How Attorney General Geoffrey Cox’s booming tones won hearts

Geoffrey Cox has had to balance his legal and political careers ever since the seasoned barrister entered Parliament in 2005. He has been outstandingly successful in the law courts, bringing him an income as a Queen’s Counsel that dwarfs what he has received as MP for Torridge and West Devon.

His immense legal experience made him a natural choice to be Attorney General, but for years he stayed as a humble backbencher.

Theresa May brought Mr Cox off the backbenches last year. He then went onto steal Tory hearts shortly after by serving as her bombastic warm-up on stage at the Conservative Party’s annual conference. Addressing the Tory faithful with the ease with which he might speak to a jury, he wryly expressed his delight that they had turned out to hear him speak. “It shows what respect our party has for the rule of law,” he quipped, showing early on that he saw himself as a lawyer first, and politician second.

Mr Cox thrilled Tory members with his call, delivered in his booming tones, for them to seize the “precious prize” of sovereignty by sticking with the Prime Minister and her Brexit deal. Afterwards, he sought to shrug off the acclaim, declaring in his only post-speech interview that his address was a “flash in a plan” that had simply “found a resonance in the hall … I will not be courting publicity.”

Since then, he has been subject to increasing attention with his analysis of the legal implications of the deal Mrs May has hoped to get through Parliament. He was reported to have told the Cabinet last October that a Northern Ireland only backstop could see the province “torn out of the UK” and “controlled by the EU”, warning a week later that the backstop could be like being stuck in Dante’s first circle of hell.

The greatest controversy caused by his opinion on the deal came last December when the Government ended up becoming the first in British history to be found in contempt of Parliament for not fulfilling the MPS’ request to publish the legal advice. Its eventual release confirmed the worst fears of Brexiteers about the backstop, guaranteeing its rejection when it was first put to Parliament in January.

In February, Mr Cox was put in charge of securing big enough changes to the backstop for him to offer a better opinion on the deal. After Mrs May agreed her new deal on Monday, speculation was rife as to whether her Attorney General would go out of his way to offer a sunnier opinion.

He vigorously denied it, telling one journalist on Twitter that the idea was “bollocks”, and telling another over the weekend that his legal reputation was “far more important to me” than his political one.