John Major - Classic or Dud?

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It suddenly struck me this morning when I saw his name for what seemed like the first time in ages - "Bloody Hell! He ran my country for seven years!" It just seems so odd now - when I think of the Tories in the 90s I think of Howard, Portillo, Lamont, Widdecombe, Ken Clarke - but not the bloke who was actually Prime Minister.

― Tom, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

he has a lovely smile

― mark s, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Johnny M! He liked cricket and seemed far to decent to be a politican yet alone prime minister.

― jel --, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

lives down the road - or did i think he sold his house - in the large diy store i worked in whilst not at uni his wife used to shop all the time - but oddly only ever bought lamps - so many lamps - i bet there house was floodlit

so erm classic bloke i reckon - rubbish at politics but all round a good egg

― born clippy, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm sure I read somewhere that he was actually a devious scheming swine but managed to project the good egg thing brilliantly. But he never came off that way.

― Tom, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Jeszus, no! Has everyone forgot that he was a thatcherite bigot? I almost had until he was on the radio a couple of months ago, he really is/was a reactionary twunt.

― Steve.n., Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I had a similar thought last night, when I was talking with a friend I used to go to school with and we were discussing what it was like when we were doing our GCSEs and I said that the night before my Spanish Oral Exam, it was the 1997 General Election - and then we both thought the same thing "Blimey, John Major used to be PRIME MINISTER!"

― jamesmichaelward, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dud, not only because he was a Thatcherite bastard, but also because this was the man who for seven bleeding years represented this country on the world stage. I mean, could you think of anyone who better represented the quintessential repressed inadequate Englishman to the rest of the world?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

clever for managing to use this 'nice guy' nonsense to continue horrible politics, but this only makes him dud. but a consumate politician, he must have read his machiavelli

― gareth, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I heard that the only reason he became Tory leader is because the party wanted someone to lose the general election (because the ecconomy was fucked and they wanted Labour to take it on and take the blame for the next 5 years). However thing didn't go to plan when they actually won (Or rather Labour lost), so effectively he was only meant to be prime minister for a couple of years lose the election and get replaced. I suppose if he would have lost, we would still have a Labour party.

― davel, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

He was nicer than Mrs Thatcher. I remember a photo of him blowing the candles out on an Amnesty International cake and I think he stuck his neck out to get the Northern Ireland peace process started.His reign certainly doesn't feel like seven years though, more like five minutes.

― PJ Miller, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The only Rory Bremner impression that greatly amuses me is his John Major, and as he isn't in office anymore he doesn't do him :-(
(+ I hate RB's impression of Tony Blair)

― DavidM, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

"I heard that the only reason he became Tory leader is because the party wanted someone to lose the general election (because the ecconomy was fucked and they wanted Labour to take it on and take the blame for the next 5 years). However thing didn't go to plan when they actually won (Or rather Labour lost), so effectively he was only meant to be prime minister for a couple of years lose the election and get replaced. I suppose if he would have lost, we would still have a Labour party."

And we would still have a Tory government, which I very much doubt would be a good thing. Interesting theory but I'm sure it's much more likely to be because a lot of the Tories really didn't want Heseltine to be leader.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Machiavelli: Misrepresented?

― ^david_h(owie), Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

John Major grew up approx one minute from my house. This, perhaps isn't very interesting unless you live in Worcester Park, in which case you'd already know.

― jamesmichaelward, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Heseltine would have been better (the Rab Butler of his era?) though in a sense Major taking the post and Heseltine never making it is a sign of the defeat of the old High Tory cultural order - Heseltine, who at his public school (the same one as Mark S!) had plotted out his life and wrote into it that he would become Prime Minister in the 1990s, was thwarted at the last because, unfortunately, the party had become too rabidly Thatcherite to accept him as leader, and a man who'd scraped into a South London grammar school and struggled in his exams got the job instead.

Tom is right. He seems such an astonishingly low-profile and self- effacing and obscure man, the last person you imagine holding such a post. I don't share his politics, and I think the absurd sight of him presiding over a nation radicalised and consumerised and Americanised and Europeanised utterly under Thatcher and yet still claiming that it hadn't really changed since the 50s and that you could trust his party never to change anything significant confirmed that the Tories had inflicted vast swathes of cultural paradoxes and contradictions on themselves (the *real* reason why they can't even hold Guildford these days), but on some level I can sympathise with him, having to run a party that was so obviously crumbling and keep up the facade of unity all that time.

Another thing: Major always seemed so *old*. Can you believe now that when he took office he was the youngest PM up to that point? (Major was 47 in November 1990, Harold Wilson was 48 in October 1964 - obviously Blair was a few years younger than either in May 1997)

― Robin Carmody, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also Matt DC is right - if Labour had won the '92 election they'd have been thrown into a terrible economic recession which would *really* have tested them and might have confirmed, for a sceptical public, the then still very widely-held aphorism that Labour can't run the economy. They would also have had a slim majority - in '64 they turned a Tory majority of 100 into a Labour majority of only 4 and had to call another election in '66 to get a workable majority, the '87 Tory majority was 102 seats and I can't imagine Labour achieving a majority even as big as the 21 seats the Tories eventually won by - so any by-election losses would have eaten away at their advantage (as indeed the defeats in Newbury, Christchurch, Eastleigh etc did for the Tories). Labour could have been as humiliated as the Tories were on Black Wednesday, the Tories could have swept back with Portillo as leader, the hereditary peers might not have been removed from the House of Lords, we might not have had devolution or a minimum wage ... ugh, don't want to think about it.

― Robin Carmody, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

also Stevo to thread!

― Robin Carmody, Thursday, 11 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hear, hear, Mr Carmody.

My friend Dan has a rap:

"The only time you'll see me Standing shoulder to shoulder with Blair Is with a bomb on my back".

Reminds me of a Burroughs quote - " a psychotic is a man who's just found out what's going on".

― Chris Sallis, Saturday, 13 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Another thing: Major always seemed so *old*.

I hear you, Robin! Each time I saw him, he looked like life was weighing him down more and more. A prime example of someone who seemed to suck the joy out of life. Only 47? I'm glad to remain one of the (not-so) ignorant plebs, if being in politics makes you look like that.

― Nichole Graham, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

He is Chairman of Surrey CC and Carlyle group Europe, and thus part of th cabal that rules the world.

― Ed, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

four years pass...

I had EXACTLY THE SAME thought this morning - obviously my brain is on a five year cycle.

― Groke, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 09:06 (nineteen years ago)

i wouldn't blame lex if he hadn't heard of this guy.

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 09:25 (nineteen years ago)

"Another thing: Major always seemed so *old*. Can you believe now that when he took office he was the youngest PM up to that point? (Major was 47 in November 1990, Harold Wilson was 48 in October 1964 - obviously Blair was a few years younger than either in May 1997)

-- Robin Carmody, Thursday, July 11, 2002 3:00 AM (4 years ago)

colour me astonished!

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 09:27 (nineteen years ago)

I remember my Mum saying he was quite young during the run up to his leadership.

Did you know that his cousin is the Psamiad?

― the next grozart, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 10:09 (nineteen years ago)

Early 90s panel show regular his brother carked it last week.

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 10:16 (nineteen years ago)

Terry Major-Ball RIP

― Venga, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:09 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

Workin' in a coal mine
Goin' down down down
Workin' in a coal mine
Whop! about to slip down...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/home/features/d/content/images/2009/03/11/miners_corbis_emp_400x260.jpg

― Free the Northampton 1 (Tom D.), Thursday, 12 March 2009 13:58 (seventeen years ago)

two years pass...

i wouldn't blame lex if he hadn't heard of this guy.

― That one guy that quit, Wednesday, 25 April 2007 10:25 (4 years ago)

― The Triumph of the Will High (nakhchivan), Saturday, 19 November 2011 02:40 (fourteen years ago)

four years pass...

his cricket book 'more than a game' is surprisingly thorough and well-written, based on the preface and first chapter

― And the cry rang out all o'er the town / Good Heavens! Tay is down (imago), Wednesday, 4 May 2016 19:04 (ten years ago)

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