John Major: The Autobiography

So we find him bowed down by the misfortunes of an ungrateful world, rendered defensive by problems with the economy, by arguments over Europe, by the intractability of politicians in Northern Ireland, by attacks from within his own party.

With that same party busy airbrushing him from its history--despite his unlikely victory over Neil Kinnock in 1992--it's as well he has got his account into print, an unstuffy telling of a fascinating story that is free of the pomposity that affects so many of his political peers and which reveals a deep-seated belief in the value of basic decency. "I will not concede possession of the recent past to the mythographers of left or right who have every self-interest in retouching the history we made," he says.

But how sad to find him still so defensive and so bitter about the slights of others, still anxious to explain why speeches or gestures were misconstrued. "I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive," he says. But could he have been anything else? --Kim Fletcher

The candour doesn't stretch to telling us absolutely everything. Like Jimmy Carter John Major was unlucky on top of his own errors, but one great piece of good luck was that his affair (while in a junior post) with a parliamentary colleague Edwina Currie did not come to light until he had left office. It was the funniest story in 20th century British politics and it highlights what was always his problem - he wasn't taken seriously. His face was against him, his voice was against him, and his bank-managerish way of expressing himself at times, such as I have borrowed for my caption to this review via Private Eye, was a gift to the satirists and the chattering classes. Otherwise his style of writing is, in all important and relevant respects, excellent. I cringed on reading '...the huge constituency and its rich variety of interests'; or '...he was always ready with a good-humoured story'. His innocent pride at his own little jokes and bons mots is pretty embarrassing too, but some of his more acid asides such as regarding the overlooked hopefuls whose self-ascribed talents would have needed a long-range telescope to be discerned are actually much better, although he floored me with his remark about the 'column inches' devoted by the papers to Hugh Grant after his famous arrest.

There I go. It's all too easy not to take him seriously, and it's all wrong too. This man was a national leader through some pretty momentous times. I can't say that his narration of the gulf war added much to what I already knew, but nobody else was in a position to enlighten us so much about the economic ups and downs of the 80's and 90's, and especially about the issue that more than any other wrecked his government, namely relations between Britain and Europe. Unlike many national leaders, Major understood economics. His rise to the top was mainly via the Treasury, and when next, I wonder, will we ever see an economic narrative like this, told by a man who knows what he's talking about, who was right at the centre of decision-making, who is or appears to be completely willing to tell the whole story, and who is able to put it across with such lucidity? If you think economics is complicated, try understanding the British Conservative party and its behaviour over Europe. Here we find Major the historian at his superlative best. The behaviour of his 'euro-sceptic' MP's was a psychologist's field-day, and Major assesses them individually with a dispassionate calmness that is staggeringly impressive considering the hell they put him through. It would all have broken many a lesser man (or woman). I never voted for his government nor would I if I had the chance again, but I can't see how his bitterest critic can fail to be impressed by the way he kept his nerve, and by the way he can stand back from his own performance under that sort of pressure and assess it as if he were marking an exam paper.

As if all this were not enough, he had Northern Ireland to deal with. If it would be fair to say that he was out of his depth with the issue, the same could be said about every other prime minister who has tackled it. Major made a bold and honest attempt to cope, and some of it has stuck, and Blair has been the beneficiary as he has been in a significant number of other ways. Above all, Blair inherited a sound economy after all the travails of the previous 10 years, Major knows that, and he's sore about the lack of recognition of the fact. Major was unlucky to come to office at the time he did - Thatcher and Blair were elected on a wave of disgust at the failures, real or perceived, of the preceding governments, up with whose shortcomings, as the phrase goes, we were fed. Major entered 10 Downing Street at a time when changes were going on that he only partly understands and, characteristically, doesn't claim to understand fully. He came from a poor background, and he is a 'compassionate' conservative. Those have actually been around for a long time, witness Disraeli himself. Witness also Macmillan, the premier who said 'We are all socialists now'. Macmillan was quite unquestionably compassionate, but he belonged to a tradition, and in an era, when the Conservative party had every reason to believe that power was its birthright. These days it still thinks so, and, worse, acts as if it does. Its problem is that the rest of us think otherwise. Labour's shortcomings are manifold and monstrous, but it doesn't make that mistake and that could be Labour's salvation for quite a long time. If I'm right, Major's thoughtful musings, while valid in point after point, are missing the main one. He was a good manager, but he failed as a leader and as a politician. Blair could see, as FDR could all those years ago, that if you at least act as if you understand what people are asking for they will put up with a great deal. For all his humble origins Major failed to connect, partly through his own fault as he can see very well, but mainly because nobody associated the Conservative party with the values that he himself is most interested in - health, safety, pensions, school, hospitals and so on. These are traditionally Labour's strong suits, and, largely through his inheritance from Major, Blair has slain the dragon that Labour can't be trusted with the economy. That leaves the Conservatives rowing over Europe on the assumption that what matters to them must therefore matter to the rest of us. Their own chairman and advertising magnate Lord Saatchi has grasped the point perfectly well 'Who needs the Tories now?' Blair is running into trouble through pushing his phenomenal luck a little too far and he will be going shortly in any case, but as he faces his fifth Conservative opponent in 8 or 9 years I expect he and his successor will make short work of whoever it is because they have grasped this point. I wonder whether Major has come to see it this way too by now.


From Major to minor   December 19, 2005
 13 out of 17 found this review helpful

As I watched the results from the 1997 General Election from the sidelines of America (remembering that ten years prior I had been in the thick of things, on the floor of a count and being shown on BBC intently staring at the bank teller drafted to count the box in which I had an interest), I was variously amazed, pleased, saddened, and in the end, pleasantly surprised at the good humour of John Major, who said very simply, 'Okay, we lost.'

I met John Major first when he was a rising parliamentary star recruited to come to the constituency of the backbencher for whom I worked. He came to give a pep talk to the local Conservatives on a local radio programme; this constituency (Basildon) was considered a dead loss, so much so that the PM and various other Cabinet names wouldn't waste their time making a stop--but John Major came, and, we won.

Major has put together an interesting account of his time in office. Thankfully he concentrates on his political career (not spending hundreds of pages giving us the sort of childhood information that rarely adds value to a political autobiography), starting with his first victory coming to the House of Commons in 1979 (Margaret Thatcher's first victory as leader) and culminating with the 1997 electoral defeat, which he took with relatively good grace and rather few recriminations. And, whereas many political figures spend a large part of their memoirs in a 'If I were still there' mode, Major only devotes a few pages to the follow-up and future (in a five-page chapter entitled Aftermath) preferring not to speculate on irrelevant imponderables, and avoiding the problem of which he was most critical in his predecessor--that being of not wanting to let go.

It was no secret that one of the things the press and public eagerly sought in this book was Major's opinions on the continued attempts by Thatcher to exert an influence in leadership. His rocky relationship with the former prime minister has many examples through the text, some explicit and some subtle (such as the caption from a photo taken at the 1990 Conservative Party Conference, which reads 'Still on good terms with Margaret following the announcement of our entry into the ERM.').

In general, this is a well-written book, and John Major's tenure of office is rather more interesting than popular memory or the press would have one believe, perhaps understandable due to following a person of such flash and sparkle as Thatcher--who could compete with that? Major did in many ways, and, as his autobiography shows, he won in many ways, and when he lost, he was a gentleman.