YouSaid · the spoken record

John Major

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2023-06-19
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2023-06-19
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  1. “No, no, no. I thought it then. I think it now. I mean, I think there's been a great change on both sides of the House of Commons. And I think it's detrimental to Parliament on the Labour side. There are a lot of, well, I suppose you might, will horny-handed sons of toil who were in the Labour Party. My goodness, they mattered because they didn't talk about things that happened in their constituencies as an abstract point. They lived it in the middle of their constituencies, whether they were minors or whatever they were. And they represented a large part of the British nation. And you don't see many of those in the Labour Party now. It's much more middle class, much more technocratic, and I think that is a loss.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And I will have something to say about that when we get there. So Europe became a second issue. The parliamentary party felt that Margaret was going to lose the next election. They had other fears as well, but they were concerned she would lose the next election. And I'm sure if she had metaphorically put her arms around the party and sweet talk to them, I think they would not have voted against her, but she didn't. I don't think she ran a great campaign when Michael contested the leadership.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And the Conservative Party was overwhelmingly pro European. And the reason it was overwhelmingly pro-European was we still had at that stage in the 80s an awful lot of people who'd served either in the war or in the forces after the war. And they were prepared to do anything to make sure there wasn't another European war. And the easiest way of doing that was the unity of Europe. And so that deeply affronted them. Then, of course, was a great clash with Nigel Lawson and Jeffrey Howe about the exchange rate mechanism when they favored it and she did not. And they won eventually, eventually. I'm sure we'll come to that later with Rory's threat about whether I'm September the 16th, 1990. I remember the death artist. Thank you very much for reminding me.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “By which time she was hooked on the policy and couldn't really retreat. She wasn't great on retreating, she didn't like it as a matter of principle, and shows she was stuck with it, and because she was stuck with it, she dug her heels in and advocated it even more. And the poltex was killing the Conservative Party. And then at the dispatch box, she referred to, I think it was after Delors had spoken to the Labour Conference. And she and Dolore, I think it fair to say, were not soulmates. Jack Commission president, the European Commission president. They were not soulmates. And she ended her remarks about something saying, no, no, no.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “The dustman and the Duke argument, really, whether they should play the same amount for public services or whether it should be related to income. And it's always been related to income or property or whatever, that the poll tax was the other way round. And the Prime Minister had been assured by departmental ministers at the time that the poll tax would not increase the levy on the average working man dramatically, if at all. That turned out to be totally mistaken.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “But the fall of Mrs. Thatcher is subjected to so many false narratives that it's worth actually remembering what really happened. There were two things that brought Mrs. Thatcher down, and one event. The two things of them the bigger event was actually the poll tax. It was the poll tax that destabilized her position in the party. Long before, well not long before Europe ran alongside it, but the poll tax was the big one. And just around that, did you at the time did you as a politician foresee the problems that was going to cause? Well, the treasury did. And I was the chief secretary. And Nigel Lawson often sent me along to the meetings to argue against the poll tax because he had done it privately with Margaret and it had obviously caused friction between them.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And who I think is fair to say, again, from looking at your book again, I always get the sense your relationship with Michael Hazelton, you never respected him, but there was maybe never fully trust between you. Is that fair? I didn't know him until I made him Deputy Prime Minister, obviously after I became Prime Minister, from when on, people had said he's very ambitious, this is a mistake, you shouldn't have done it, and he was absolutely superb to work with. So he became an extremely good friend and remained so. But I simply didn't know him before.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “His spending ministers, and that isn't an easy job. They all have a case for spending more money because you can always have a case. There will never be a time where a spending minister cannot make a case for spending more money. And the Treasury have to hold the ring to make sure the macroeconomic situation is correct. And so there is an instinctive divide between the two of them. It depends how well they work together, whether that divide can be easily handled or whether it actually becomes a point of friction. Often it becomes a point of friction. It didn't, with David Cameron and George Osborne. It was true, but mostly it does. And that is, it's that they both have to live with the success of different objectives.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I will then, but I noticed you didn't answer me about the number 10, number 11 relations. I'll come back to that. But while I can remember the example of her instincts. There was Berwick and East Lothian by-election in the 1980s, where there was a majority for the Labour Party of just over 1,000, and the Tories were pretty confident they'd win it. The candidate was a lady I'd known for a very long time, Margaret Marshall. And I went up to help her for a couple of days, and I was there when Margaret came up. And I was asked to look after Margaret for part of the time she was there. And she was only up there for a morning. But I remember her saying at the end of the morning, it doesn't smell right. We are not going to win this. And everybody was anticipating we'd win it. But she was bang on the button. I think it was John Hume Robertson who won for Labour with a majority of about 1,100. But she was up there just for morning, and she knew it was wrong. That was a remarkable instinct. I don't think many people would do it. The tension between ten and eleven is because they have different roles, really. I mean, the Prime Minister has to keep in check all.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “No, I don't think she did, but she realized it was trouble, and it wasn't a trouble she could just shake off. It wasn't something that could be handled by Bernard Inham or anybody else. And there were comments made that really...”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, I was sitting next to Margaret, and she didn't expect it. She certainly didn't expect a speech that was so blunt and clearly aimed with deadly accuracy at what she had been doing and how Jeffrey disapproved of it. So I think she was pretty shocked and she was a sufficiently astute politician. She had a very good nose for politics. Stories about that, I could tell you, but I'll spare you them. So she realized immediately how deadly that particular speech was. And when she got up and left the chamber, she asked me to go with her. And we went into her room and talked about it for a while. It wasn't really a conversation. She was emoting about what had happened and how it would be received in the party. Did you know she was?”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “to trouble, particularly over Europe, where I was seen as a pro-European, and many of the newspapers and others were becoming, let me put it this way, disenchanted with the European scene. And I think they began to become more participants than they had been before at that stage. And I think that has carried on and worsened.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That's what Sherlock Holmes would call a three pipe problem, I think. Let me try and address it from the point of view of the politicians first. There was no social media then. That is a huge difference, an absolutely mega difference, which makes life immeasurably more difficult for many politicians and certainly more difficult for senior ministers and the prime minister because they're never quite sure what's going to come out of the undergrowth from their own side. So that is a distinct change. I think also, although we always had the newspapers broadly labour, broadly conservative, I think they're much more part of the debate now than they were then. I think they're participants in politics rather than reporters of politics. And we began to see quite a bit of that at the end of the eighties, I think, and certainly in the nineties where the government ran in.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “While Nigel was concerned that I balance a budget which no one had done for a very long time, and we did balance the budget. And providing I did that, Nigel was content.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Oh, yeah, I was a wonderful job. Because in those days, I'm not sure it's done the same way now. But in those days the chief secretary negotiated one to one just as I'm sitting opposite you with the spending minister. No civil servants present, nobody present. The chief secretary prepared the departmental secretary of state prepared. They debated it and they reached a conclusion. So it was given to the chief secretary, the junior member of cabinet, the opportunity to shift public expenditure in very large sums from some areas to others that he judged were more deserving.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Less than the time you had before you got into the prime ministers are getting younger and younger, an expert too will be pre-puberty, I think. But it was a little more difficult in those days. So yes, I think I was the first. But there were in Ken's time when he was there with Margaret longer conversations, I understand, and there certainly was when I was there. Because I tended to draw all the voices in before reaching a conclusion as to what the voices said. It was a novel concept, but it seemed to work in cabinet.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Ken, if I can put it this way, is one of a kind. They have never produced anyone like Ken in my political lifetime. The thought that anyone could cow Ken or keep Ken quiet if you wish to speak is just an illusion. They certainly couldn't. It is true. I didn't enter Margaret's cabinet till late 87 when I became Chief Secretary”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yes, after AT3 and 87, I wasn't in the cabinet any. But after 87, yes, she did. She became a bit more determined to get her own way after 87.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Well, they were very plant. If anybody had And they think Jeffrey Howe would be deterred because he has a gentleman, then they don't know Jeffrey. And you could say the same about Willie Whitelaw. The belief that Margaret just said, we'll do this and we all do it. It is true that she tended to introduce the subject and at the end of her introduction came her conclusion. But that is not how the discussions always ended”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Well, I can only tell you that she was Prime Minister for 11 years. She threw nobody out and never even suggested it, and there was certainly plenty of differences.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Well, firstly, if I may say so, it's overdone and was overdone by the media. Of course, she was right of center in her attitudes and many of the others were left of centre, particularly on economic and social matters. But you will recall she appointed all the people I mentioned to government. There was no question of having a Brexit government with only one conceivable view. She saw these people were talented. She knew she needed a government that brought in the best talent in the Conservative Party, and she appointed them. And she was prepared to argue her case and argue with them. I'll tell you something about Mrs. Satcher, which people haven't particularly remarked. She could be extraordinarily brutal and blunt, and occasionally rude, but only, only to people who were in a position to fight back. And if they did fight back, she didn't mind. If they didn't fight back, she thought they were wet as a stream. But what I never saw her do was be unkind or brutal.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “But the very next day, I was the whip on duty sitting on the bench in the House of Commons. When she came from the Prime Minister's office at the back of the speaker, she has sat down beside me and said, I've been thinking about what you said last night. We must have another talk about it. I'll convene at another meeting. And she did. And it was a much gentler meeting. And five weeks later, she appointed me a member of her government and gave me a what I call a proper job. It is, she said, when she appointed me, the job I started with, parliamentary secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security. And Tories will understand health and social security are reasonably rare, reasonably rare. It was a wonderful place to start.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Well, I didn't know whether she's mine at all at the time, and frankly, I was so fed up with the way she'd behaved, I didn't much care. But I found out pretty soon in a pretty spectacular way that it was easy to misread her. The whips thought I'd blown my career, several of them said it. And I remember one of them putting his arms around me and said, never mind, she won't be there forever. You can always come back.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Well, how best to tackle this question? I was in the whip's office and it was my job as Treasury Whip to keep an eye on what people thought of our economic policies in the early 1980s.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Well, I think the group we're talking about is the blue chips. And they were a lot of centrist and maybe slightly centrist left. And one or two from the right, Robert Cranbourne, for example, who I don't think would call himself a center-left Tory. And we liked one another. We were the same vintage. We came in at the same time. I think all of us came in in 1979. And we naturally gravitated together”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Well, I don't know that I consciously did think that at any stage. My ambition was to get into the treasury. And if I could to be Chancellor, I don't know that I'd stretched it beyond that. Everyone who has become Prime Minister other than the perhaps Titans of politics of whom there are a handful over the past 300 years needs a measure of luck, time and circumstance to get there. So I didn't particularly sit there thinking, am I going to be Prime Minister? I did want to go to the Treasury.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Well, I am alarmed about the safe current politics and current world affairs, but I'm reading that book because I heard it was an extremely good book. I mean, what do you buy someone of my age at Christmas? You buy them books. And I think at Christmas I had about 24 books. So I've got two shelves of books that I'm still reading and will take some time to get through”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I'm reading appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouvery at the moment. It's his first book, but I think it's one of the finest books about the lead up to the Second World War that I've yet read. It's beautifully researched, beautifully written, and raises it from an angle many people have not previously approached. So I thoroughly recommend it.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yes, it is. Yes, it's well, I won't tell you the story of the book. It'll take half an hour. But if anyone hasn't read it and they can get a copy of Below the Salt by Thomas Costain, it's one of my favorite books.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “All the children's classics, things like Black Arrow, the whole of the Bunter books, of course, were absolutely essential reading in those days, but I also gravitated to more serious books as well, as I have done as subsequently. I remember reading a book called Below the Salt by Thomas Costain, probably out of print now, but a brilliant and absolutely brilliant book that excited me tremendously.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I think Jock Bruce Gardine and Alan Hazelhurst and Charles Duro, now the Duke of Wellington, the other three in the final shortlist, all of whom were favoured in some way, and I was not.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Well, as far as Huntington is concerned, it sounds like a very rural constituency. It had had a huge amount of London overspill, much of it in Peterborough, but also it had spilled out into the villages, so there was a much, it was a very different constituency from the one who had selected my predecessor in 1945. And so it wasn't as rural as you may think. And many of the problems that were arising in Huntington were problems that I had been familiar with from London. So I did think I had a better chance than many people did. I was completely written off by the Sunday Express, who had a column in the middle of their paper each week. Crossbench, I think it's called. I was the unconsidered outsider, which I thought was quite helpful.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Oh, I pointed out that the country was pretty evenly divided between capital punishment and not. And if you maintain capital punishment, you diminish the chance of getting convictions for people, even though they might be guilty. And that piece of sophistry worked quite well.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Well, going around generally, it was a problem, but not as big a problem as another issue. The other issue was whether I was in favor of capital punishment, which I was not, until I found a word, a form of response that beat off the people who were in favour of it.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Now, it hasn't come about. I think there's been moves towards it in many ways. For example, politics is much more inclusive these days. I mean, the number of minorities around the House of Commons is immeasurably different, even from the time when I was there 20 years ago. And I think that is a necessary change. And of course, many of these minorities have now served in the cabinets of both Labour and Conservative governments and have constituencies where you would not have expected them to be chosen as a candidate 20 years ago, but which they are now and where in many cases they're very popular. So I think there has been a quite significant shift. Is it perfect? No. Will it ever be perfect? I very much doubt it. But I think in that regard, we're moving in the right direction. Now, you mentioned prime ministers coming from top schools. That's true. But what I was talking about was not who passed through the sieve to reach.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “It's a very big part of Britain, and my dream of a class for society is something that has never come about. But I'm not sure it's such a big determination in which way you vote anymore. I found in my first seat in Highgate whenever I went up to a very large, well disposed house. It was a Labour voter for sure. It certainly wasn't a conservative. And if I went round the Council of States, I would find more conservatives. So in terms of the way people instinctively vote, it is less class-based today.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “politics was much more class-based in the 1950s and 1960s. I think it's more culturally based now, frankly, than class-based. But it was class-based in those days if you were middle class, if you were white-collar, if you earned a good income, you were likely to be conservative. If you were a manual worker, and if you were relatively lower income, you were more likely to be labor. So that was certainly how I saw it at that particular time. I'm not sure that that is as true now. In fact, I'm sure it isn't as true now as it used to be then.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “I was really looking for a freedom to make of myself what I could. I wasn't sure what I could be made, but I wanted to try.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “The second half of your statement is only partly true. I never was especially tribal. I wasn't especially opposed to labour. The Labour people I came across then in those days in Lambeth were straight up and down people with a left-of-centre view who were trying to do their best in very difficult circumstances and also at a time of massive immigration into the borough which added to their difficulties. I had no particular opposition to them at all, but I did feel conservative. I wished to conserve the rule of law to me seemed to be an extremely important thing. The chance of the individual's chance to do for himself what he wishes to achieve rather to have it collectively done was something appealed to me very much indeed. I did no work at school but I did a great deal when I left to pass the exams that I hadn't passed at school and to get some qualifications.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “I had. That was what I wished to do. Indeed, if you think about it for a moment, the choices were limited. For someone, I had no sponsors, no backers, no money, no background, no educational qualifications. Top of the civil service, unlikely, top of the armed forces, unlikely. Top of sport wasn't good enough. But politics, you lived on your wits and what you did throughout your career in a way that doesn't apply elsewhere. And I found that very attractive.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Connecting to Well, in those days, of course, there was a proper parliamentary reporting, a couple of pages of blogs from East Molsey said this and so on. So I saw a bit of that, but also he was often in the news. He was in the cabinet at the time. And, of course, the party conference speeches. And they also issued a record of his speeches at times of general elections. So that was really how I heard him. And then I met him and was similarly inspired, metaphorically sitting at his feet when he was making a speech.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Let me try. Well, in terms of inspiration, the politician who inspired me more than any other then and since was Ian MacLeod. And I don't know whether everyone listening will remember Ian MacLeod. He was quite a short man with a high domed bald head and a slightly paralytic neck And when he spoke it was like a great church bell ringing, and he was to me, as a child, truly inspiring. He didn't just talk about political things. He talked about the morality of politics. He talked a lot about what was right and wrong, about what should and could be done and what was intolerable.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Who was then, I think, the Chancellor. And as I walked into Downing Street, before I saw the chamber, the atmosphere reached out and grabbed me, and I thought this is where I wish to be.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Yes. I mean, school for me was something I loathed from start to finish. I didn't work at school or too much of rebellion about me at the time. But the two things I cared about were history, which is essential to politics and English, which is essential as well, at least in this country. For most people. I was very lucky then because I went to a local church fate and I met the local labour MP Colonel Marcus Lipton. You may remember him. And he'd been the Member of Parliament since nineteen forty five, so he'd been there a long time. And he was very kind to me. He realized in talking to me that I was likely to be a conservative, but we talked often, we met on these occasions, and he gave me some tickets to go to the House of Commons. And I went there in 1956 for the first time. And I saw one of those dreary afternoons where they're doing the finance bill in committee stage on the floor of the house. But I heard”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Oh, the gap was 40, 41 years. So I had no idea who he was, and neither my mother nor my father had told me it was sometime we'd be moved there. I was about 10 before I actually realized who he was. But life was quite tough there. Both my parents were sick. There was no money to throw around. And at one stage, we were approached by the Lambeth Labour Council who offered to rehouses when they could. They were very kind, they were very decent, they were very gentle, but they couldn't actually do anything at the time. Alive was more attracted. I was then twelve or thirteen, twelve, I think, by the Conservative creed that you took the opportunities to get yourself out of the difficulties which you were in. And that was a quite binary choice at the age of 12 or 13.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Well, I think it was, as Macmillan would have put it, events, dear boy events. It's quite a lengthy background, but I mean, briefly, my father was a Victorian man. He was born in 1879. He was 64, 65 when I was born, which was something of a surprise to my mother. But as a Victorian man, he did a business deal just by shaking hands. And in terms of shaking hands, the deal then went sour. And my father lost everything he had, which wasn't much. It was a small bungalow in Worcester Park and whatever savings he had. And we moved to Worcester Park to two rooms in Brixton, and although I didn't know it at the time I wondered where we found these two rooms, our landlord was my father's son, who I didn't know existed, who'd been born in 1902.”

    2023-06-19 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source