A blast from the past

Wow, is it really ten years since we last heard from that Thatcher-loving, platitude-spouting, talentless irritant? The Spice Girls I hear you cry? No silly, I am of course referring to Britain’s 50th Prime Minister, Sir John Major.

His appearance on this morning’s Andrew Marr show HERE served to remind us (in case we’d forgotten) what we’re missing: A weak and peevish little man with no discernable achievements from his six and a half years in the top job.

His attack on Labour’s “systemic sleaze” and “unscrupulous” behaviour in exploiting his own Government’s manifold episodes of sexual misadventure and corruption, was, frankly, a laughable double-standard.

Major was one of the least able men ever to become Prime Minister. His elevation in November 1990 was as much the result of Conservative MPs deciding they didn’t want Michael Heseltine’s regicide of Margaret Thatcher to be rewarded as it was an endorsement of Major’s own titanic political talents.

In many ways, Major was a more contemptible figure than Thatcher. He initially promised to build “a nation at ease with itself” but presided over a deep and lingering economic recession, effectively shut-down the UK mining industry, privatised the railways and told us to “understand a little less and condemn a little more” in relation to lone parents and the poor. His was Thatcherism without the redeeming quality of Margaret Thatcher’s certain leadership. Ideology without the conviction.

Like her great nemesis Francois Mitterrand, Thatcher made no plans for her succession, leaving no-one of any ability to carry forward her mantle. Having only entered the Cabinet in 1987, Major’s lack of experience in the political top flight meant he never stepped outside Thatcher’s shadow. His puppet-premiership was a dismal interregnum.

His twee and backward-looking view of Britain was an embarrassing and threadbare offering from the man given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lead the country.

His weakness in facing up to his internal critics on Europe made a mockery of Britain’s foreign policy, despite his earlier stated determination to put Britain “at the heart of Europe.” He even guffed-up the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US, backing the wrong horse when he dispatched Tory reseachers to trawl over Governor Clinton’s time as an a Rhodes scholar at Oxford before seeing “Slick Willy” become president.

And his shabby deal to prop up his parliamentary majority with the support of the Ulster Unionists even prevented forward progress on the Northern Ireland peace process.

But the myth that Major generously bequeathed Labour a sound economy in 1997 is the biggest lie in British politics. What Labour inherited was an economy recovering from the ravages of the 1991 recession and Britain’s ejection from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on "Black Wednesday" in September 1992, which paved the way for interest rate cuts and renewed growth. Claiming credit for an economic upswing, following a recession he created, is a fig-leaf which deserves to be wrenched from his shrivelled reputation once and for all.

So there we have it. John Major: whinging, lightweight, no-mark. Let’s hope it’s another ten years before we hear again from him again.

And that goes for the Spice Girls too.