The Modern British History Podcast
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The Modern British History Podcast
12. John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister? - with Dr Ben Williams
John Major was prime minister for longer than the last five we've had in the UK. What were his politics? Were they little more than Thatcherism with some of the hard edges taken off; or did he represent a more significant shift of the political dial.
Thanks to Dr Ben Williams for joining me on this one to unpick these questions (and a few more besides!) Ben co-wrote the edited book John Major: An Unsuccessful Prime Minister? Reappraising John Major with Dr Kevin Hickson.
Welcome to the Modern British Political History podcast. So I'm joined by Ben Williams on this one from the University of Salford. Welcome to the podcast, Ben.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, real pleasure to have you on this one. So we're going to talk a bit about John Major. But, ben, just before we start, could you just talk a little bit about your research and what some of your interests are more broadly, and then we'll zoom into John Major.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, my main area of sort of knowledge in teaching research is post-war British political history, as well as some international history, focusing mainly on the 20th century, and my PhD was on the Conservative Party's social welfare policies since they lost office in 1997, which is the tail end of the John Major era, and I've written and published articles largely on sort of social welfare policy, british politics, ideology.
Speaker 1:And you also put out a book about John Major, which is going to be the focus for this podcast, which I read and really enjoyed. I think he's under examined figure often, John Major. So let's kick things off with some questions. You often hear qualities like decency, pragmatism, sensitivity, both in the positive and negative sense, associated with John Major. If you were to describe him Ben with just a few choice words, what kind of words would you be using to describe John Major as a man?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I'm slightly reluctant to say there's maybe a false narrative that he was like a kind of a bit more human than Margaret Thatcher. I suppose that's a kind of common comment, that he had a bit more empathy to other people. I think the criticism Margaret Thatcher was she'd lost touch with her cabinet. She kind of had a kind of regal syndrome where she felt she was all powerful and I think that was one of the factors in a downfall. I think what John Major was conscious of was that he had to be a different sort of prime minister and be more consensual. I think there is a general belief that that's how he was. He brought people in, he tried to unify. Although he was considered initially one of the Thatcherites, I think the general view now is he wasn't really a full blown Thatcherite and Margaret Thatcher maybe misread his political allegiances. I think he was a bit more mainstream, towards the centre, with some Thatcherite tendencies maybe, but not really what she would call one of us, and probably in hindsight she regrets maybe anointing him as a successor.
Speaker 2:I think there's a slight myth that he was this kind of kind, benevolent man. I mean, I have a view that if you become prime minister. You've got to have a pretty ruthless streak to get there, and we had a book launch for the John Major book in 2017, and we had one of his former MPs who came to us called Tim Janman fairly obscure character, only did one term, but gave us some interesting stories, and one of the points he said was that John Major had previously been a whip. He may well have been chief whip I'm not 100% sure of that but he'd been a whip for quite some time and when you're a whip, you certainly know how to use some underhand political tactics and obviously that helped him climb the ladder almost unnoticed.
Speaker 2:And I think Tim Janman said that, for all his pleasantries as a public figure and he come across at times a bit more pleasant and approachable than Margaret Thatcher he had a kind of ruthless streak, maybe an unpleasant streak. That was not always there, but I just think that's quite typical of anyone who gets that layer of politics. You've got to basically have that side to you if you want to become prime minister. So different to Margaret Thatcher, not necessarily less ruthless than any other politician, but he was definitely aware that there had to be a new approach because the Thatcherite approach had hit a bit of a wall and the Thatcherite personality was a problem and he had to offer a different personality to the British public and I think he did try to do that, mason Daly.
Speaker 1:Joining up the possible ruthless element underlying his character that you've suggested, and also the idea that Margaret Thatcher wasn't aware of his views. Do you think he underplayed some of his views to Thatcher to be able to rise up more quickly, or was it more the case that she just didn't detect his views? He actually was quite clear about them and she just didn't really listen. Essentially, tim, Janman.
Speaker 2:Probably a bit of both because, yeah, I think he probably played his cards close to his chest sometimes and he probably thought keeping a little profile will help me progress. And if you look at his rise through the cabinet from the sort of mid to late 80s, it's pretty meteoric, holding some very senior positions and climbing almost unnoticed into the you know the top jobs of. You know he was foreign secretary, you chancellor. He had a number of top jobs. However, he did in his defense, for example, one of the issues he was very consistent of. He was very keen for Britain to become closer to Europe. He wanted us to join the exchange rate mechanism. At an earlier stage.
Speaker 2:He and Jeffrey Howe and others put pressure on Margaret Thatcher to join the exchange rate mechanism, those that don't have. The exchange rate mechanism was like the forerunner of the single currency and it obviously created a big problem in 92 when we had Black Wednesday, when Britain crashed out of this tentative economic framework. So I think his Euroscepticism was maybe not necessarily on display. He maybe downplayed that and I think, if you do some digging, he was always, at heart, a European. He did famously say you want to bring to the heart of Europe. And, of course, since Brexit, he's been an outspoken critic of Brexit. And whereas Margaret Thatcher went off in a more Eurosceptic direction the longer she was in office, I think John Major didn't. John Major had always generally remained a pro-European and maybe she didn't detect that. But on other issues, I suppose, he tried to align himself as close as he could with her, to keep in her favor, which secured his rise up to political ladder.
Speaker 1:And that segues nicely into my next question, which we've covered a bit, which is about how different was he from Margaret Thatcher and her government, because you often have figures that try to define themselves somewhat against, or at least in relationship to, who came before in government. Is it something about taking some of the harsher edges of Thatcherism? Is it a move from neoliberalism back to more traditional one nation conservatism? How would you characterize the shift, or to what extent was there a shift, I suppose, and if so, how would you characterize that shift from Thatcherism?
Speaker 2:I think it's sometimes overplayed that he was a radical new direction because, as I say, he was pretty central to her administration. He'd been a minister in her government, for example, for some years, right the way through the 1980s, and, as I say, he'd risen up the ranks to different positions in the Thatcher government. So on one level, no, there was some continuity. On one level she thought he was one of them, or one of us as she called it this phrase he took the edges off. I think there is something in that he did show more of a social awareness than Margaret Thatcher. She seemed to lack a bit of empathy and sympathy for kind of unemployment, poverty, marriage backstories. He was quite unusual for conservative in the sense he did have a very poor upbringing and he did remember poverty as a child. So I think there is an argument, say he had a bit more empathy with those kind of people and that kind of lifestyle. So he did take the edge off, but that's again, we shouldn't overemphasize it.
Speaker 2:He did continue a lot of her policies and indeed there's an argument that many of her most radical policies that were kind of underway and in progress under her came to full fruition under him. So quite a lot of the reform of the welfare state with benefit cuts and conditionality. That privatization of the railways happened under John Major, which was a pretty radical step. There's something that Margaret Thatcher never really got round to doing. Lots of the other privatizations came to full fruition the reforms in the NHS, with more private involvement and private money. So on one level again it's slightly ambivalence. The tone changed, the personality, the face of the government changed A bit more compassion was maybe visibly expressed. But in terms of actual policy, there are arguments made by various academics that policy didn't change a huge amount.
Speaker 1:Let's go into some of those policy areas then. You've touched on rail privatization. One of the other big areas that Major was really passionate about was the citizens charter, which I would argue is maybe wasn't the most exciting policy but in some ways has filtered into a lot of the public sector's consciousness about how you deliver public sector services. Can you talk a little bit about the citizens charter and maybe we could link it slightly to that last question as well as to what extent is that a change or a shift in policy approach?
Speaker 2:It's a slightly vague policy and at the time I seem to recall it was kind of scoffed at for being really meaningless.
Speaker 2:The whole idea was as citizens we had rights, that the government should deliver us certain basic services, and I think there was a feeling that maybe governments of the past of both parties hadn't. I'm not sure it had the biggest legacy of his government. I think a lot of people scoffed at it. I think there's an allegation that he was scrambling around to find something distinctive to offer after Margaret Thatcher had blitzed the policy agenda for 11 and a half years. But on a basic level the idea of the citizens charter was as citizens we had rights and the government had a duty to protect us and give us these rights, and if the government didn't, we had a right to redress. We had a right to redress. There's some argument later on that Tony Blair may have continued some of that rights and responsibilities that citizens had rights but governments had the rights to deliver services to. So again, it's probably not something Margaret Thatcher maybe may have brought in, but maybe critics might say it was a bit of a wishy-washy, meaningless initiative in many respects.
Speaker 1:I always wonder, as well with the citizens charter, if it links back to John Major's time in local government where the idea of setting certain targets and some of the issues that are in the citizens charter about bus times, issues with roads, cones, hotline, all that kind of thing would play quite well at the local level and be issues of concern. But maybe at the national level, like you say, wouldn't get the same kind of media approval.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I just forgot the cones hotline at the time was widely derided as like some sort of joke that was. People didn't take it seriously and thought this was like dumbing down politics. This was not a really big issue, and why was the government talking about it? But you know there is a defense to say it. As you say, he did have a background in local government and maybe that's where that came from. He felt that there was a service that needed to be improved for people on a local level.
Speaker 1:And what about another policy, that or set of policies I suppose you describe it that did get more media attention, but was also criticising lots of ways, which was back to basics. Firstly, it'd be good to understand, I guess, what, what that actually meant, because there seems to be two different narratives, Doesn't there been about this? There's the. John Nages view about what it was all about, and there's the media view about what it was all about. So could you unpick a bit of that for us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I seem to recall I think it was 1994 was the Conservative Party Conference and he basically said, you know, I think he was basically arguing on one level that conservatism had kind of lost its way and it likely did a reset and that the the values of conservatism, of responsibility, individualism, hard work, low taxation, all that kind of arguments, had been kind of lost in maybe internal party disputes and political events and it was time to get back to that and offer people the sorts of conservative government that he believed they wanted. The problem was and there's some dispute about this and I know John Major has disputed this happen but there are claims by various journalists that John Major's spin doctors put it out that it was also about people's personal morality and that the way people behaved on a personal level was also an issue. So there was maybe too much sexual sleaze and marital breakdown and infidelity and adultery, and that kind of morality came through, came through which, again, has always had a bit of an audience within the Conservative Party and the Conservative voters. But in the 1990s, with a changing society and a more intrusive press, it was a very dangerous argument to make, given human behavior, particularly the behaviour of various politicians and then of course, developed that when the press did some digging, there was a whole series of Conservative MPs behaving in a very non-conventional some might say immoral way in terms of having affairs.
Speaker 2:Children at a wedlock were kind of having a double life, where some were gay but were not open about it, and it just blew up into a mess of hypocrisy. And then of course there was the icing on the cake that when John Major was preaching this, he himself had had an affair with another Conservative MP, and that again, years later, just adds to this whole image of hypocrisy. So calling for standards in life but not sticking to them, and really not reading the public mood either because I think the 90s was a decade, there was a lot of social change and people were becoming more liberal in their views, and so to preach conservatism on people's lifestyles was a recipe for disaster really. But of course he still argues to this day that it wasn't about that and it was about just asking for some sort of decency and morality in, basically, public life and standards of behavior.
Speaker 1:And on the theme of how much was majorism a continuation of thatcheryism, do you think this is in line with the sort of policy agenda thatcher would have put forward? I mean, she was very socially conservative. In some way she would talk to the likes of Mary Whitehouse and talk about her admiration for Mary Whitehouse.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But I guess another argument maybe is that she would have been more savvy, maybe about how she put out this kind of policy. What do you think, ben? Do you think this is a continuation of thatcherism?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're right. I think Margaret Thatcher was definitely socially conservative. There's lots of stories about her having a kind of rather a view towards like sort of homosexuality. That was very primitive and lacked understanding. She didn't fully understand the lifestyle. I'm not aware she ever made full blown speeches, preaching though, about this Not that I'm aware of anyway. She kind of stayed clear of that.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a bit about back to basics. We've talked a bit about the citizens charter, ben, let's think about culture and sport as a policy area, which was something major was much more interested in than Margaret Thatcher. Do you think it's fair to say this was a good policy area for John Major and had some amount of success in the area of culture and sport?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you're right. I don't think Margaret Thatcher really showed much interest in this area. I mean, I know the arts community in general went fans of Margaret Thatcher, which was a bit of a sort of Philistine in her sort of rather parochial suburban views. The big story, I think, with John Major, is the National Lossary, though isn't it, I think, launched in 1994. There had been some stories about it happening sooner, and it had always been rumoured to be a possibility, even previously. Under that, again, I think Margaret Thatcher was turned off by the fact that it was gambling which went against her kind of religious values.
Speaker 2:But obviously the legacy of the lottery is it's the funding that's followed it, and a lot of the funding has gone into sports, which was again an intention. Some critics at the time, as I recall, said well, you know, this is really a substitute for government here, which we shouldn't necessarily welcome. You know why can't the government directly fund these sports? But the argument about the lottery was it created money, created wealth for people who won it, but also that some of the money was diverted towards sports and leisure and there wasn't a quick, instant hit. This didn't necessarily lead to great immediate success.
Speaker 2:But in consequent Olympics, and I think the big one used often is London 2012. We're talking, you know, 18 years later. The money that had gone into various Olympic sport, both fruits and sports like cycling, for example, that had received lots of lottery money, achieved great success on the sports field. And there have been other areas as well. You know whether women's football has benefited, possibly so over the years, from lottery funding. So I think that's the big success story that the lottery came in, created money that was invested in sport, and various sports since have really picked up and moved on, and maybe that was reflective of John Major's own personal interest that was significantly different to Margaret Thatcher's.
Speaker 1:And there was, like you say, there was some reaction against the idea of encouraging gambling from areas of the church, For example. I remember reading what were more critical, but John Major's counter argument was the type of quite and quite gambling is materially different from the more problematic side of gambling. What do you think, Ben? Do you think that's a fair?
Speaker 2:I think he thought it was a kind of regulated, government organized form of gambling which was, yeah, I think there was something different about it and it was, in a way it was something to do with John Major, often accused of being nostalgic, of looking back to the past of the days when you'd go out and you'd go to a football match, you'd have a bet, you'd have a pint, this traditional kind of way of life for like your typical man or woman. And, yeah, I think there is something in that. There was a kind of romanticized, nostalgic view and it wasn't a kind of excessive gambling, it was a kind of, yeah, a regulated gambling and, again, for a good cause, not going in the pockets of greedy bookmakers. And I do think that's probably one of his most positive legacies the legacy of the National Lottery, which at the time, I recall, was quite criticized and a lot of people didn't think it was going to really have that impact. But in that sense it has had a positive impact.
Speaker 1:I always think a good sign of a policy is whether it's lasted, essentially whether it's still going, and I suppose that is one that is still going to this day. You mentioned rail privatization as well. Yes, I think it's quite telling reading John Major's autobiography. He makes scant mention of rail privatization in it. What's going on there, do you think? Rail privatization, what's his view on it and what's the legacy there?
Speaker 2:I mean I think it was a natural progression from previous privatizations. I mean, they were running out of things to privatize in a way, and it was one that Margaret Thatcher had kind of put off. I think she'd always intended to get round to us, but it was one that. It was the complexity of it, I think, that put people off and we still see it to this day. You know who owns the stations, who owns the track, who owns the trains, who employs the staff. They're all these different layers of ownership and responsibility.
Speaker 2:My own view is it was sort of in the pipeline. I suppose he could have pulled the plug on it if he wanted to. I suppose he was in a weakened position by this point because this is post-92, he had a reduced parliamentary majority and even if he may well have had a few doubts and there were some people thinking it was a step too far it would have really antagonized the faturites on the Conservative back benches if he'd ditched this and led to claims of betrayal and treachery. So I suspect he felt there was a momentum that it was inevitable. He had to go ahead with it, although there were concerns at the time that it was a step too far.
Speaker 2:Some people call it a privatization too far, and there's been a lot of criticism since that. It was a mess. It's created a mess and there's an argument here that the railways have not notably improved really in many ways since this and it was unsuitable for privatization, of course, because it's not the sort of service where privatization will necessarily improve because of the various safety and public service aspects of it. So I think he felt in a sense it was inevitable he should go along with it, but there would have been reservations both from him and some of his advisors at the time.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Like you say, it's a different beast in terms of you can't opt to go on a different train track, can you? I suppose you can opt. Try not to use different providers, but then actually there's quite set providers, aren't there in different areas? That's right.
Speaker 2:There's not much choice in terms of the other privatizations, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:So we've covered a few policy areas. Is there anything you think we've missed?
Speaker 2:before we go on to thinking more broadly about John Major's legacy and look a bit more big picture again, no, I think the general message that should come across is that he did continue a lot of the facture policies in the pipeline and rail privatization is one. Another one is in welfare benefits. Conditionality was introduced, making it harder to claim benefits. Jobseekers allowance was introduced, which was a new variation of the dole, but you had to prove you were looking for work to get your benefits. Some might say these are quite hard-line positions. So I think sometimes there's a slight mythology that it all went very one nation again. I don't think it did. There were bits of it that softened, but all of it remained quite aligned with Thatcher's legacy.
Speaker 1:There's a political commentator I like, called Stephen Bush, who says often vibes matter more, in a way, than policy in terms of politics and I guess John Major gives off a different vibe, doesn't he, than someone like Margaret Thatcher, even if the policy platform was relatively similar- Well, I think in 1990, when the Conservatives changed their leader I mean a lot of it was about just the image.
Speaker 2:The image of Margaret Thatcher had become quite toxic and they needed a different sort of personality in charge. And that was the big reason for the shifts in changing leader and who they went for. And there was no doubt he was a very different personality and you could argue that that personality helped him win the 1992 election. Because, although Margaret Thatcher and their allies would always deny this, the prediction appeared to be if she'd stayed in power she would have struggled to win in 1992. And it was that refresh under a different face that the Conservatives needed, that helped them win in 1992. Against the odds, really.
Speaker 1:So going on to thinking a bit more broadly, so John Major said that society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less. Your book seems to suggest we should maybe condemn John Major a little less and actually understand him maybe a bit more in terms of his successes, because I noted in your book it talks about the title is an unsuccessful Prime Minister Question mark, though Is that fair? Is this a bit of a reappraisal of John Major to point out some of the areas where there were successes? I think what the book.
Speaker 2:I mean, I could recall this because I lived through it. But the time John Major left office he was widely discredited and he came across as being weak. Spitting image of the well-known satirical show had him as this grey man eating peas. The guard he knew to have him with his underpants outside his suit, looking ridiculous. And then of course he led the Conservatives to this humiliation of a defeat which was the worst anyone could remember. I think it was his 1906. And I think at that point in time he was seen as a disaster.
Speaker 2:Now, one of the things our research showed in some of the articles we wrote since the book and during the book is actually since he left office he's not become this suddenly, this well-beater, but he's been reappraised in a more positive way and in the sense that some of his policies, like the National Lossary for example, have been seen to bear fruit. He did revive aspects of the Conservatives' traditional views on the welfare state and he put more money into the NHS. I suppose you could say. In his defence he warned about the dangers of devolution, which some would say have come to fruition because he famously said that devolution was the most dangerous policy ever put before the British people and there are many who think devolution is going to lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom and could well happen. And he also, in his defence, has had a very consistent position on Europe and although he was leading a very divided party, he managed to keep that party together amidst great crisis. He took a position on Europe which was it's not perfect, what we're better off in, and he's since continued that in later years and was obviously a very vocal critic of Brexit and has continued to be so since we left. So I think there is some reappraisal and of course, the reappraisal is in comparison to others that followed. So, for example, tony Blair came in and yes, okay, tony Blair in many ways was a success. He won three elections. He was in power for 10 years.
Speaker 2:But Tony Blair has some major, major problems hanging around his reputation, notably Iraq and the destruction and the damage that caused and the lies involved effectively in that war. That's very much tarnished his reputation. And if you look at all the other prime ministers that have followed Gordon Brown, david Cameron, theresa May, boris Johnson, liz Truss Okay, we've got Rishi soon. Right now you think back and think well, actually have any of them achieved as much as John Major did. In many ways They've all got their problems. They've all got their disastrous legacies, their major problems that maybe happened on their watch. So comparatively he maybe doesn't measure up as badly to some of the people that have followed.
Speaker 2:So I think the argument is is that whereas Tony Blair's reputation has got worse since he left office and there is evidence about that all John Major's has actually improved. And that was the issue that I think came across. We're not just suddenly wiping it all clear and saying he was fantastic, because obviously he was and he had a lot of problems himself. But it's been reappraised and he comes out better with the hindsight. And, of course, the book was written on the 20th anniversary of his election loss, so that was an appropriate moment to reappraise his legacy.
Speaker 1:It's nice. We haven't talked about new labor being a continuation of majorism, have we?
Speaker 2:New labor, yeah, I mean. Well, I think there's an argument, isn't there? It's all. It's the post-thatcher legacy. Did anyone really come along and challenge what Thatcher left?
Speaker 2:And I suppose what you could say about the governments that followed was John Major to some extent, and maybe Tony Blair to a further extent that this phrase you used earlier they took off the rough edges. Well, yeah, I think they did. And what was it? Someone said, trying to create thatcherism with a human face.
Speaker 2:The criticism of thatcherism was it all about economics? It was all about restructuring the economy and regardless of human sacrifice or human hardship, it was all in the bigger picture. The John Major government maybe acknowledged the social side more, and Tony Blair's government did so even more again, but neither of them really dismantled the Thatcher framework, and I think it's more that Major and Blair were, to varying degrees, continuations of the Thatcherite settlement, although they both diluted aspects of it, which, of course, was one of the reasons why the Thatcherite, over time, became more and more angry at John Major, because they felt that's what he was doing, although it wasn't necessarily always apparent at the time. They felt he was diluting her legacy and I suppose, having he done that, tony Blair felt a bit more confident again to not necessarily dismantle it, but again to tweak and dilute aspects that he felt were a bit harsh and unforgiving.
Speaker 1:One thing that John Major talks about in his autobiography is saying that new labor does not give enough credit to John Major's time in government for what they inherited, so he'll talk about that. Actually, they had years of economic growth that they handed over to new labor. Some of the policies around giving increasing autonomy for schools, for example, giving public services more of a sense of targets that they should work toward, greater use of data and metrics A lot of these things actually, tony Blair took on and carried on, but do you think it's fair to say that he didn't really give enough kudos almost to Major for some of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think Blair and Major had a very difficult personal relationship. They didn't like each other and there was a lot of animosity in their campaigning in the build-up to the 97 election and it got a bit personal and nasty. But I think, even again, over hindsight and again with the benefit of looking back, I think there is a consensus now that, yeah, one of the benefits that the Blair government had which it would appear that if there's a storm of government that they won't have is that they did inherit a fairly strong economy and that then laid the groundwork for what then Labour did, which you could argue was a fair there consolidation and build up the economy and improve people's lifestyles and incomes, et cetera. So the Conservatives did leave a positive economic legacy for new labour. I think that's generally agreed.
Speaker 2:I think the critics would say, well, it's all very well leaving. But in the years before there were a series of recessions, there were a series of slums, there was a massive recession in the early 1990s, there was Black Wednesday and, unfortunately for the Conservatives, although the economy was improving in 97 under major in his early years and then a lot of parts of that year, the economy had been battered and many voters remembered who was in charge and they blame the Conservatives for the hardship they suffered, not really remembering that things then later improves.
Speaker 1:And there's the accusation against John Major that he was too weak, too sensitive, often would pay attention to what the press was saying about him, often would be brow beaten by some of his colleagues, whether they be on the more Eurosceptic side of things. What do you think about that Ben in terms of his I guess his personal qualities? Were there some weaknesses there that came out in his premiership?
Speaker 2:I mean again, I think he had an image of the time as being weak because the party was split down the middle and he didn't appear to have the authority to move against. I mean the famous phrase where they had these bastards in his cabinets and he couldn't move against them because he was too weak and too, if you move them then there'd be a backbench rebellion. He only had a majority of 21 that was shrinking all the time because of deaths and defections and by-election losses. So there was a perception he was weak, but there's an alternative view for his supporters to put across and he was actually quite strong. He was actually quite a good manager going back to his time as a whip, and one of his great achievements was he actually managed to keep the Conservative Party in one piece because it was so badly divided.
Speaker 2:Again, it's a forerunner of what's to come here.
Speaker 2:It was the issue of your more than anything that was splitting them, the aftermath of the Maastricht Treaty, the difficulty of getting it through Parliament, his own position, which was quite ambivalent at the time, but I think it was deliberately ambivalent.
Speaker 2:We now know he was far more pro-European than he let on at the time, but I think he knew if he'd have come out with more pro-European language, he would have alienated a sway of his own party and got the facts right up in arms. So I think weaknesses may be a harsh analysis now, because at the time it was weak, it looked weak, but I think he was being a party manager and he was dealt a very difficult hand, which the two Prime Ministers side-to-side of him didn't have. You know, we often have this debate when I'm teaching this Is the Prime Minister strong because they have a majority or is the Prime Minister strong because of their personality? Now it's like cause and effect and Thatcher and Blair both had large majorities that allowed them to behave in an authoritative, domineering manner. John Major never had that and that made him appear weak.
Speaker 1:And you could also say, actually, although Thatcher always appeared strong and in many ways it's hard to argue that she wasn't strong, but there's the argument that she was lucky in her enemies and that she had enemies that had some great internal weakness at the heart of them.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So I'm thinking you know the enemies that she had For the Falklands War. You know the Argentine regime had some real structural weaknesses. I'm thinking of the minor strike. You know, within trade unions there was a lot of division and the leadership you could argue wasn't effective in many ways. So I guess luck plays a bit of a role, I think luck does.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of politicians would acknowledge that and I think again, to make a comparison of the politician, I think what John Major had was similar to what Gordon Brown had in 10 years down the line. In this he came in at the tail end of a long dominant period for a particular political party, in the aftermath of a very powerful dominant figure, and it was difficult for him not only to kind of emerge from the shadow of Margaret Thatcher but also to carve out new policies to reinvent the party. And I think any successor of Margaret Thatcher was going to have these problems, as was any successor of Tony Blair and it's you know, both of them struggled and both of them went on to electoral defeat. There are some parallels there and it's probably the legacy of following a leader who, in both these cases, was in power for a decade or more. And incidentally, we know we've never had leaders since really being in power that long.
Speaker 2:I mean, again, when you look back, john Major, of the last seven or eight prime ministers, is actually one of the longer serving ones as well. If you think of our recent prime ministers, I don't think we've had a longer serving prime minister, john Major, since Tony Blair, because they've all been three, four, two year stints. John Major, we often forget, was just under seven years in office, which appeared short at the time because compared to Margaret Thatcher it was. But if we look back, consequent Prime Ministers have not been in power anywhere near as long as John Major, so he has that as well, quite a long period of time to make an impact, and the impact has followed in later years, as we've said.
Speaker 1:And I think the Gordon Brown comparison is really apt as well, because there's that argument about Prime Ministers that you go from a more, if you're being positive, charismatic Prime Minister if you're being negative, you might say superficially charismatic Prime Minister to a more if you're being negative, you'd say uncharismatic. If you're being positive, you'd say more chairperson type approach to being a Prime Minister, or just less media friendly figure like Gordon Brown. So there's that shift, isn't there that you go through? I guess it goes through revolutions, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, now there has been things written about this by academics like Michael Foley that you know. They, thatcher and Blair get the comparison. There's been these dominant, powerful leaders with large majorities who had a sort of charisma and personality to match, and Brown and Major are often compared as being the people that followed who were dealt with a more difficult hand, arguably had less luck and therefore had more difficult situations and circumstances to deal with, culminating in electoral loss at the end of it all. But there's an argument to say that there would have been an electoral loss anyway because the cycle for that party in power was coming to a natural end and that's what, effectively, john Major inherited.
Speaker 2:For him to win a fifth election in a row in 97 with everything that was going on would have been some hell of an achievement really, and you could argue it was an electoral democratic impossibility really that he was facing at that election.
Speaker 1:And actually we haven't talked about 92. Have we the election then? That was unexpected, wasn't it that you've touched on it a little bit, that the win was unexpected? How much do you credit that down to John Major's personal qualities?
Speaker 2:Well, in 1992, john Major was again completely up against it.
Speaker 2:There was a feeling that John Major was going to lose. He'd inherited from Argonthatra a difficult situation, a divided party, a weakening economy. But I think again there's a lot of credit being written by various academic sins that his campaigning skills, his refocusing of the conservative message, the economy had improved somewhat by the time he came into that it was improving slightly and I think his approach in that election I think has had a lot of credit and his own personal role in it I think a lot of conservators were very grateful for. So yeah, I think we often forget that he had two elections the 97 one was an unmitigated disaster but the 92 one was a victory against all the odds and I think that's again one of probably his strongest memories, positive memories as a politician, that he managed to win in his own right and defy, I suppose, again defy electoral gravity because again, 92, the conservators had been in power 13 years and there was a view that they were going to be kicked out because they've been in power too long.
Speaker 1:And there's an argument with that election, isn't there, that what we typically see as charisma isn't always necessarily the right kind of charisma to help you with an election. I mean, John Major did things that were not hugely bombastic moves. So, for example, he would stand on a soapbox, wouldn't he, and speak to crowds. But perhaps that was what people were actually looking for, was a more low key but more personable if that's the right word approach to politicking.
Speaker 2:I think it's like you might call it even a bit more of a humble approach he went back to oh, it's just back to basics, is that for people? He apparently had used that campaigning technique in his earlier days when he stood for council in London and it was an interesting difference approach. It was quite a hostile, divisive campaign and I think people admired his kind of his guts because he put himself in the framework of hostile crowds on a soapbox and would be shouting at them. And of course there were famous instances where he got eggs thrown at him and there was a lot of rowdiness. But I think that won him some kudos from various undecided voters who thought, well, this guy's got a bit of guts, a bit of an ounce about him. Maybe he's not as weak as some of the press are making out.
Speaker 1:And I suppose it linking to slightly the point we said about different styles of leadership. There's the chairman style, which you've talked about, or chairperson, and then there's the being a kind of very more strident approach to leadership. But the strident approach causes resentments, doesn't it? I mean, margaret Thatcher used to come famously to meetings and know exactly what she wanted to get out of it and know what her view was before. Yes, and I remember hearing that people in the cabinet were so shocked when John Major started running cabinets because he would actually ask everyone's opinion and go around and he might not necessarily have come to that meeting trying to push forward one particular set of opinions. So it's different leadership styles, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the consensual approach he took was one of the most stark differences to Margaret Thatcher, because by the end of the Thatcher years she was basically the chair in charge, saying it was as it was, allegedly humiliating and abusing some of her cabinet ministers in a rather hostile way she spoke to them, whereas John Major was more consensually, listened to people's views. I think one person called it a cabinet of chums. There was a bit more friendliness, a bit more camaraderie and I think he brought, of course, famous Thatcher opponents back into the cabinet, like Michael Heseltime, and he tried to reunify the party. Because of, you know, at the time Thatcher left the party was extremely split. You could argue that John Major tried to heal it, but it remained split. But in his defense, he did try to heal it. He brought back in different wings of the party and I suppose, yeah, there were different wings of the party in the major government who seemed to get on quite well and work together quite harmoniously.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a little bit about the legacy, we've looked forward. I suppose also we haven't looked back as much as are there any historical figures in terms of other prime ministers, maybe other politicians that you would compare John Major to. So the one that springs to my mind is perhaps more like a Harold McMillan in that he was certainly in the tone. There's the whole middle way approach. But actually then you've talked about actually John Major that's maybe overdone a little bit how much of a kind of middle ground politician he was.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I don't know whether he was as middle ground politically as Harold McMillan, I think, sometimes sometimes Stanley Baldwin type figure who kind of tried to unify the country after a period of division. So then there's a feeling after Thatcherism, after the miners strike, the poll tax, there's been a lot of division in the 80s. There's been race riots, urban riots, and I think that Major tried to kind of heal some of the wounds of the Thatcher period and I think sometimes you could say like Stanley Baldwin, similarly in the 30s, after the general strike, after the Wall Street crash, after industrial unrest, he tried to do something similar part of a national government, as a conservative leader, bringing people together and being a bit more of a comforting figure for the public to look at, rather than this abrasive, hostile figure that Margaret Thatcher had become by the time she left office in 1990.
Speaker 1:To wrap things up, then, if people want to go away, Ben, and look more into John Major, obviously there's your book, which I would definitely recommend, which is John Major and unsuccessful prime minister, but are there any other sources you point to whether it's watching or reading or listening that we should go to if we want to learn a bit more?
Speaker 2:I mean there's John Major's autobiography, which he wrote himself, obviously after he left office, which I think we saw quite heavily in our book. There's a book called A Major Effect which, again, for the life of me this minute I can't remember who wrote this. Oh, dennis Cavani. Dennis Cavani wrote it in 1990. That was a more contemporary book. Then there's also a really good series which was on BBC at the time which I think was called A Major Years. It was a series of BBC documentary about the John Major government and I think it's somewhere on YouTube, I'm pretty sure. And I mean that was a really good first hand recollection of the Major Years, with interviews of a whole range of people involved and their recollections of the time. Particularly the John Major himself speaks a lot on that. So there's lots out there. You know some of his views on Brexit and you are interesting to know, given how much of a problem it was for him when he was prime minister.
Speaker 1:So it just leads me to say thanks so much for joining us on the podcast, ben. I've really enjoyed this one. No worries, thanks for having me. Thanks.
