John Major

Recently read a (mercifully short) biography of John Major, and the summary for it was that he wasn't as bad as he appeared at the time. Which, in spite of leaning towards the Tories politically, I would strongly disagree with.

I think that a lot of the criticisms of Major at the time were brutal and needlessly personal - such as the famous story, most probably from the odious prig Alastair Campbell, that Major tucked his shirts into his underpants. That sort of thing has no bearing on whether Major was a decent Premier or not and given, if memory serves, Campbell was once arrested stark bollock naked and pissed out of his tiny little mind is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Also, a lot of the problems encountered by Major were out of his control. He couldn't help it if Aitken decided to fight a court battle even though Aitken knew he was in the wrong. He couldn't help it if Neil Hamilton had accepted bribes from Al-Fayed. He couldn't help it if Mellor, Yeo et al all failed to keep their winkies in their trousers* and he certainly could not help it if Stephen Milligan decided to shuffle off this mortal coil in a highly idio-syncratic way. Also, his victory in the 1992 General Election was nothing short of spectacular (although a lot of that may have been fear of the Welsh Windbag).

But aside from that, he did not really achieve anything. He totally failed to unite his party - the argument that no-one else could have done does not change the fact that he still failed to do this. In 1997 he handed Blair a landslide election victory, virtually gift-wrapped. And the ERM debacle was entirely Major's fault - not least because he forced Thatcher to take Britain into it in the first place. The economic upturn enjoyed by the UK towards the end of the Major administration only occurred because we were free of having to conform to the pointless and counter-productive measures of the ERM - and leaving the ERM was most definitely not the policy of Prime Minister Major.

I am sure Major is an amiable chap - a little wet, but good-hearted and well-meaning. But as a Prime Minister he was a failure, and this rose-tinted retrospective move to praising him when he was pretty much despised whilst in office worries me. Not because I have any issue with Major now being seen as OK, but because I am terrified that in a few years people will have a rose-tinted view of Blair, rather than seeing him as the incompetent, mendacious piece of excremental filth that he undeniably is.

*Although Major launching Back To Basics when he had been knobbing Edwina Currie was perhaps an error of judgement and could have proved to be very costly for Major had it come out when he was in No. 10.