Has anyone seen John Major? We are referring to the man who, until a couple of months ago, was leader of the Conservative Party, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Her Majesty's First Lord of the Treasury and much else besides but who seems to have disappeared without trace. This is especially peculiar because the said John Major was also a staunchly courageous man who always stood up for what he thought was right, who never ran away from a fight, who thrived when the odds were stacked against him.
We know all this because John Major often told us so himself. He told us when he defiantly said that Britain would stay in the ERM because he knew, as Prime Minister, that it was in all our interests that this should be so—and again when, shortly after, he bravely left his Chancellor Norman Lamont to inform us that it was important to us that Britain immediately left the ERM. He told us as one after another of his ministers and supporters in Parliament were revealed as venal and devious, when he steadfastly denied that they had broken the rules only to abandon them to their fate when their exposure became too obvious. And finally when, with breathtaking bravado, all through those long days up to 1 May, he assured us that he would be leading the Tory Party to another stunning electoral victory and a fifth term in office—until, when he saw the size of the Labour majority, he abruptly resigned the leadership to leave what was left of his cabinet to scrabble over the succession.
Bastards
And since then we have neither seen nor heard anything from the man. None of the contenders in the struggle for the Conservative leadership seemed to think it worthwhile to ask for his opinion or for his endorsement (did they, it is reasonable to ask, fear that Major’s support would be the kiss of death only much more rapid?). Perhaps more to the point, Major himself did not intervene in the contest, although he was once so certain that some of the candidates stood for policies which would be seriously damaging to the standing of British capitalism.
Remember, for example, the time when he memorably described the likes of Peter Lilley and John Redwood as “bastards”. When he sneered that whenever he got close to colleagues like these he could hear the flapping of white coats. At the time, this was supposed to be John Major being brave and scathingly witty. But if he thought like that why did he not speak out during the fight for the leadership, to warn the Tory MPs of the perils of voting for someone who was mad enough to stand for policies which Major considered insanely damaging to British capitalism?
Of course one explanation is that Major is concreted into a prolonged sulk, bitterly angry with his party for making his life as Prime Minister so miserable and then catapulting his government into so historically huge a defeat. There are one or two comments to be made on this possibility. First of all, what kind of parliamentary leader is it, who can react in this petulant way to the give and take of political life? Would he, in one of his more misanthropic withdrawals, have sulkily decided to press the button to start World War Three? Or sullenly decide one day to go down to the House to own up to the facts about what capitalism does to its people and about the impotence of all its political parties to control the system?
Fed up
Secondly, if Major were so enraged in his dissatisfaction, what was he doing leading the Tory Party into the election, trying to persuade us to vote them back for a fifth term and obstinately declaring, until the votes had been counted and the enormity of their defeat was undeniable, that they would win and he would be back in Number Ten? He wasn't sulking when he wrote in the Conservative manifesto that the Tory government since 1979 were ". . . among the most successful in British peacetime history"—forgetting that some of the ministers in those governments were "bastards" who should have been carted off to psychiatric hospitals. He wasn’t sulking when he signed his name under the slogan “You can only be sure with the Conservatives”—although he did not elaborate on what we could be sure of.
Perhaps Major is simply fed up with politics, with the bump and grind of it all and of recurrent, insoluble problems. Perhaps now he fancies offering himself for one of those posh jobs in the City or those part-time directorships which pay a lot more than what a minister gets. (Of course one problem in this is that what with all those suddenly unemployed Tory ex-MPs the competition is a lot sharper than it used to be.) He would not be the first.
Exposed
Norman Fowler, for example, resigned in order, as he famously put it. to spend more time with his family—or should he have said "while the going is good”? As it turned out Fowler spent more time in various boardrooms and is still to be seen doing his bit to influence the running of the Tory Party. Nigel Lawson, after his "boom" had been exposed in the anger and despair of thousands of people who had been seduced by the false dream of capitalism in endless prosperity, symbolically lost a lot of weight and audaciously cashed in by writing a book on dieting—which some of those workers who had had to tighten their belts may have found grimly amusing. It is difficult to imagine what Major would do. Could he go back to the bank? That might work provided his job did not involve any economic forecasting. Try again to be a bus conductor? What with cuts in funding and in wages there aren’t many of them left. Go back to the obscurity of Brixton? Perhaps—if they'll have so spectacular a failure.
And that really is what it is all about—politicians who talk to us so confidentially about their ability, their unique schemes, to control capitalism but who are found wanting when their facile assurances are exposed. John Major is a historical example of this. Has anyone seen him? Has anyone seen one of the more wretchedly exposed politicians of recent times?
Ivan
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