My leader, your leader
Sir: It is your perfect right to believe (Lead- er, 4 May) that John Major is fit to hold the office of prime minister, but it will not do to caricature his Tory detractors as people who 'invent an exciting past when we were supposed to have been ruled by a mythical Thatcher who did not compromise'.
Of course any political leader has to make some compromises, which, as you say, are 'inseparable from day-to-day gov- ernment'. But what distinguishes Mrs Thatcher as prime minister from Mr Major was that she did not compromise on the central planks of her policy programme. That is fact, not myth. She did not 'U-turn' on her primary economic commitment to overcome recession without resorting to monetary reflation, in spite of immense pressure to do so in 1981. In the defence of the realm, she did not compromise on the maintenance of Britain's nuclear deterrent, nor on her commitment to keep cruise mis-
LETTERS
siles on British soil. At home, she pressed unflinchingly ahead with reform of the trade unions and did not allow the NUM to triumph in their strike (achievements of steadfastness which had eluded her Conser- vative predecessor). She transferred huge swathes of the economy from the state to the private sector, as she said she would. She stood firm against the Argentinians over the sovereignty of the Falklands, and against the IRA over the hunger strikes. On Europe, she supported the completion of the common market, and to this end signed the Single European Act, but was opposed to a single currency and held fast to that position (even at the cost of her leader- ship). These were the critical issues which faced her administration, and in spite of the inevitable pressures she did not abandon her position on any of them. The contrast with Mr Major is evident even in the examples you choose: taxes and the ERM. These were not peripheral issues, but the central planks of the pro- gramme on which he won office in 1992. The Conservative manifesto that year promised lower, not higher, taxes — and declared ERM membership to be 'central to our counter-inflation discipline'. If those positions did not hold, what confidence or comfort can we derive when you assure us that 'he wants us to be in the present Euro- pean Union, not a federal'union'?
It is because Mr Major (by contrast with Mrs Thatcher) cannot be relied on to hold fast to the fundamentals of his programme that, for all his mildness of manner, he is truly dangerous. The further contrast, in their electoral performance, flows from that.
Michael Grenfell
64 Edgwarebury Lane, Edgware, Middlesex
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