The Right Honourable Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo is a British journalist, broadcaster and former Conservative Party politician and Cabinet Minister.

The Right Honourable Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo is a British journalist, broadcaster and former Conservative Party politician and Cabinet Minister.

Michael left Cambridge in 1975, after earning a first class degree in History and for a year worked for a shipping company. He moved to the Conservative Research Department in 1976, where he spent three years. At the General Election in 1979 he was responsible for briefing Margaret Thatcher before her press conferences. For the next two years he was special adviser to the Secretary of State for Energy.

Michael became a special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Nigel Lawson) and in December 1984 won the by-election in Enfield Southgate, caused by the murder of Sir Anthony Berry MP in the Brighton bombing. Michael represented the seat for thirteen years but was defeated in the 1997 election.

After his 1997 electoral defeat, Michael returned to Kerr McGee as an adviser. He had worked for the company for two years previously. It was during this time Michael turned to journalism, writing about walking as a pilgrim on the Santiago Way, and working as a hospital porter. He also wrote a weekly column in The Scotsman. Beginning in 2004 Michael became a weekly columnist on The Sunday Times and was the theatre critic of The New Statesman between 2004 and 2006.

As well as the written word, Michael turned his hand to television. He has had a three part series for Channel 4 about politics, Portillo's Progress, a programme in BBC2's Great Railway Journeys series, Portillo Goes Wild in Spain (a natural history programme) as well as radio programmes on Wagner and the Spanish Civil War. In 2009 Michael appeared on The Supersizer's Eat to discuss medieval banqueting.

Michael was re-elected to Parliament in a by-election in Kensington and Chelsea in November 1999 and was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from February 2000 to September 2001. Following the Conservatives' election defeat in 2001, Michael unsuccessfully contested the leadership of the party. In 2005 he left the House of Commons.

Michael is a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the former Yugoslavia (which organises the identification of massacre victims) under the chairmanship of Jim Kimsey, and sat on of the Board of BAE Systems plc from 2002 to 2006. He joined the board of the Kerr McGee Corporation in 2006. He is President of DebRA, the national charity working on behalf of people with the genetic skin blistering

condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). Michael is also the British chairman of the British-Spanish Tertulias, which organises annual meetings between the two countries.