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WHY THEY HATE MAJOR
By the time many readers see this, air- waves and public prints will once again be full of Mr Major's `future'; which is the word they use about someone who hasn't got one. The Friday and Saturday issues of the Conservative papers will be weighed down by those long leading articles explain- ing that Mr Major is hopeless, but some- how stopping short of recommending that their readers vote against the Tories if he is still there at the general election.
The 'focus' pages of the Sunday papers will this weekend be more than ever the same. Once again, they will report at vast length that ministers and backbenchers have given up on the general election but that, on balance, Mr Major will survive to lead them into it. There will also be polls, including perhaps a particularly useless one: that of anonymous Tory backbenchers, the country's most hysterical electorate.
Yet Mr Major is himself a Eurosceptic. That is, he is as much a Eurosceptic as any- one on offer, or anyone possible at present. He secured the Maastricht opt-out. He is stalling on the single currency in the hope that it will not happen in this century, which hope could well be fulfilled. He is more Eurosceptical than Mr Blair. To adapt But- ler on Eden, Mr Major is the best Euro- sceptic the Eurosceptics have.
Why, then, do so many of them make trouble for him, or want to get rid of him? We can understand why the party's Euro- enthusiasts do. They would get Mr Hesel- tine in his place. But why do the Euro- sceptics? They say it is because they do not trust him. He will 'sell out' to Brussels in the end. But many of those who say this have themselves no great history of consis- tency or indeed of principle. Some do, but many of them do not.
No, they want him out, and plot against him, because they think he is finished. The Tory Party is the party of the careerist and the professional politician; though Blairite Labour is working on that. The average Tory politician is not disloyal to his or her leader unless it is safe to be so.
That raises the question: why is he fin- ished, if indeed he is, which a few of us still think is not certain? The utilitarian answer is that people have never forgiven him for Coming out of the ERM, after having told the country it was essential to stay in it, and having putting up taxes after having won a general election by suggesting that he would not. Memory of these transgressions makes him all the more irritating when he goes in for the evasions and incompetences and changes of direction which are inseper- able from day-to-day government.
He was probably wrong to be so enthusi- astic for the ERM, and he was certainly wrong to put up taxes. But mere policy can- not explain his Conservative tormentors. You do not have to be a Freudian to notice that their attacks go beyond satire, leg- pulling and legitimate dissent on the issues. More likely, the Major-haters hate him because he is like them, not because he is unlike them. They too are `uncharismatic', 'grey' and not at all as sure of themselves, or of what to do next, as they pretend. The only differ- ence between them and him is that they are more ill-natured. Democratic peoples are seldom led by politicians who are very dif- ferent from themselves. Otherwise they would not have become leaders. Walter Bagehot understood this more than a cen- tury ago.
His essay on Peel (1856) is the first 'pro- file', though more than the quick reshuffle of newspaper cuttings which most profiles now are. Certain phrases in it have become relatively famous, though not always under- stood. For example: 'A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.' Leaving aside the Major-haters' retort that Mr Major does not have uncommon abilities, there is no doubt that his opinion on Europe is the common one. He wants us to be in the present European Union, not a federal union.
Bagehot did not just describe Peel; he described a type then relatively new: the ruler beholden to the middle classes. Thus he said of his subject: 'He was converted at the conversion of the average man.' That is Mr Major. Today's average man, and woman, is against federalism but for the European Union. Voters cannot be as opposed to 'Europe' as the anti-Major Eurosceptics claim that voters are; other- wise so many people would not tell poll- sters that they like Mr Blair — a 'Euro- pean'.
But the Major-haters are disatisfied with anything so rational. They want politics to be more exciting than it usually is, but lack the personalities which could make it excit- ing. The Tories among them therefore invent an exciting past when we were sup- posed to have been ruled by a mythical Thatcher who did not compromise. The Blairites among the non-Tory Major-haters invent an exciting future in which Mr Blair does not compromise. Mr Major, like most average men and women, is the grown-up one. All who believe that adults should behave like adults must hope that he sur- vives in office; both now, and beyond the general election.
Frank Johnson
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