Major major

The 90s are back. Or at least John Major is. As Steve Richards points out in an excellent piece, it is the tenth anniversary of his leaving office next week. Now, I wouldn’t go as far as Matthew Parris in today’s Times, suggesting Major for mayor.

But Richards is absolutely right in stressing Major’s incredible popularity with the British public. The press may have despised him, and his party may have been self-destructing, but he managed to win the 1992 election. Right to the end, he remained far more popular than his party. And the words he used at the beginning of his premiership, about a country at ease with itself, a classless society – these rang out widely.

In that sense it is unfair that it is his name that now denotes an era of political failure. It should be called instead after those in his party who couldn’t stop picking fights, briefing and plotting, albeit often in the name of ideological purity - perhaps 'the Bastard years' instead of the Major years. It’s a warning too, to any Labour MPs who want to populate their next leader’s cabinet with Portillos and Heseltines and arcane ideological battles over the private provision of public healthcare and education.