[3] In 1998, at a time when the prime minister Tony Blair was positioning the United Kingdom to join the Eurozone, with the full-hearted support of the CBI and many members of the business establishment, Leach founded Business for Sterling to co-ordinate the case against this.

The lobby group gradually recruited a thousand chairmen and chief executives to its cause and gathered momentum around the country until the pro-euro side largely faded away.

[1] But when asked whether he had personally saved Britain from a dangerous fate, Leach was self-effacing: “If there was credit it should be spread very, very broadly.

I was just the chairman.” From 2005, Leach served as chairman of Open Europe,[4] an influential think-tank [5][6] based in London and Brussels and with a partner organisation in Berlin.

His second marriage was to Jessica Violet Gwynne in 1993, widow of Charles Douglas-Home.