John Major, love machine

alan clarke — of all ppl! — once said that major "has the most gorgeous smile in politics" (or something like that)

FUCK ME! JOHN MAJOR USED TO BE PRIME MINISTER!!! JOHN ARSING MAJOR!

I swear that history will recall this country has having lurched immediately from Thatcher to Blair. The idea of this man having led the country just seems utterly, utterly surreal to me now.

I suppose what fascinated me about Major is that he did not actually come from a traditional Tory background at all, but he wanted so desperately to ingratiate himself with those people that he started playing the role of such a character, so he spouted dreadful old romantic Tory cliches (maids in the mist etc etc) without the saving grace that someone like Richard Body or Peter Tapsell would have had - that of his heart being in it. Major was something oddly worse than a Tory - a fake Tory. A man from a farming public school Countryside Alliance type of background would have defined "Englishness" as Major did and MEANT IT: Major defined "Englishness" as such and not only did you hate the definition, but it seemed so fucking MEALY-MOUTHED coming from him, you could tell he was going through the motions, just keeping the party faithful happy. He was a deeply confused, uncertain man - it becomes more and more obvious that he married Norma because she was a quintessential Tory Wife: ie, as usual, he wanted to ingratiate himself with the party's old elite rather than portray his own character. Greatest irony of all is that that elite had itself lost control of the party to the Thatcherites by the time Major became its leader.

there are very few decent MPs left in the Tory party: there's a possibility that I might be living in the Totnes/Dartington area a few years from now and the MP there is Anthony Steen from the 1974 intake (ie the last era before acquisitive two-faced nastiness became the normal character of Tory MPs), and I was actually thinking even today that I wouldn't want to be living in his constituency if he retired and was succeeded by another horrible Adrian Flook clone (though if that happened the Lib Dems would target the seat and, with luck, succeed).

truly amazing stuff, it must be a set-up right?
who would? i mean come on, lets be real.

so instead of using it as a cheapshot — which of course the entire world did — think of it from his own perspective: he craved social stability, and reached for an idyll which fitted that (city boy who genuinely loves cricket)

he learnt early on that being non-flamboyant worked for him, and most political commentators being dumbfucks, they assumed that bland public face = passionless drone: sorry, that's retarded psychology (and actually we got plenty of hints of his being basically a passionate person under immense, long-cultured control)

behind the scenes, he was angrily anti-racist, for example, and actually did a lot to shaft the racist wing of the party — but he was charged with unifying a collective which was no longer remotely unifiable (which his predecessor had effectively crippled), and what's astonishing — it's an achievement you may well hate but it was still an achievement — is that he did it for so long

he won the 1992 election (won it BACK in the face of widespread anti-Thatcher disgust: Kinnock was a weak and tainted opponent but even so), and THEN he won the confidence vote against portillo/redwood et al: when he left, the party dissolved into ruin more or less overnight (the establishment of "inclusivity" as its attempted watchword is totally major's doing: it's basically a nogo politically — ie even the stump cannot rally round it — but it's still a significant cultural legacy)

another tory commentator — unless it was clarke again, but i don't think it was — said that the tory party had failed major, and didn't deserve him... i think that's true: which is why, in a hundred years time, (good) historians WILL still be talking about him

He was bad but you can't say it was all his own fault. the lunatics had taken over.

''he learnt early on that being non-flamboyant worked for him, and most political commentators being dumbfucks, they assumed that bland public face = passionless drone: sorry, that's retarded psychology (and actually we got plenty of hints of his being basically a passionate person under immense, long-cultured control)''

that was really boring= he's grey, etc. idiots!

Fucking someone for 4 years solid is a single event!!!!

to be honest I think I'm a v.good writer next to 90% of people but a terribly lame and slow-thinking one next to Mark S: that's how good I think he is

And re. Scallywag and the New Statesman: if successful, does that mean that Major gets the cell next to Archer in Lincoln nick?

his great skill was portraying himself as separate from the rest of the tories (ken clarke was good at this too), but i saw major as an devious politician who had 7 years in which to do something for this country and did nothing.

i don't care about his affair or whatever, but in the context of the 'back to basics' nonsense, just shows what a cheap load of shit he spouted all the time.

his greatest achievement may well be, as mark s said above, that he will have conned history in to looking kindly on him.

I had not thought before now just how much the French must enjoy Pres Vladimir's name, tee hee.

Why did he - if he did - insist on rail privatization?

v

http://image.pathfinder.com/time/daily/2000/0011/putin1130.jpg

fite, etc. Have we driven off PF yet?

Latest Edwina news is that she's been offered a berth on Celebrity Big Brother. Though this is according to that awful Metro gossip column so should be taken with a pinch of powdered egg.

Combovers are only sexy on world leaders.

Sometimes, Emma, not even then...;>

All I have to say is: if the Grey PM is now considered a sex god, what ideal does your average guy have to aspire to?

[But consider exactly who is giving him such a high rating...]

Reynard - I think it was Norman Fay who said at the time of the Potters Bar crash that Major intended the railways to be returned to the 1923-48 situation where there were several big companies running their trains while also maintaining the infrastructure of the lines they served, and that the insane separation of Railtrack, the train operating companies, the owners of the actual rolling stock etc etc etc was insisted on by ultra-Thatcherite idiot ideologue civil servants who'd been "planning" it (sic) since the mid-80s. Sounds plausible.

(ps "Horace Coker" is not me, despite the Charles Moore reference - pretty sure it's Marcello. Sanderson has been retired to the Julian Amery Home for Bereaved Gentlefolk, though the original joke / point of his place of residence / email address is underlined on Usenet today where one of the ultra-right-wing loons has made a derogatory reference to Fairport Convention.)