm Rifkind bet his father a box of cigars he would be an MP by the age of 30. He won the bet three years early, gliding into Parliament as the youngest member in 1974, aged 27.

But the rest of Rifkind's career has been far from smooth, much of it fighting for survival during the Tory decline in Scotland.

Despite his owlish public image, the bespectacled former foreign secretary earned a reputation as a political hard man during those years, equally at home in a bareknuckle contest with Labour or a bitter Cabinet bust-up.

He was one of only three Cabinet ministers brave enough to tell Margaret Thatcher to her face in 1990 that he was not prepared to vote for her in a second round of the leadership contest, prompting her resignation.

In her memoirs she recalled the episode bitterly, describing him as "probably my sharpest personal critic in the Cabinet".

He also honed his skills defending one of the most marginal Tory seats in the country, Edinburgh Pentlands.

He defied political gravity for years, finally facing defeat in 1997 when Tony Blair's landslide cost every Conservative seat north of the border.

Had Rifkind clung on, he would have stood for the party leadership - a compromise figure who offered tax cuts and privatisation to the Right but was trusted to be moderate on Europe by the Tory Left.

Sir Malcolm became interested in politics at 14 when a teacher dragged him along to a debating society. School friends reveal that the future foreign secretary would doodle political maps of Africa for fun. He flirted with the Liberals in his first year at university but "found them as dull as ditch water".

He began his Tory career as a supporter of Edward Heath but, picked as a minister in 1979, he doggedly implemented Lady Thatcher's most radical policy

ideas. Tory critics were still complaining they did not know where he truly stood when he left office in 1997 - one of only four ministers to survive the full 18 unbroken years in office during the Tory era.

Relations with Lady Thatcher soured and she installed hardline Right-winger Michael Forsyth as Scottish chairman to sit on his shoulder. Rifkind threatened to resign unless Forsyth was demoted. He won.

As transport secretary under John Major, his civil servants drew up the blueprint for rail privatisation. But Rifkind scented disaster and sat on the scheme. Eventually, he was reputedly bypassed from the final decision. He was proved right in the end - with the creation of Railtrack and the 25 train franchises now widely regarded as a disastrous idea.

His grandfather arrived in Scotland from Lithuania in 1899 and his father Elky sold furniture, carpets and clothing.

Rifkind has been married for 34 years to Edith and has two children, Caroline and Hugo.

And the future? Rifkind will add weight to the shadow Cabinet in a future Tory reshuffle and at only 57 he will be talked of as a natural successor to Michael Howard.