YouSaid · the spoken record

Sir John Major

lines on the record: 53
first: 2023-06-26
most recent: 2023-06-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I wasn't planning to determine what the award should be. But clearly, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, who served 11 and 10 years, would get more nominations than I would who served seven or David Cameron. And so on. Because I think you would remove some of the irritations to the public if you were able to do that.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They don't make legislation, they revise it. And an elected House of Lords would not be in a position to do that remotely as well. So I do not in any way favour an elected House of Lords. I do favour an appointed House of Lords, maybe not the way it's done now, of a much smaller size than the one we have got. And in terms of things like Prime Minister's nominations, I don't think you can stop them, and I don't think you should stop them. What I do think is you should limit the number of nominations to so many for every year the Prime Minister has served.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it is a revising chamber, and that's a key point. There is a suggestion, firstly, the House of Lords is in need of reform. It's much too big. And there are too many people who really don't attend. A House of Lords between 500 or 600 is ample. And it should certainly be smaller than the size of the House of Commons because it is a revising chamber. But let us consider it as a revising chamber. If you have an elected House of Lords, the people elected to it are likely to be people who could not get themselves elected to the House of Commons. So the cream of those willing to face election will get into Commons, the Lords would be secondary. And if it was all elected, you wouldn't have the experience of the captains of industry, the great academic leaders, the leaders of the armed forces who have a lifetime of experience in revising the legislation.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the danger that arises from that is you're going to have people who are more Tory, more labour and more liberal, as the people selected as candidates and elected. And you get a more fractious, disputatious parliament than you have had before, in which you can't lean across the aisle. And other things have helped with that. For example, one well meaning thing was Robin Cook's reform of ours in the House of Commons. Now it was meant to make the House of Commons more family friendly, but it's had a secondary effect. It means there are no late night sittings. Tory labours and liberals are not sitting there in the smoking room while the tea room getting to know one another and talking to one another there were used to be quite a considerable number of friendships across the party barriers. It wasn't so tribal. They weren't all in their tribal hideouts, poking nothing but opposition at the other side.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will be defeated. And I think that can certainly be done. But I had wider things in mind as well. Our politics has changed at the grassroots. It's very difficult to claim these days that the three major parties are mass movements. They aren't millions of people now had better things to do with their lives than join the conservative Labour or Liberal parties. And they don't. And the constituency parties have shrunk. And with the constituency parties shrinking, it is in the nature of life that the people who feel most strongly pro-Tory, pro-Labour, pro-liberal remain, and the people who are middle of the road, but on balance think this is the right mob for me, drift away.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. No, I think I do. But I think that's because in some ways there are bits of them that are a bit out of date, frankly. I mean, there are several things I had in mind. Firstly, I had in mind the growth of populism. I also had, because it goes hand in hand with this, the growth of intolerance. Populism isn't a political creed, it's a self-interested and selfish creed. It promotes its cronies, not the people who are best suited to a particular job. It recklessly seeks out scapegoats in order that they can attack the scapegoats to the general encouragement of the populace. It's an unpleasant way of conducting public life, and it needs to be seen for what it is. If it is seen for what it is, and if it is not supported nationally in the media, then it will”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do think the tone of the country is beginning to change, and so I am on the optimistic side. You may be right in your pessimism. It may have gone too far. Populism is a slightly different beast, of course. Populism has got a lot to do with political self-interest, and that depends upon whether it is successful or not.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know whether that's pessimistic or realistic to be absolutely honest. I could make a case for it against, almost as if I was deciding which side of an argument to take. I'm inclined to the optimistic side because there are so many people I have met who are not in politics, who are normal citizens whom I've met in all sorts of different positions, who feel completely let down by what they have seen. And I think the power of that is compelling. Now I can't possibly know how widespread it is in every part of the country and I don't pretend to do so.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that we have to live up to what we say. If we admit the Nolan principles of right, in terms of parliament to take that particular example, we have to live up to those Nolan principles, and people who do not live up to Nolan principles must pay the price for not living up to them. And if that is done, and rigidly enforced, it will set an example that people will soon follow. They soon follow a slack example. Not accepting the law or not obeying the conventions. We slipped into that habit quite quickly once it happened. It's reversible. And it must be reversed.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think they can be very important indeed. And I think Albert Reynolds was very important. Albert and I had met when we were both finance ministers. And we met mostly at finance ministers because in those days the Irish and the British rarely met. Except to disagree.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He would, he would. I mean, he'd argue about the tax bombshell and things like that, which are the sort of things I had in my mind, because all political parties will present their side of the case as though it is beyond doubt that that is the right thing. And that's the nature of political debate. The question is, which side of the political divide has a public audience at that moment? And at that moment in the 1990s, the audience was listening to the Labour Party and not to the Conservative Party.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's difficult to go back and be clear about that. It certainly set a new trend in forceful politics that is undoubtedly the case, I think, in the 1990s.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tony Blair. No, no, no, no, no, I don't think it was all about the communication, but I do think the communication was very important. And our communication, after 13 years, there comes a time, I think, when people cease to listen. In such a friendly fashion as they do, there's a balance where people will give you the benefit of the doubt and people where they won't. And at some point the benefit of the doubt goes. It went on Black Wednesday.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I may be said to have a bias in that Christian. May I not? Well, I think in all cases it's a bit of both. It's a question of how wide it goes. The Labour opposition in the 1990s were the most ruthless and best organized I have seen since my time in politics. And I think for the reason I set out, it was do or die for them if they hadn't won that election. Would there have been a credible Labour Party in the future? So they were completely ruthless. They had an extremely friendly press because we had been there too long. It was partly a problem that I was neither very right wing or very left wing. And of course that did remove from you some of the natural support you might otherwise have got and many of the policies, if I may put it this way, that Tony Blair successfully introduced I supported because they had been my policies before they were his policies except that the Labour Party branded them much better than I had done.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I would have liked to spend more money, but of course I wasn't in a position to do so. We were still dealing with the problems of inflation and making sure that it didn't get out of control and bring it down, which we did. As I say, went over 10% at one stage down to 2.6% and growth up. But just when we were in a position where we could have spent, and I would have spent, we lost the election and Gordon spent it for us.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would like to have done a lot more towards reforming education, particularly education at the primary level. That was one of the things that I very much wish to do. I thought we needed a complete reform of the tax system. Nigel Lawson had done a great deal, but it still had a lot of anomalies in it. And today, the tax system is desperately in need of reform. Other things that I thought needed doing, like the Irish peace process, like the lottery, things like that I was able to do, but there was a number of things that I wasn't.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The answer to your question is yes. You do. Aye, spend more time looking back thinking about the things that we weren't able to do, not just that I didn't do, but that we weren't able to do because of the circumstances than I do about the things that we did do that went well. So the answer is yes, you do, and I think that must be true of everyone with any sensitivity who has been Prime Minister.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just something you have to deal with. You don't go and stay in a corner and weep about it. You just have to try and deal with what's happening. It made a judgment as to what you can do. And we made judgments. I was in the room with a number of other senior members of the government. And we made judgments and eventually we concluded that interest rates were not going to work, the die was cast, we had no choice but to withdraw from the exchange rate mechanism.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a political disaster. But what I was about to say was it was not an economic disaster because when we were driven out of the ERM, we were looking to see how we could withdraw because it had done its job. We didn't enter the ERM as a preliminary to a single currency, which is what the Eurosceptics always feared. We were never going to do that, Lawson wasn't, and I wasn't. So we were looking to see how we could get out of the ERM. Now that was more difficult because if you withdraw from the ERM, the markets say, ah, you've given up fiscal discipline and you have to put up interest rates. So we were trying to deal with that problem. And the crisis came upon us before we could deal with it. So it was not an economic disaster for us, but it was a political disaster.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only lever we had was interest rates. And support from other governments. Strange to relate, we didn't get the support from Germany that we thought we would have. And later, when the French franc hit the same problem, they did get support from the Germans. So that was a very sore point indeed. But the fact of the matter is it became clear as we put interest rates up. We had got them down under the RM from fourteen to ten percent, I think. We put them up to fifteen before realizing it wasn't working. And then we had to withdraw from DRM. If we had done it without battling, it would have been seen as bad faith apart from anything else. Now maybe these days people don't care about bad faith, but I did then.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the day we were facing huge outflows of money. We tried to protect, to stay within the ERM. We had signed up to it in Europe.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It actually meant keeping sterling within fairly narrow bands. And the base of it was the Deutschmark. And what happened subsequently was the Deutschmark, the policy of the Deutschmark began to change. And what happened with Black Wednesday was there was turmoil in Northern Europe with interest rates at phenomenal levels over a couple of nights. And the governor of the Bundesbank said something at a private briefing. Which implied that the turmoil would hit stirling next. He didn't name Stirling, but he said something that led people to believe that, and so everything turned on Stirling. And these days, with the degree of external money, it can be removed, and there is a great crisis, and that's pretty much what happened.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was to almost near universal acclamation. Even the telegraph and the sun were warmly supportive, the Labour Party was strongly supportive. John Smith had been kicking me for ages about why we hadn't gone in.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was it was and the most frustrating for a different reason because why did we enter the exchange rate mechanism? We entered the exchange rate mechanism because we had a huge inflationary problem and had had since the 1960s and no government Tory or Labour had managed to tame inflation for a long time. Time and again, things had been tried, it had become too difficult, too painful, policy had changed, inflation had dipped a little and come back. Now I hated inflation with a passion I cannot begin to tell you because I learned about it. If the week is longer than the family's money, that's a problem. Inflation means that applies rapidly, so I was determined in our term of office not to back away from handling inflation. We had run out of everything except the exchange rate mechanism. When we went in,”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hand to hand with the growth of English nationalism. Which has got far worse, accompanied by the growth of populism. The two things in the UK have gone hand in hand. And there are people in all the political parties who don't really belong in them On the fringes of them, but who have gone to the three main parties because they can get themselves elected to Parliament under their labels, and they believe with many of the tenants of those parties, but not perhaps all of them. I think that's what you have seen in politics on both sides of the chamber over the last 20 years, and certainly what you have seen in recent years.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were distraught at India becoming independent, for example, in 1948 under the Atli government. And they just like the fact they found it hard to come to terms with the fact that we were no longer an empire, that we no longer had the whole of the world with large pink blotches in which 50 million Britons as we were then actually governed a very large portion of the world. And of course, that worsened. It isn't that we have retreated. It is that many countries like India and many others that are in the Commonwealth have grown, grown enormously. As of today, for example, we British are seventy million people in a world of eight thousand million. So let's not pretend we can be cocked with walk in the way we were fifty, sixty or seventy years ago. Now that is a very hard lesson to learn and many people found it very difficult to accept that Britain wasn't an exception.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it goes back to the Empire loyalists, of course. If you go back to that immediately after the war, they were quite a significant feature in the Conservative Party. And that strand of opinion has always been there.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so there wasn't time to get the Maastricht Treaty through. And since it had had a massive majority in Parliament, there seemed no difficulty in leaving it till the next Parliament. What I did not foresee was that the nature of the Conservative Party would change with the membership of the members of Parliament in the nineteen ninety two election. The old guard, who'd been in or after the war, who believed unity with Europe was imperative for the future security of our country, left Parliament, and in came people who were imbued with a different view about Europe and were prepared to vote against it. And I should have really taken the treaty through before, but I didn't. And so new people coming into Parliament, led by some people who'd been there and encouraged by others who should have known better, caused a great deal of trouble in getting the treaty through the House of Commons. And it disrupted the whole Parliament. And in many ways,”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of them spread wider across the Labour Party, the other didn't. The first was not joining the euro currency. Nobody thought I could negotiate a deal that kept us out of the euro. I did. The second was the social chapter, which we conservatives believed rightly or wrongly was going to be a job-destroying event. Nobody thought we could negotiate our way out of that we did. And so those were the two things which led people to declare the negotiation was a triumph on the day the negotiations were complete. And the biggest single mistake that I made in politics was not to get the Maastricht Treaty through before the 1992 election, but we ran out of time without There were three dates, and the date I picked for the 92 election, the 9th of April, was a sentimental date because it was a day I met Norma. We couldn't have gone on any longer.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were several points that were fundamental. Europeans were going to move towards the Maastricht Treaty, whatever we said. And if we had just tried to block it, we would have made ourselves complete outliers in Europe and we would have lost all the influence that we had in Europe. The point about negotiation is you give something to get something. You don't just say, I'm having this and throw your toys out the pram if you don't get it. There were two things that were a red rag to the majority of people in Parliament.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do identify conservative. I'm a conservative because I believe in what conservatives believe in. I believe in conservatism. I believe in conserving. I believe in obeying the law I believe in the unwritten laws of politics that we call conventions. I believe in all those things. I believe in internationalism rather than nationalism. That is the conservatism that I believe in, that I've always believed in. And I haven't changed parts of my party may have changed. But not all of it.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are one or two policy points. I'm a conservative. I'm not going to alert the Labour Party to what they're doing that will cost them votes at the next general election.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It may be, I'm not sure yet, because I think the Labour Party are making one or two mistakes that will damage them in the general election. But in 1992, we foresaw the probability that we would lose in 1997 unless Labour imploded. And so it wasn't a surprise to us in 1997. The scale of the defeat was, but not the fact of it.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we realize then that having been in government for thirteen years, and then got another five years just we had stretched the Democratic elastic as far as it could go. Unless the Labour Party imploded, we agreed the day after the ninety two election not in any defeatist mode at all, but we just agreed that dispassionately as observers of politics it would be extremely difficult for the Conservative Party even if led by the Archangel Gabriel, to win the next election, and therefore we should do what we thought was right because we thought it would be extremely difficult to win, simply because longevity, people, there's a time and tide when you can feel the mood changing.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you a story that will give you your answer. In the 92 election, Chris Patton, who was party chairman, lost his seat at Bath. He was as able as anyone in our generation, as a politician, and his career has been extraordinary. The following morning he came to number ten, and we went up to sit in the white room and have a coffee and talk about it”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find it hard to believe if you, Rory. Well, he did for Tony Blair. What I could have probably used someone doing for me. And he was extremely good at it. And the Labour Party had been out of office for a very long time. They had lost the nineteen ninety two election. Unexpectedly they thought they were going to win it. And they were ruthless in needing to win the nineteen ninety seven election because if they hadn't, there would have been a real question about whether we were a plural democracy and whether the Labour Party had a future. So there was a range of circumstances that made the Labour Party completely ruthless about what they did. And plainly, one of the things they had to do was to damage the Conservative government and the Conservative Prime Minister. Alistair and his colleagues were very successful in doing that.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it would be very difficult today. It was a novelty value in 1992 that was so effective, I think, because people thought that politicians were growing away from the public, and here was suddenly someone in the middle of election, actually in the middle of a crowd with a microphone, surrounded by large numbers of people, some of whom were shouting at. So it was a novelty value, I think, that worked. I doubt it would work today.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By many in my party you thought I ought to be on television, but it worked with the public. It was flesh and blood politics.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I went to Bolton and there was a near riot. I never did find out quite why. And I thought, hang on, why can't I speak to people directly? And that's where the soapbox came from. I had learnt my politics in Brixton as a boy starting at fourteen or fifteen, whatever, thirteen, actually, standing on the soapbox in Brixton Market, and in Brixton Road, just speaking to anyone who was passing, and answering questions, and people were very tolerant. Here was this kid who knew nothing about everything, and it taught me something about British tolerance. They listened. Many of them just walked on, of course, but they did listen and they'd gather in little groups and they'd cross-examine me. But nobody ever, ever told me to buzz off. I didn't have a right review. And I was very struck by that. So I was encouraged to get out of soap box. And I did it first at Luton. And it was dismissed.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did. I was pretty much the only person who did, I think, but I did. The first week on all of the campaign, I loathed it. The Labour campaign was very professional. If I use the word slick, I mean it in the sense of professional and it was very televisual. Ours wasn't. Yet when I went out into the streets there was a warmth that led me to believe that we were doing better than the opinion polls told us. But I wasn't getting through. If I made a long speech about education for an hour, it would get one minute on the news, followed by one minute from the labour spokesman announcing it, one minute from the Liberal spokesman announcing it, and two minutes from reporter explaining what it was I meant by what it was I said. Though in practice I've actually said what I meant. So the message just wasn't getting through.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If at all, in living membry. And yet we had caused so much hurt, and we had been there so long, and we had blue on blue battles which is always absolutely fatal for any government, for those three reasons we went down to a terrible defeat. But it's also interesting to note that we did it because we thought we had to get rid of inflation. And the fact of getting rid of inflation lasted for a very long time. I do think the way the government behaves, any government, not just the one I was lucky enough to lead, but any government can look callous when in fact the reasons behind it are much more complex and rather different.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I was going to bring inflation down. And that was immensely damaging. It made us look hard-hearted. It made us look as though we didn't care. And many people would genuinely have felt we didn't. And the opposition, of course, Alistair, were making it clear that they felt we didn't. And that was perhaps their job, but that's what they were doing. So that was extremely difficult. The moral aspect was it, if I may say so, on the day we left office, interest rates had fallen from 14% six. Inflation had fallen from, it went up to over ten percent to two point six percent, growth from being in recession was at three point five percent, which I think is a large, we've seen it for a very long time. And the public finances were one billion in deficit. It had risen to 46 billion. So there was a complete turnaround. I don't think you'll find figures like that very often in politics.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In order to correct that, we had to do some pretty uncomfortable things in government. We had to put up some taxes, we had to cut public expenditure, we did many things that caused an awful lot of pain to people. The things that I wished to do when I came into politics were precisely the opposite of what I had no choice but to do during the period of that recession, and the belief that we didn't care was simply untrue. But I had a thing about inflation in particular, because I remember in my childhood that for us to get through the week, my mother often had to borrow money. I don't ever remember her in my youth, buying herself a new dress or a new pair of shoes, or going off to the hairdresser or spending money on herself, and I knew there were many families up and down the country who would be in a similar position. But I had no choice”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's quite difficult to answer that without sounding pious or sanctimonious. Let me have a crack at it at the risk of doing one or the other. In terms of the moral responsibility, and perhaps I can do it by mentioning the thing that I least like doing and most regretted during the time I was there. On the day I became Prime Minister, we were heading for a serious recession. If you remember, interest rates were 14%. Inflation was very nearly ten percent. Growth was down to half a percent, and we were going into what was going to be a very deep recession.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I had this vast array of soldiers as far as the eye could see, surrounding this tank in Saudi Arabia. And I looked at them and they were very young, and I knew which they did not know that the war would actually begin on the twelfth of January, and the twelfth of January was my son's sixteenth birthday. A many of these young soldiers were seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, Batfra an accident of a year or so it could have been my son I was looking out there who could have been going into war and could have been killed in a few days time. And I thought they deserve to know that they had the whole country behind them without a shadow of doubt. And that was what was in my mind.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I did go out on my way to make sure they were well briefed. I was fascinated by that because Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, the Gulf War begins. You have to commit or you decide to commit UK troops. And yet it's clear from reading your book that you really felt it mattered not just to get the politicians on board, but you had, I think you had the Archbishop of Canterbury Runsey and Cardinal Hume come in. I did. And you briefed them on the whole thing. I was blown away by that. Well, I think it was necessary.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't agree with his politics, of course, but I rather liked him and I thought he was quite badly treated by many people and he was very supportive of the Gulf War. I mean, when the Gulf War began, it seemed to me if we were sending young men and women conceivably out to the Gulf to be killed because we were really worried about biological and chemical weapons at the time and the Republican Guard, if we're going to do that, there were several things we need to do. One of them was a broadcast I made to the families because it was their husbands, brothers, children who were being sent out there. The second one was to, and I don't put these in any particular order, to make sure all the churches, Church of England, Catholic Church, all the churches, were fully on board with the necessity of the war. And thirdly, was to make sure that all the party leaders were”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the purpose of holding the Prime Minister to account has long since gone. It's a carnival in which the Prime Minister tries to cheer up his troops and damage the opposition, and the opposition tries to prove that the Prime Minister is either incompetent, Craven, or whatever is the determination of the day. I think for the first three months, Neil Kinnock and I tried to clear that up. We didn't have a formal agreement to do it. It just was the way things worked. And of course, our peers on either side eventually got the better. The press said this is very boring. And it went back to the old merry-go-round, which is of no use then or now to man nor beast. But I thought Neil Kiddock was a more considerable person than he was given credit for at the time. I could only say when I shared confidences with him, they remained confidences. When you meet someone you either are neutral about them or you think this is quite a nice guy.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it was a good try. You mentioned Neil there. I was going to bring this up later, but actually I will bring it up now because I want to talk about the Gulf War. I was really struck in your book by how warm and positive you were about Neil, because, of course, the public will just remember you across the dispatch box at each other. You basically said that Neil was an incredible support during the Gulf War. He was an old-fashioned patriot. And I was really kind of quite blown away by your assessment. And of course, later, after he stopped being leader of the opposition, you made him a European commissioner. So I suppose this is, Rory and I, we have this motto of disagreeing agreeably. It feels to me that that sort of defined how you two operated. Is that a fair assessment? I think without a formal agreement, when I first became Prime Minister, we both tried to clean up Prime Minister's question time. It's a carnival.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think I will, actually. Boris is no longer Prime Minister. He's no longer in the House of Commons. He wasn't my favourite Prime Minister. I think that's fairly evident. I didn't agree with his policies. But Neil Kinnock once jokingly said to me, the best time to kick a man is when he's down. That he was joking. There's no need to kick Boris now. He's down. He's very possibly out. And I really don't want him to continue to be part of the conversation. He would wish to be part of the conversation, but I would wish to look forward.”
2023-06-26 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 24: John Major: The Gulf War, Black Wednesday, and Populism (Part 2) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source