POLITICS
Ten years on, Mr Major's achievements look more impressive than ever
BRUCE ANDERSON
There is a problem about trying to assess Margaret Thatcher's place in history. She is not yet ready to become part of it. She still produces more adrenalin than she can consume, and has only just got used to the idea that she is no longer in Downing Street.
There is also a problem about trying to assess John Major's place in history. He is in constant danger of being written out of it. It took him about 24 hours to accustom himself to being out of office; it took hos- tile commentators even less time to start writing as if he had never been in it, and was merely a Bonar Law who had lived on. Yet he was PM for about as long as Attlee, Lloyd George and Macmillan. No one can be compared to Lloyd George, who was the alpha-gamma Prime Minister, but Mr Major has nothing to fear from comparison with Attlee and Macmillan. His achieve- ments were more substantial than Macmil- lan's and will prove more enduring than Attlee's.
But there is one respect in which he was bottom of the league for 20th-century pre- miers, and possibly for all time. No previ- ous prime minister derived less enjoyment from his term in office. If Bonar Law was the unknown Prime Minister, John Major was the unhappy Prime Minister. The rea- sons for that go back to the circumstances in which he took office.
No Premier had such a brutal fall as Mar- garet Thatcher nor such a dramatic and unexpected rise as John Major. This led his campaign team to make two assumptions.
The first was a source of anxiety. Here was this inexperienced figure who was not only taking over from a great and proven leader, but was doing so in the midst of an inflation crisis while a crucial European negotiation was imminent — and there was a Gulf War to be fought. So how would he cope?
The second assumption created confi- dence. Of all premiers who had served in the lower House, John Major had a briefer Commons innings than anyone since the Great Reform Bill. He was also the youngest PM since Rosebery. Rosebery was an Earl, educated at Eton and Oxford, who had bred Derby winners. John Major, from Brixton and the university of life, had once acted as an illegal bookies' runner. So there seemed to be an inescapable conclusion: Mr Major must be a political genius to have risen so rapidly from such disadvantages.
Both assumptions proved wholly unfounded. John Major was never afraid of the big issues, to which he added Ulster; he started the peace process. He enjoyed tack- ling hard questions with an international dimension, because he was then able to deploy his two greatest attributes: com- mand of detail and skill in negotiation.
But the politics was a disaster. There were a number of explanations for this. By 1990, the Tory party had become ungovern- able. At the time, some of us interpreted the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher as merely an act of ruthless electoral calcula- tion: the sort of unillusioned, cynical real- ism one ought to expect from the most suc- cessful political party in modern democratic politics. But Matthew Parris was right. From the outset, he realised that the party was undergoing a great psychic disturbance which only a second Oresteia could have chronicled. It might win another election; it would not forgive itself for committing mat- ricide. The party which would no longer have Margaret Thatcher as its leader was no longer capable of being led.
Then there were the voters. Any party well into its second decade in office is con- fronted by an updated version of Morton's Fork. If it does come up with bright, fresh suggestions, the voters will merely say: `Well, if that is such a good idea, why has it taken you all these years to come up with it?' Time for a change' is one of the most potent of political slogans — especially in the aftermath of a recession.
John Major was unlucky in the form that his recession took. In the North, they are used to hard times, and will remain steady on parade as long as they get dripping on their bread twice a week. But those wretched pampered southerners thought that just because they had lost their jobs and had their houses repossessed, there was an excuse for voting Liberal Democrat.
But the recession of the early Nineties was a worthwhile economic purgative. In its aftermath, there was a change in economic culture. For a generation, the UK had been an inflatio-genic society; any successes against inflation were temporary and unsta- ble, even under Margaret Thatcher. That is no longer the case, and the credit belongs to John Major, who was Joshua to her Moses, which is why he can claim to out- rank Attlee. The surviving architecture of the postwar Attlee settlement, so impres- sive in its day, is now shabby and overdue for demolition. But John Major's conquest of inflation will be a lasting legacy, which entitles him to a high place in the second rank of premiers.
Hitherto, he has been denied much recognition, largely because of the ERM degringolade. But the ERM was a mere sideshow. By 1990, it was necessary to join, largely because Margaret Thatcher had never made the principled case against membership. She said that she would join `when the time is right'. The rest of the world assumed that the time was wrong because UK inflation was out of control. ERM membership assisted the fight against inflation, and in or out, interest rates would have had to be more or less the same until 1992, because of the K factor: the fear that Neil Kinnock would become Prime Minis- ter. After that election, ERM-induced rates were too high for Britain's needs, but the government's willingness to adhere to them for another five months brought benefits. It convinced the markets that, for once, Britain was serious about defeating infla- tion. The markets understood the ERM in context, but few other people did, which was John Major's fault. He was never able to explain himself, on the ERM or on any- thing else, because he had reached No. 10 ill-equipped for its challenges.
By the time they kiss hands, most prime ministers have not only developed a cara- pace: a thick skin to protect them from the daily round of criticism. They have also evolved a persona: a 'mask of command' in John Keegan's phrase. They have found a language of their own, plus a few exaggerat- ed personality traits which enable them to strike a rapport with the voters. There was Harold Wilson's pipe and Gannex coat, Jim Callaghan's Dixon of Dock Green act, Mar- garet Thatcher's 'Iron Lady', Tony Blair's Tony Blair; with him the persona is the man. John Major found no equivalent. He is a man of infinitely greater moral depth than his successor and if he had only possessed 10 per cent of Mr Blair's spin control, history might have been different. But unlike Tony Blair, John Major has nothing to fear from history. He will not only pass into it much more gracefully than Margaret Thatcher did; he will not be so far below her on its honours board as some of his detractors would wish.
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