AND ANOTHER THING
Will the real John Major stand up and tell us what, if anything, he is?
PAUL JOHNSON
Churchill called Russia 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. I often think that this saying applies equally to John Major. Not that there is anything profound or gnomic about our PM. On the contrary, he is flat. I am fond of quoting his notorious remark at the annual Trollope dinner: 'What I like about Trollope's novels are his characters — they're so two-dimen- sional.' If ever a character was two-dimen- sional, it is Major. And yet there is some- thing mysterious about his remark, as there is about so many things he says and does. He is, by any standards, an exceptionally ignorant man (not of course about the nuts and bolts of machine politics). Yet can he really be so ignorant as not to know what the term two-dimensional means — to believe, in fact, it means exactly the oppo- site?
Churchill capped his remark on Russia by adding, 'But perhaps there is a key.' I suspect there is a key to Major, and I have a hunch about what it is. The other week I overheard three men whom I know to be homosexuals discussing him. One said, `Well, in the words of Rab about Eden, he's the best prime minister we've got.' Then they realised I was listening to them, said, `He's not one of us', and shut up. I have noticed before that Major is looked upon kindly by the inverts. Perhaps this is because he had the actor fellow who is head of their lobby round to No 10 for a noggin. Major is constantly being praised, most recently in this journal, by Matthew Parris, a self-outed protagonist of queer- dom whom I think of as the Times Sodom Correspondent (they have a stringer in Gomorrah too, but mum's the word about him). So the homosexuals like Major. Why? It cannot be that he is one, though there is something a bit enigmatic about his sexuali- ty too. When rumours arose about him hav- ing an affair with his cook — the only inter- esting thing anyone had ever heard of Major — he got into a frightful rage and insisted on suing the New Statesman for libel, though all that wretched publication had done was to say the rumours were without foundation.
So why do the queers like Major? I put this question to my friend Carla Powell, who is not only extraordinarily wise in the doings of British politicians, but brings to the analysis of their behaviour the perspec- tive of a close student of her countryman Niccolo Machiavelli. 'Oh,' said she, `zat is an easy one. Ee make dem tink he ees on zair side. Ee does that to everyone.' I believe this remark to be profoundly true. If Major has a personal gift, it is that. He gives everyone the impression, when they talk to him, that what they say comes not just as news to him, but as welcome news, and that he is extremely glad to hear it. You may say, 'But in that case, the man is a mere cypher. Is he not like the Earl of Derby who, as War Minister in 1917, aroused the wrath of Field-Marshal Haig, who recorded in his Diaries: "He is like the feather pillow: he bears the impression of the last person to have sat on him." ' No, he is not like Derby. There is no need to sit on Major. He agrees with you anyway, or appears to. But then he agrees with every- one else too. There really is something mysterious about our PM. Not only does he seem to have no principles, beliefs, opin- ions or even prejudices of any kind, but he appears unable to identify them in anyone else. For all these things have to be expressed in words, and words mean noth- ing to Major, they are simply agents to get through any difficulty that arises. Like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, words mean what he wants them to mean at any given political moment. He does not know what many of them really mean any- way.
When Major first popped up, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Then, when I began to realise he was no good at all, I likened him to the man whom Disraeli called 'a transient and embarrassed phan- tom', the stopgap PM who held office momentarily between Canning and Wellington. This phantom was capable of osmosis, rather as I thought Major was, first manifesting himself as 'Good Old Fred' Robinson, then as 'Prosperity' Robin- son, later as Viscount Goderich and finally as Earl of Ripon. But it then emerged that Major is not like Robinson: far from being a lachrymose quitter, he is a smiling limpet. Just as Robinson had one skill — he was the best shot in England — so Major has a vital aptitude: he is brilliant at surviving. His Government is by far the worst in mod- ern memory. It even beats the Three-Day- Week Heath Regime and the grotesque Wilson Mark Two. It is incompetent, cor- rupt, sleazy, mendacious, accident-prone, totally immoral and barbarous. But, after more than five years, Major is still the head of it.
What does this prove? It proves, I sup- pose, that if a prime minister is determined to put his personal survival before any other consideration whatever, such as the national interest, truth, patriotism, justice and decency, then he can struggle on quite a long time. After all, Lord North occupied No 10 twice as long as Major, though Burke said he had 'a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet', and Dr Johnson, asked to sum him up, remarked, 'He fills a chair.' And Major has far more patronage to dispose of than North — more than Walpole indeed — and disposes of it more ruthlessly. We can now see, for instance, that his supposed daring in resigning his leadership last year and running again was a mere exercise in bulk-purchase. He bought Heseltine's votes in return for the deputy premiership and various other tit- bits at his disposal. He lost Emma Nichol- son because he refused to buy her with minor office; or perhaps because he didn't think she was worth buying. It will now be fascinating to see how he sets about buying the Ulstermen. It is true that Irish politi- cians come cheap. Asked the most he had ever paid, as Leader of the House, for the vote of an Irish MP, Sir William Harcourt replied, 'Ten pounds — and a fiver on Derby Day.' However, other opposition `sleepers' within Major's nominal majority may be more difficult to detect and pur- chase. But I suspect that over the next few days and weeks Major will be dispensing a good deal of hospitality to his back- benchers, especially those who call them- selves One Nation Tories, and sending them away happy in the belief that he is `one of us'. It is indeed a gift, and one which will be with him to the end. But it may not be enough as the Ides of March draw near.
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