POLITICS : Black Eye Doesn’t Deter Lamont’s Rise in Britain

Until he was named chancellor of the exchequer last week, 48-year-old Norman Lamont was better known to readers of Britain’s tabloid press as “the man with the black eye.”

That unwanted sobriquet came in 1985 when a jealous suitor punched the married Lamont as he left the apartment of heiress Olga Polizzi, daughter of millionaire hotelier Lord Forte. For days, Lamont wore dark glasses as he carried out his duties as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. And he denied deeper ramifications of the story--first declaring that he had “walked into a wall,” then explaining that the incident was “innocent but complicated.”

But the tabloid headlines and House of Common chuckles failed to impede Lamont’s career: He climbed steadily, and today is probably the closest adviser to Prime Minister John Major, who is surrounding himself with bright young men.

When the 47-year-old Major himself was chancellor, Lamont served as chief secretary of the Treasury, a demanding job that is the rough equivalent of the U.S. budget director.

The two became close associates, and when Thatcher announced her intention of resigning as prime minister in the face of a challenge for the Conservative Party leadership from former Defense Minister Michael Heseltine, Lamont quickly organized Major’s campaign.

He worked tirelessly and efficiently, lobbying Conservative members of Parliament for their votes, which resulted in Major’s surprisingly strong showing over Heseltine and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd.

Something of a bon vivant who likes good food and visiting Italy, Lamont’s fleshy, saturnine appearance--one profile described him as looking like a Neapolitan tenor--belie a scissors-sharp mind.

The son of a Scottish physician and born in the Shetlands, he attended Cambridge University, where he quickly took to college politics. Later, he spent time in the Conservative Party office in London, and in banking.

He was elected to Parliament from Kingston-upon-Thames in 1972, at 30 the youngest Tory lawmaker, and began his rise to No. 11 Downing St., the chancellor’s official home, on the way holding posts in the Departments of Energy, Trade and Industry, Defense and the Treasury.

In advising the prime minister, Lamont will not, of course, be alone. Among the senior figures Major has brought around him is Chris Patten, 46, the well-liked, humorous and competent former environment minister who has become Conservative Party chairman. His role will be central to Major’s political future: organizing the Tory party to win the next election.

Closer to No. 10 Downing St. will be Major’s press secretary, Gus O’Donnell, a 36-year-old economist who has moved with him from the chancellor’s office. Tall and easygoing, O’Donnell is smooth and cool, a marked contrast to his predecessor, Bernard Ingham, a fiery Yorkshireman who delighted in manning the barricades for Thatcher.

On Wednesday, Major named Sarah Hogg, 44, a well-known economics journalist, to overhaul the prime minister’s policy unit, the “think tank” inside No. 10. Her first task will be to decide which of the seven-person unit inherited from Thatcher should stay. Like most of John Major’s personal appointments, she is considered a pragmatist, rather than an ideologue.

As Major’s personal staff shakes out, four other sometime aides are expected to find themselves in key behind-the-scenes roles: Nicholas True, 39, who advised Major at the Department of Health and Social Security; Graham Mather, 36, a lawyer who now directs the Institute of Economic Affairs; Andrew Dunlop, 31, a former political adviser at the Ministry of Defense, and Carolyn Sinclair, a Treasury official on loan to the prime minister’s office.