Amol Rajan’s interview with Sir John Major, broadcast on BBC Sounds on 18 September 2024.
BBC Sounds Link
AMOL RAJAN
Sir John Major is perhaps the most unlikely of our modern British Prime Ministers, the son of a circus impresario. He grew up in poverty and left school with just 3 O-Levels. Yet that didn’t stop him rising through the Tory ranks at remarkable speed, serving as Foreign Secretary, then Chancellor for Lady Margaret Thatcher, and then finally her replacement and successor as Prime Minister. His victory in the 1992 election saw him win more votes than any British leader in history at a general election, but battles over Europe, sleaze and the future of the Tory party led to his defeat in 1997.
Tony Blair, with a Labour landslide, ended 18 years of Tory rule in which Major had been a central figure. Sir John rarely gives interviews these days, but the man once held as an emblem of meritocracy clearly feels as strongly as ever about what his party, his country and his generation need to do urgently to fix Britain’s problems, restore its pride and help it thrive In the 21st century.
Here is Sir John Major. Sir John Major, very good to see you. Thank you very much indeed for agreeing to speak to me. I can’t help but note that you don’t often do interviews these days, so I must start by asking why you’ve agreed to do this one.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s a rather unusual question, but I’ll give you a strictly truthful answer. There were two reasons, really. One, because it was a lengthy interview, and I do think a large number of the short interviews I see merely produce soundbite answers. They don’t really inform the public, and I think fewer, rather longer interviews would be more useful to the public. And secondly, though I probably shouldn’t say this, it’s 65 years since I joined the Conservative Party. I was, am and always will be a Conservative. But in recent months, a little longer, a few months, there’s not been a great deal I could say that I would wish to say in favour of what the previous Government were doing. That being so, I thought it better just to stay off the air. Now, of course, the election is behind us. The party’s looking again to the future, and I can return to speaking out, hopefully in favour.
AMOL RAJAN
[narrating]
Now 81 Sir John is much more likely to be seen at a cricket match than in Downing Street. But he remains hugely influential in British politics, even though his seven years as this country’s leader hark back to a very different era. Sir John’s life story is by any measure remarkable. He is the son of a mid Victorian, his father Tom was born in 1879 and in his mid 60s when his son John was born. A circus impresario, he fell on hard times when a deal went sour and the family moved from a bungalow in Worcester Park, a suburb south of London, to a two bedroom apartment with a communal toilet in Brixton’s Coldharbour Lane. Sir John endured poverty and hated school, giving it little effort and leaving with 3 O-Levels.
I met up with him at the Oval, home to Surrey Cricket Club, where he was once President, and just over a mile from the Brixton street that decades earlier Sir John had called home. Sir John. It’s not a bad sight, is it?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I mean, it’s absolutely beautiful.
AMOL RAJAN
When did you first come here?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I first came to the Oval, I can’t be precise to the date, early 50s, 1952 or 1953.
AMOL RAJAN
Did you come with your father?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
No, I came on my own, I would have been 10, and we lived in Brixton. I could walk here in 25 minutes, it was very cheap to get in here if you came just for the afternoon. So I was a regular attender, pretty much from the early 50s. I was here for the whole of the seven years that Surrey won the championship. This marvellous county team, arguably the best ever, though Yorkshire would disagree with that, and I just saw some wonderful cricket here. It brings back the most extraordinary memories whenever I come
AMOL RAJAN
Well, they’ve given us lovely sound effects of the leather on willow and I could talk to you for several hours about cricket and cricket alone, but my paymasters tell me that there are some other subjects that we should touch on. So let’s start with one other thing that we’ve got in common, which is a childhood in South London, but you resist the invitation and the temptation to cast your childhood as a sort of school of hard knocks. You’re humble about your humble origins, and I do think it’s a very unusual beginning for a Prime Minister. And I do think that it’s quite remarkable that you should have entered Number 10 from where you began. So I want our audience to understand where you began. Just describe, if you would, the circumstances of Coldharbour Lane, because it was really just two rooms and a lavatory, wasn’t it?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, there’s no lavatory actually, it was three floors down. Before I mention that, I should say my experience wasn’t unique, in the post-war period and in the early 50s, there were many families who lived in exactly the circumstances we did, or a good deal worse. There’s no point crying about that. I was extremely lucky in the family that I had, even if they had been unlucky in what life had done for them. But there were just two rooms, so there were five of us theoretically, my father, my mother, my older brother and sister, who were both older, my sister 13 years, my brother 11 years older than me, a parrot and a dog. There plainly wasn’t room for us all, so my brother moved out and actually lived in a shed for a long time, while they were repaying debt and there wasn’t much money.
I can’t ever recall my mother buying herself anything new, never a new dress. No luxuries, never a hairdo, never a meal out, never the cinema, never a holiday, certainly nothing remotely as smart as a bottle of wine in the house. So that was the experience of millions of people at that time, so I’m not saying it was unique, please don’t get that impression, but it was very different from life as it is today.
AMOL RAJAN
Was it happy?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Yes, it was. But my mother was a near saint in my view, largely because whenever there was half a crown to spare, it wasn’t spent on her, she would spend it on my father when he became bedridden and there was not a great deal of life left for him, except to talk, to remember the past, and occasionally have a small tot of whisky. So if she could save up enough money, she wouldn’t buy something for herself, she would buy a bottle of whisky for my father, who would treat it very sparingly, a very special occasion when you had a glass, but he loved it.
AMOL RAJAN
You were clearly supremely smart because you got into Rutlish Grammar School. How did you find that?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
That wasn’t the happiest of times, but let me emphasise that it was not the school’s fault so much as mine. When we went into Rutlish, it was moving up in the world, its prefects wore mortar boards. They were clearly aiming to make the school a much more attractive proposition, as seen from the 1950s. than it previously had been. And there was I, forgive me mentioning this because I don’t like doing so, but there was I in jumble sales school uniforms, who had to travel from Brixton to Wimbledon every day to go to school and back every day. So there was no chance of me doing any extra school activities, where so many friendships are born, or the the thought of going on school outings was just a non-starter. So I felt a bit alienated from school, as I say, my fault and our circumstances, but I absolutely rebelled in the most stupid way possible, in that I didn’t work.
The only subjects I liked were English language, English literature and history. The rest I was completely disinterested in. So my school record was lamentable and a great disappointment to my parents. So I had to do the work I hadn’t done at school after I left it.
AMOL RAJAN
Why did you want to go into politics?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I guess it was in the blood.
AMOL RAJAN
Was it?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, it was in my blood. I first went to the House of Commons aged 13.
AMOL RAJAN
Colonel Marcus Lipton at the village fete?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
You’ve read my book?
AMOL RAJAN
Yes, yes, that’s right, out of respect, to do research.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Marcus Lipton was a Labour MP, Colonel Lipton, very safe seat, Brixton at the time. He was a superb constituency member, I don’t know that he ever did a great deal in the House of Commons, but as a constituency member, he was brilliant. Everywhere you went, he would be there and I met him at the local church. The Reverend F. Franklin Cheney had invited me, the local vicar, and I met Marcus Lipton. We talked, and he realised when I talked about the things that I was concerned about, he was prepared to give me time and listen, and he realised that I was more likely to be Conservative than Labour. You regard that as surprising, but those were my natural instincts. Nonetheless, he said “have you ever been to the House of Commons?” and I said “no”, it had never occurred to me that I could go to the House of Commons. He arranged for me to have a pass to go and listen to a debate and I went, and Macmillan was in the House and Macleod was in the House, but came in and left. So I saw the great figures of British politics, but that wasn’t what caught me, walking into the House of Commons it was the atmosphere, it reaches out and grabs you. Well, it reached out and grabbed me, and I thought as I walked out of the House of Commons, this is where I’d like to spend my life.
AMOL RAJAN
[narrating]
In an era when working class boys were much more likely to join Labour than the Tories, Sir John became a member of the Conservative Party on his 16th birthday. Two decades later, having worked in Africa and the insurance industry, he was an MP. Admired by Mrs. Thatcher, he was a survivor of the Tory battles of the 1980s who, after a brief stint as Foreign Secretary, would become her Chancellor and then successor.
Well, there’s a lot to get into. Let’s start with where we are as a country, the country that you led for seven years. You used to say vocally, publicly, that you dreamt of a nation at ease with itself. Has your dream come true?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Emphatically not, indeed, quite the reverse at the moment. Wherever you look, not just in our country, but right across Europe and the United States, there’s a great deal of dissatisfaction and a large part of it has come about from one single effect, and that is the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 which has cast a very long shadow. In many European countries, and in parts of America as well, there are people who quite against all past and all tradition have had no increase in their net quality of life, in their net standard of living since 2008 to 2009. Now, that is unprecedented. That being so, it’s hardly surprising that people are upset and irritable with government and irritable with democracy, and they most certainly are.
Of course, there are other things that were not the result of any individual national government, the Covid pandemic, for example, was something that was unexpected. The Ukraine war, with all the difficulties created for governments right the way across Europe because of the increase in fuel prices, they were things no government could reasonably have anticipated were going to happen. And so, in addition, to the knock on effect from 2007 to 2008, you had these two mega events. The net result of all of those, I think, is a great deal of dissatisfaction and a great deal of pressure on democracy with the belief that it has been failing the electorates. You’ve seen that in the volatility of the electorate in the last two general elections.
AMOL RAJAN
A lot of people, a lot of voters, do think democracy is failing them, particularly young people, for reasons that we’ll get on to. Just before we do that and go back to where we are as a country today. Labour are back in power after 14 years. Given your answer to my first question about your party, would you say, did your party, the Conservatives, deserve to lose?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think there’s a time when democracy needs a change of government. Although I was the leader of the party at the time, I could see that, in 1997 we had been in government for 18 years, and it was perfectly true to say that we were tired and that we were running out of fresh ideas and we were running out of fresh people to make Ministers and reinject the government with vigour. So looking back absolutely personally, I can see why the country changed their minds in 1997, and of course, the same thing applies, although it was only 14 years on this occasion, but 14 years plus the difficulties of the pandemic that I’ve just been talking about,
AMOL RAJAN
We’re talking shortly after some data published showed there’s been a really significant fall in this country in national pride. Very significantly, fewer people are proud to be British and are proud of this country’s history. Why do you think that is?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think because they’re not seeing us succeed. I think there are a range of reasons, that’s partly because of their own personal experience, it’s partly because many of the things that they took for granted appear to need reform, appear to be broken. If you look at the post war settlement, most of that is now out of date, and yet, I see no one on the political horizon anywhere around the world who’s going to gather people together and look again at a new settlement that might be appropriate for the 2020s. It’s a different world from 1945 and 1946, and it hasn’t updated the fundamental structure of Western democracy.
AMOL RAJAN
You think we need a new settlement?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think it would be very helpful to have a new settlement. Let me give you one illustration, and it’s an illustration for which I do not have a solution. But if you look at the permanent five Security Council, they are no longer the five most powerful nations in the world as they were in 1945 and 1946. Of the five of them, they all have a single nation veto for action. So with China and Russia, many of the things that the UN really was really established to do, to prevent wars, for example, they are stymied completely because there’s a one nation veto. Now I would like to see the permanent members increased, there are big countries like India, Brazil, Japan, who perhaps usefully ought to be there and certainly I’d like to see an end to the one nation veto. I think it would reflect the world we live in, rather than the world that was.
AMOL RAJAN
That world is changing very, very fast, and some people don’t like how it’s changing. When you were elected into Parliament in the late 1970s throughout the 1980s, you often saw riots on the streets. One of the first things that we’ve seen in this country after the election of Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has been major rioting. Why do you think we’ve just seen riots on the street in this country?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, I think it’s a function of the general dissatisfaction. If people are broadly happy with the direction their life is taking, then they don’t riot. If they aren’t happy, then they are much more likely to be subjected to things like rioting when seductive voices suggest we all ought to do this, we ought not to do that, and encourage people to take action against it. When people are content, or more content than they are at the moment, they resist those siren voices. At the moment they’re not, and so those siren voices have had some success.
AMOL RAJAN
Let’s get into some of the hard policy choices that come from that. One of the choices that the Keir Starmer Government has made concerns the early release of prisoners and prisons was a big part of your thinking. Obviously, when you were in power, prison reform is a subject on which you have been outspoken in the past. How would you have approached the dilemma of, on the one hand, wanting to be tough on rioters, but on the other, the fact being the prisons are full, and therefore you need to release people?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, let me go back in history a bit for this, because it’s quite an interesting background. I was a humble Parliamentary Private Secretary in the home office in the early 1980s when Willie Whitelaw was Home Secretary, and I will never forget the day he burst into our morning meeting having just been told that the prison population had reached 40,000. “Terrible” he said, “how could it possibly be 40,000?”, but it’s now more than twice that. You ask ourselves this question, is there twice as much crime? No. Is there twice as much violent crime? Well, the public don’t believe it, but actually violent crime overall has been falling for some time. Are the police more efficient in catching criminals? Are they twice as efficient in catching criminals so they filled up the prisons? Well, I would think probably the answer to that is, no, they’re not twice as efficient as they used to be.
So what has happened? What has happened is, in the interim, whenever there’s been something wrong, one Home Secretary or another from both parties has decided we have to be tough on crime. The easiest thing to do is add to the tariff. Now, there are many people who should be in prison, people who are violent, people who are habitual criminals, I thoroughly agree they should be in prison. But I think I would argue that there are many people who have misbehaved, but they ought to be treated by non custodial sentencing of one sort or another.
AMOL RAJAN
So we’re locking the wrong people up in some cases?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think there are some of the wrong people we’re locking up and I think we’re locking up too many of them. It’s not for me to pick up precisely who they should be, but it seems to me we have something like, I think 6,000 women in prison. I don’t think there’s 6,000 violent women in prison, many of them will be there for relatively simple things and they could have been punished another way. The problem about saying sending people to prison ‘isn’t it a deterrent?’, you can argue that case to violent prisoners, yes, I accept it’s a deterrent and you must do it. I’m not a softy about that, but what I do think is where people are marginal and you send them into prison with the crowding we’ve got, they’re probably in their cells for most of their day. There’s very little recreation and in very few prisons is there actually any attempt at rehabilitation.
The vast number of people in prison, an astonishing statistic, actually have a mental capability of about 11 or 12 years old. They need some assistance so that when they come out of prison they haven’t just learned the things they learned in prison, which may be an addition to how you commit crime, but they’ve learned something that will enable them to get out of prison and find a job and create a different life for themselves. If they haven’t gone to prison, but they’ve had a non custodial sentence, it’s more likely that can happen. Now from the point of view of the public, should we not be focusing where we can, and it’s not everywhere, but where we can, should we not be focusing on turning people who have committed crime away from further crime once their punishment is over? I think we should, and I don’t think we’re doing that as effectively as we should.
AMOL RAJAN
As you say, for 30 years, the direction of policy has been against what you say. So why has prison reform of the kind you’re advocating now, and in fairness, have advocated for a long time, why has that prison reform not happened? Why is it not fashionable?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s not happened because it’s just too easy to say ‘we must deter these people, we must punish them, we must send them to prison, we must make sure they don’t they don’t offend again’. The point is that last point, actually you send the wrong people to prison, you may well be encouraging them to offend again, because when they come out, what do they do? They may have lost their home, they may have lost their marriage, they may have lost their job. Who is going to employ them? You’ve just come out of prison. How many people? They’re not all as forward thinking as the Timpson family, who take in a lot of former prisoners and rehabilitate them after they’re out of prison.
Now I repeat, I’m not some soft liberal saying we should understand everything that’s gone wrong and treat people excessively leniently. Where necessary, there should be hard sentences to protect the public. My point is, I believe we’ve sent a lot of people to prison who are not of real danger to the public, who are foolish and have been dishonest, but there are probably better ways of punishing them than incarcerating them in a prison system that can’t take them in any decent circumstances. What is truly horrifying, most of our prisons are very old, they were built for one person in a cell 150 years ago. There may be two or three people in a cell now, and they may be in there for 23 hours out of 24. What does that do for someone when they’re there? How alienated from society are they going to become?
AMOL RAJAN
Do you think your position that you articulate now is a vote winner?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think it could be explained if you mean, is it going to be bitterly attacked by people to say, I am tough on crime? Yes, of course it is.
AMOL RAJAN
I just mean that you’re completely out of kilter, as you yourself acknowledge, with the direction of policy, and have been for the last 30 years. And it’s very striking to me that I hear very, very few people, the Timpsons being an exception, very few people, making the case you’re making in a General Election.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, I suppose most people think it’s not what the electorate wish to hear. It is in a civilised society what I think the electorate has a right to hear. We haven’t got a really hawkish nation who’s out to punish people, of course not. If we had, why would so many people from abroad wish to come to this country? I don’t see them queuing to get up into China or queuing to get into Russia or Iran or North Korea, I do see people with hope in their hearts trying to come here, because they see us as a place of hope. I think you need to examine policies and see, have we got that right in the past? There are some areas why I appreciate my view is very much a minority view, but I think I’m under the belief that we are a democracy in which a majority view should be aired.
AMOL RAJAN
You mentioned millions of people around the world do want to come to this country, as you say, with hope in their hearts. But do you think the scale of immigration that we’ve seen to this country in recent years is one of the reasons that in your first answer, when I asked you if this is a nation at ease with itself, you said, no?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Absolutely, I could have done that. People are fearful. I mean, with the best will in the world, we could not remotely take even a majority of the people who actually wish to come here. In a sense, we should be proud that people from all around the world look on us as a bastion of freedom and wish to come here, but we are a small island. We need to recognise what we are, we are 70 million people in a world of 8,000 million. Let us get ourselves in context and we are a small island. There is a limited amount that we can do, and I think we should do our limited amount. But beyond that, the public and governments are quite right to say, we simply cannot take people beyond a certain number.
AMOL RAJAN
So why has immigration been too high? Why has it got to the levels it has, over 700,000 net, Do you think?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
There’s been a big change, of course, since Brexit. Lots of people from Western Europe who work, particularly as it happens, in the hospitality industry have left, and other people have been actually encouraged by the Government to come here, and then with the people who come here by boats, who haven’t been encouraged to come here at all, but do because they’re not quite sure where to go. Of course, there isn’t the space for all these people, I see that, but how we deal with them is a separate question from whether we actually have enough room to take them. No, we haven’t got enough room to take them, but the manner in which we deal with them, the manner in which we process them, the manner in which we deal with them when we say we can’t have them here is a separate matter.
AMOL RAJAN
You mentioned the boats. Are you glad to see the back of the Rwanda scheme?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Absolutely.
AMOL RAJAN
Why?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
If you really wish to know, I thought it was unconservative, unBritish, if one dare say it in a secular society, unChristian and unconscionable. I thought that really, this is not the way to treat people. We used to transport people, nearly 300 years ago, from our country, felons who at least had had a trial and been found guilty of something, albeit that the trial might have been cursory. I don’t think transportation, for that is what it is, is a policy suitable for the 21st century.
AMOL RAJAN
Let me challenge you on that because a lot of people, some in your party, some outside of your party, some that were once in your party, would say what’s really unconservative or unChristian is allowing this boat crossing to continue. The way you stop it, this was the argument of the former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the way you stop it is by having an effective deterrent. You could tell that the Rwanda scheme was going to be a deterrent because other countries were looking at it and were thinking about whether or not they might do a similar thing. So isn’t it actually the compassionate view to take all measures necessary to stop the boats, as someone once said, and isn’t the threat of deportation to Rwanda part of that policy?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It doesn’t seem to have been working, the threat has been there for some time and it hasn’t stopped people coming. Are they seriously saying to me that somewhere in the backwoods of some North African country, they actually know what the British Parliament has legislated for? I think not. I absolutely think that is not the case. So I’m not sure that it is the deterrent at this stage. If it had actually happened, it might have been, but it would still have been odious in my view. But there are ways in which we can deal with this, better ways. Every nation in Europe has got this problem. Let me put it in a wider context, because it’s a long term problem,
AMOL RAJAN
And it’s a hard problem to solve.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Which is why, over the last year, I kept my mouth shut about what I thought about it. It is a very hard problem to solve, and my sympathy goes out with Ministers trying to do it, because it is difficult. But let us put it in a proper long term context. There are people coming from all around the world who are coming here, and the more autocracies grow in other parts of the world, the more people have a life without the freedoms that we enjoy, the more they will seek to come here. There’s also the problem of Africa. Over the next 50 years, the African population is going to grow disproportionately to the rest of the world. In the next 50 years, it’s highly unlikely that the degree of investment in Africa will be able to provide good towns, good facilities, good hospitals, good education, all the things that they will need. A lot of people from Africa over the next 50 years will look for something better for themselves and their families, and they will come north and they will try to come to Europe. This isn’t just a short term problem.
So how did we solve that problem? I don’t think we solve it just with the Rwanda scheme, and in any event, that would only be a tiny part of it. It’s only a tiny part of the immigration, let’s get that point perfectly clear. But I think if the European and other countries worked together and decided they would tackle this problem at its roots. Let us seek out where these rubber boats actually are manufactured.
AMOL RAJAN
Often China?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Often China. Let us ban their import into the whole of Europe, for example. Let us work together beyond China, where the boats have gone to, where people go there and seek out the gangs working with the local countries, not just Britain, but working with our partners all across Europe. It doesn’t mean you’re reinventing the European Union, they have a similar problem to us. Collectively we can provide a bigger deterrent. If we find they’re coming out of a particular port, you can actually police their port outside and turn the boats back almost where they start.
There’s a range of things that, so far as I know, haven’t been looked at although perhaps they have and have been turned down for reasons I don’t know, but I don’t think they’ve been looked at. There are policies that are going to have to be in place for a long time, because I’m afraid now the scale of this migration has grown and the problem has grown as it has. It will be quite a long term problem, whomsoever is in government, and almost whatever they do, so we must find a better way of dealing with it. I think if we deal with it collectively we’re more likely to have a policy that would be more effective.
AMOL RAJAN
I’m very strongly struck by the clarity of what you say about legal migration and the strength of what you say about illegal migration, because people watching this should know that you spent many decades actually advocating for what you described as the heroic story of individual immigrants who come here because they want a better life for them and their family. You’ve also advocated the idea of a multiracial society. You once wrote:
“Our house was multiracial for a time and it provided a good primer on poverty for a future Conservative Prime Minister, I knew the immigrants as neighbours. I played with their children. I shopped with them in Brixton market. I saw them for what they were, men and women seeking a new life in a land immeasurably wealthier than the ones they had left behind. Instead of inciting fear, the bigots should have gone to the Oval where, when the West Indies played, it was carnival time. The atmosphere was full of fun”.
This idea that the bigots should have gone to the Oval prompts me to ask you whether or not you worry that bigotry has seeped into the Conservative Party?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
You say the Conservative Party, I don’t know why you single out the Conservative Party. There’s a degree of bigotry in the country, there always has been.
AMOL RAJAN
Is there in your party?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think there probably is in a number of parties, I don’t think it’s solely within the Conservative Party. Certainly some of it is in the Conservative Party, some of it is in Reform UK, I’ve no doubt some of it is in the Labour Party. Don’t forget, when you look at politics, people tend to think that fascism and communism are at opposite ends of the political pole. They’re not. They meet. They’re next to one another. So it’s not fair to say it is just the Conservative Party. There are people in the Conservative Party who advocate policies I would disagree with. I wouldn’t call bigots that, they’re entitled to their view, and I’m entitled to my view.
One of the things that has gone wrong in the Conservative Party is that these days, they seem to think it’s better to be part of the faction of the party, rather than in the party as a whole. But that has been going on for a long time. I well remember in the 1980s, Margaret sitting there musing when she looked at someone, ‘Is he one of us?’ and she was looking at another Conservative MP. She wasn’t advocating division, but of course, that sort of idea encouraged people to set up different groups. We’re left wing conservatives. We are one nation. We’re a different form of group on the other side, and family feuds are always worse than feuds with people with whom you have nothing in common.
That has happened within the Conservative Party and it has happened within the Labour Party. I think we are going to find that the present Government, with its huge majority, will find that huge majority is very, very difficult to cope with, because there’ll be a lot of people in it who have views very different from the mainstream view of the most senior members of the Labour Party. We shall see, but I think he’ll have great difficulty with that.
AMOL RAJAN
What kind of health is the Conservative Party in today?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s had a whopping great electoral defeat, it’s had three or four of those in its history, and it has recovered on each occasion. I may be deceiving myself, though I don’t think so, but I think a large part of our nation is, by instinct, centre right, not far right, but centre right. The only party that can legitimately appeal to the centre right is the Conservative Party and that is what we have to do. We have to decide where our natural support really lies and appeal to them.
People may have made a misjudgment about the last election, we lost five seats to Reform UK, and people are jumping up and down, and some rather reckless people are saying, well, we must merge with them. Well, that will be fatal. We’ve lost five seats to Reform UK, we lost 50 to the Liberals and and we lost a huge amount to Labour. We lost the vote on the left more than on the right, and we have to focus on that centre right position. We’re not an ideological party, I do think traditionally we have been a common sense party. I’m always suspicious of ideology. Heaven protect us from the ideologues, they have bonkers ideas sometimes, sometimes they’re brilliant, but sometimes they have bonkers ideas that lead people astray. I think we need a common sense solution to the problem, and how can we encourage people to believe that that is what the Conservative Party is going to stand for in the future. And I’m optimistic. We have had such a bad defeat, we have got a base upon which we can build in a wholly new and, I think, potentially effective way.
AMOL RAJAN
You say you’re optimistic about the Conservative Party, a number of questions follow from that. First, have you made up your mind about who you’ll support to be the next leader?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I will look and see what they have to say. I’d like to support someone who’s going to look at the long term problems and make a suggestion as to which direction we should go. I’d like to look at someone who’s going to try and bring the party together and bring people back into the party who are genuinely centre right. So I’m more concerned with what they say than their individual personality. As to whether I have made up my mind, no, I haven’t.
AMOL RAJAN
I heard a story about how after you were voted out of office in 1997 you said to a young George Osborne, who was then your press advisor, I think it was his job to collect press cuttings for you and he’s had quite a career since. You said to him that the great danger for your party was to be taken over by its right wing. What’s the great danger today?
AMOL RAJAN
I don’t think the Conservative Party should be taken over by any part of it, there are different strands of conservatism. We need the right wing. What we don’t need is the far right, people who’ve attracted themselves to the right wing, who perhaps would be more comfortable in Reform UK than with us, but I don’t want to dispense of the right wing of the Conservative Party. They are a very important, valuable part of the Tory party, and so are the centre and the left of the Tory party. What I want is for them to reach a concordant so that they can agree and so that we don’t have these factional disputes within the party. They have done enough damage to us in more than one election over my lifetime.
AMOL RAJAN
But why do you say it would be fatal to merge with Reform UK? A lot of people think Nigel Farage should be in the Tory party.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I don’t share that view.
AMOL RAJAN
Because I don’t think he’s a Conservative and he spent most of his time in the last few years telling people how much he dislikes the Conservative Party and would like to destroy it. I don’t think that’s a terribly good background for bringing someone into the party.
AMOL RAJAN
Just before we get into Europe, where that takes us, something strange is happening to conservative parties all around the world, isn’t it? Because you say conservatives stand for common sense, but I think one of the insights of conservatism is this idea that social goods are easily destroyed, but not easily created. And yet, all around the world, lots of conservative parties, like Trump’s Republicans, like perhaps the Conservative Party in this country, have been attacking institutions. They’ve been attacking democracy. Why has that happened do you think? Why have conservatives been drawn to those anti democratic tendencies?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I find it baffling that they’ve done that. I mean the previous government talking of the blob, the blob are people who work for the Government and who are the mechanism to transfer the Government’s policies to reality. Doesn’t seem to be very sensible to insult them, and the whole series of other people, judges were enemies of the people I seem to recall many people said. Half the nation who voted to sustain our position in Europe, a position the Tory party had had for 40 years, were insulted as remoaners. They’re not remoaners, they’re people who consistently supported a Conservative Party that existed for a very long time. So I find it very difficult to understand why people actually took that particular view, and I think insulting people whose votes you need and whose votes you’re going to ask for does not seem to be a very good form of candidacy, but that is what people did, and we saw the result at the general election.
AMOL RAJAN
What has Brexit done to and for your party?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Brexit has been the most divisive thing that has happened in our party in my lifetime, it is less important what it has done to our party than what it has done to our country.
AMOL RAJAN
That was going to be my next question. What do you think it has done?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I don’t think it’s done anything good, if I may just reflect on it for a moment. It’s made our country weaker, poorer and that is emphatically not in the interests of our country. It has broken us away from alliances that were useful to us. The world saw us as a member of the European Union. When we spoke, they believed we had 500 million Europeans essentially behind us in what we spoke, it was a megaphone to magnify our power in the world. Similarly, they saw us as the closest advocates in Europe, in the United States, we were inside the European Union that helped the United States keep an eye on European policy, and they think we’re less close to the United States. So you take two of the three most powerful blocs in the world, we were the closest ally of one, and we’re now less close than we were, and we were part of the other, and we are no longer in the other. So instead, we are isolated and outside.
AMOL RAJAN
Did it have to be thus? I mean, could Brexit not have, if delivered in a different way, could it not have fulfilled the promise of those who advocated it, which is that it would make us richer and more free?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s done exactly the reverse, hasn’t it? I mean, what’s the one thing that is consistent about the British nation for the last 400 years? We are a trading nation and what have we just done? We have broken away from the largest, richest free trade market the world has ever seen, and we were in the middle of it, as a leading part of it, and we have broken away from it. And what do we get instead, rolled over fresh trade deals with countries like Australia and New Zealand, who are old friends of ours, but the deals done with them were worse than the deals they rolled over. And if you disagree, go and ask our farmers what they think of the deals that were done. And the deal with Europe has gone. What is going to replace that? What is there that’s going to replace it? What has happened to all the benefits of Brexit that we heard about?
AMOL RAJAN
Maybe they’re yet to come.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I don’t recall people saying during the election campaign, in 10 or 15 years time, maybe 20 we will have some benefits of Brexit. It was going to be milk and honey straight away, and it wasn’t milk and honey. Brexit was sold to the nation on the basis of things that haven’t happened and couldn’t have happened. There was a great degree of misapplication of reality, if I can put it in that delicate way.
AMOL RAJAN
Do you mean lies?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
That’s another way of putting it. What was actually told to the people about what Brexit was going to be about. A large amount of that came from Conservative sources, not all of it. There were some very senior Labour sources who were part of that at exactly the same time. But I don’t see the great advantages that were going to come from Brexit have come yet and I don’t see any likelihood that they’re suddenly going to magically appear in the future. Let me offer you another illustration, one that most people won’t have come across. Europe has about 20 strategic agreements with countries around the world, all around the world, which cover a whole range of things and which are useful to both parties. We are their nearest neighbour, we turned down a strategic agreement because the politicians, Tory and Labour, were too foolish to agree that we actually have to have a closer relationship with Europe.
I’m not bothered about the political loss of Europe very much, I am very much bothered about the trade loss. A Cambridge econometrics report published recently, there’s been a whole series of them, but I’ll just pick out one. I think every one of them, I can’t think of one that actually says we are better off because we’ve been through Brexit, they all say we’ve lost a vast amount of money. Cambridge Econometrics, if I remember, said we’d lost trade worth 130 billion. That would have been a huge amount of tax revenue for the Government and we wouldn’t be facing tax increases in the forthcoming budget if it hadn’t been for that sort of thing. We wouldn’t just have taken away fuel payments for the elderly if we hadn’t lost all that money, why do people not look at the practical example, the practical effect, that we are poorer. That is not some statistic, being poorer means taxes are higher, expenditure on public services are lower. That’s actually what it means, and that is what has actually happened because of the false promises of Brexit.
People said we were going to get our sovereignty back. Up to a point that’s true, we now have sovereignty to be poorer, we have sovereignty to be less influential. I don’t think that was the sovereignty that people wanted when they voted in the Brexit debate. The Brexiteers now say ‘oh, well, get over it, it’s all gone’, but if my house had been burgled, I would be pretty fed up if the burglar then said, ‘well it’s all over now forget about it’, and I think so would most people. I think we have to remember it, because I think we have to make sure that nothing like this happens again. What is so dispiriting is that neither the Conservative Party, nor the Labour Party, nor even except in slogans, the Liberal Party, actually seem to be looking for a way to ensure we get back as many as we can of the trading advantages that we have lost.
AMOL RAJAN
So would you advocate going back into either the single market or the Customs Union?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I don’t think it is politically practical at the present moment, but I think it will happen. The next generation, the young generation, when they voted, voted overwhelmingly to stay in the European Union. In 10 years time, when they and their compadres are in Parliament and running the country, it may be possible to get back, but the Brexiteers did a good job in making it difficult, because we not only insulted our neighbours, but in addition to that, we have lost all the special advantages we had, the rebates, the opt out from the social chapter, all sorts of things like that, which they opt out from a single currency. All those things are gone.
If we sought to get back, we would probably have to accept them, or we couldn’t get back. So it may be that that is going to be more than Parliament at any stage I can see will accept in the foreseeable future. What they’ll do in the long term future, who can tell because who knows how circumstances will change? But the Brexiteers did a very good job in dividing us from Europe, even though they did a very bad job improving our prosperity and our wealth when they did so.
AMOL RAJAN
Let me put two principled objections to what you’ve just advocated to your position. The first is about trade deals. The argument of those who advocated for Brexit in 2016, and advocate for it now, is that by virtue of leaving Europe, we are free in future to strike trade deals around the world, which should, in theory, it may not have done in practice yet, but should, in theory, make us richer to be in a trade deal and trade deals with the growing part of the world, in particular in Asia.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Do you think the European Union aren’t going to do that? 500 billion Europeans will strike a better trade deal with the growing part of the world than 70 million Brits can crazy. If there are trading opportunities that they can take, they will take them, and they will grow the European Union. And they will because of the sheer size compared to our size, they will probably get a better trade deal with whomsoever it is than we would.
AMOL RAJAN
But it’s Europe’s deal, not Britain’s.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
We were part of Europe. We benefited from the deal. What matters, to put it at its crudest, what is the cash flow and the job flow to the UK? That’s what determines our prosperity, that’s what determines our security and retirement. That’s what produces the resources in order to make sure that we have a properly funded defence policy. I’m afraid money is the root of all progress in many ways, and you don’t if you throw away the vast amount of money that came out directly in our direction because of the scale of our trading with the European Union, if you push that aside, it’s very difficult to replace in a way that could not have been replaced as a member of the European Union.
I want our country to succeed. I want our country to be in a position where we are respected for what we are, because there’s no country in the world I’d rather live in than this one, despite its shortcomings sometimes. I want it to be respected, I want it to be wealthy, I want it to be secure. It’s never going to be the great military power. There’s only two superpowers now, China and the United States, below that sits Europe. But Europe isn’t a superpower in terms of politics and isn’t a superpower in terms of defence. So they sit a little below and there are countries like Britain and others that are coming up, like India and more that are coming up, who will sit on the tier below that.
We will still have an important part to play in the future, because of our language, because of our history, because of our trade, because of some areas of our economy that we’re very good at, technology for example, because of the soft power we have. We have the best theatre in the world, we invented most of the sports the world played. This is a special nation, and it can be, and it should be, and we should play testimony to the things that are right. I wish we had been able to spend the last however many minutes it is we’ve been talking, talking about the things that are going right, or the things that could come right, rather than going over the things that have griped in the craw of vast numbers of people in our country and made it so miserable.
AMOL RAJAN
I want to talk to you about democracy. Before we do that, let’s get to the second aspect of the Brexit vote on which I think your position ought to be challenged. A lot of people who voted for Brexit did so because they felt that being part of the single market meant we had freedom of movement, and they didn’t like it. Now, obviously it’s the case that since we had Brexit, immigration has soared. But did it need to happen? That might be the result of policy choices the Government made, but a lot of people listening to you might say, ‘you know what? Immigration was too high, we wanted it lower, and Brexit was our best hope of voting for lower migration’. What do you say to them?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I would simply point to the reality of what has happened. It was said that we were going to control our borders. It was another of those three word slogans, ‘get Brexit done’, ‘control our borders’. There are a whole range of them that were slogans rather than properly thought, our policy and the reality is quite different from what was promised, and that is true about immigration as well. So you can make that argument, but I don’t think it’s a substantive argument, and I wouldn’t agree with it.
AMOL RAJAN
Let’s turn to the New World Order. How would you describe Britain’s standing in the world today compared with, say, 20 years ago?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s obviously a little less than it was and that’s not because we have particularly failed. It’s because it’s the way the world has changed. China has been marching into the world in a phenomenal way ever since the Nixon visit in 1972 when Deng Xiaoping took China into the world in a quite remarkable way. Xi is doing something differently and much more nationalist, taking the Communist Party back, once again, the Chinese right back to the centre of Chinese life to a greater extent. But China has grown. America looks as though it may not be the America that would pay any price, bear any burden to protect the success of human rights, but I think America is still crucially important to the world and particularly crucially important to the democratic world. Without America active, on the side of the democratic world, there are very great difficulties to come, so we must make sure that they are.
The world has changed simply because of the growth of different countries, a lot of medium sized countries in the world are now growing a good deal faster than the western democracies. Once you become richer, you become more influential and more powerful. The world isn’t only about money, and I set out all sorts of things we have in this country that don’t relate to money. But when you become a richer nation, you become a more powerful nation, so the world is changing.
AMOL RAJAN
One of those giant nations, the giant power, a great power, which is not a democracy, is China. Do you think we’re getting China right? Do you think our approach to China is a healthy one? Do you think we’re ready for a world in which China is as dominant as it is today?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s a very difficult question and to be absolutely honest, I’m not sure of the right answer to that question of how ready we are. I think a lot of work has been done, particularly to protect us against things like cyber crime and to protect us against China appropriating technology that is legitimately British. But what if you want a safe world in the future must be the primary aim of diplomacy. Primary aim of diplomacy would be to make sure that China and America may be opponents, but they don’t become enemies, and they don’t go to war. That must be the primary aim of diplomacy, and I think we have a role to play in that, and I think we should endeavour to play it.
One of the things I think we would be wise to build up in the next few years, we’re no longer the great military power that we were, and we can’t afford to be, but we’re not insignificant. But in terms of soft power, I think we can build up our soft power. I think we can build up our diplomacy. I think we can often play a very valuable role in changing policy. Which is best in terms of leadership, winning a war or stopping a war in the first place? Good question, isn’t it? I think if you can stop a war in the first place, that’s fantastic, and we can play a part in all that, but we’re going to have to watch what is happening with democracy and autocracy, because the balance is changing and changing more quickly than most people realise.
The main point about the autocratic nations, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, Venezuela and many others, there must be about 40 nations in the world, something approximately who are autocratic or neo-autocratic. That’s one fifth, over a fifth of the nations around the whole world. As they grow, democracy has been shrinking. People don’t I think focus on it, but democracy has shrunk in every one of the last 18 years. We thought, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, that democracy had won the battle of ideas, but we haven’t. Autocracy has come roaring back in the last 15, 16, 17, 18 years, and we have to be aware of that danger, and aware of the dangers that could arise from it, which are many and various.
AMOL RAJAN
Is autocracy everywhere wrong?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s difficult to tell. I wouldn’t like it anywhere, because it restrains human liberty and human freedom. I think one thing our country has stood for is liberty and freedom, freedom of action, freedom of thought, freedom of religion. You don’t get that in autocracies. So I think there are bad aspects of autocracy. Whether they’re bad in every respect is a more debatable point, but if you believe in freedom and liberty, then you don’t want autocracies.
But there’s a real danger here, let me give you a practical illustration. Let us suppose that the American President ceases to be active alongside Ukraine. Let us suppose Germany ceases to be active alongside Ukraine, and the Europeans pull back, and Ukraine loses, and Russia wins. Is that the end of the matter? No, it isn’t. Because for every event, there is a consequence. Now if Russia wins, they may not be immediately in a position to go after Moldova or other nations, because they will have been badly damaged by the war that there’s just been. But let’s assume Russia wins. How does the world see that? They will see that the West has funked and failed to protect a democracy, a big democracy, in Europe of all places, from an autocracy. Now, what does that mean for the perception of America? They haven’t prevailed. China will notice that. Will it encourage China to think, aha, we may be being too timid about whether we go into Taiwan, maybe America will do nothing about that either. And of course, what happens to the allies of the West? What happens in Asia, to Japan, to South Korea, to the Philippines, strong allies of the West, and they will see the West has funked it. What do they do? Do they decide we’re safer to line up behind China rather than the West? Or do they say, then we had better be prepared to protect ourselves better and start moving towards nuclear capability? So you get suddenly a much more dangerous world. For everything that happens, there is a consequence, and we need to think through what the consequences are. Those are two illustrations I gave you. I could give you 20 others.
AMOL RAJAN
So if the war in Ukraine is going to end by some sort of political settlement, a lot of people would say Ukraine’s land has been taken by violence, it’s been taken by force. Why should they give up an inch of land to what many people would say is a dictator or an autocrat?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I would agree with that. That’s why I think Russia needs to be defeated, and that’s why I think the West needs to continue its support of Ukraine, so that they have the capacity to defeat them.
AMOL RAJAN
But do you think the West has the will to do that based on what you see right now looking around the world?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I hope they have. I’m alarmed at the position of one or two Western nations. I’m alarmed at the possibility that America might decide that Ukraine is not a strategic interest, because she certainly is, to the position of the United States and the world. I think we should argue for the fact that we as a nation, should argue for the fact that she is and we should try and lead people into believing that it is right for us to defend Ukraine, because you are defending freedom against autocracy, and if you begin to weaken and lose on a mega scale, for this would be a massive setback, unlike anything we’ve seen before, then there will be a price to pay for that, and it may be a price we don’t wish to pay.
AMOL RAJAN
Talking really about a new world order in which democracy is, to some extent, receding and autocracy is rising. What’s really striking is where that democratic recession, as some people have called it, comes from. Because around the world today, many young people are losing faith in democracy. If you look at the support for AFD in Germany, if you look at the support for Marine Le Pen in France, if you look at the support for Javier Millais in Argentina, a lot of these people are getting their support from those under 30. Look at what’s happening, as you say to real wages over last 20 years. Can you really blame those young people?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
No, I don’t, but you can’t expect these young people to have a strategic view of what happens if we were to lose the war, for example, and I don’t suppose they’ve even thought of it. This needs to be a matter of public debate. We need to set out for people what is at stake with Ukraine and it’s more than Russia just invading Ukraine. It’s much more important than that, because the implications of it are very wide, very varied and very bad, and so I don’t believe we’ve got a nation of youngsters who are less determined to be free than earlier generations. But I don’t think politics anywhere is widening the debate beyond the rather trivial, narrow lines of party disputes in country after country, and some disputes that hit the headlines.
AMOL RAJAN
Beyond Ukraine, there are a lot of people in this country, young adults, who might look at, I mean, you’ve been out of power for 27 years, so I’m not putting this on you, but they might look at your brand of politics, moderate in disposition, supportive of liberal democracy and capitalism, and say we’ve had that for decades in this country. What’s the reality? We’ve had completely stagnant wages. We’ve had education getting more expensive. We can’t buy a house. Why should we support the John Major brand of politics?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Have we, do you think, have we had that brand of politics across the world since 2008?
AMOL RAJAN
You think we haven’t had the John Major style of politics?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
The record would suggest not.
AMOL RAJAN
But the coalition, which was staffed by many people who once worked for you, I think they would say that they wanted very much to…..
SIR JOHN MAJOR
The coalition, you’re right. I think the coalition were, but post coalition has been a different consequence, I think.
AMOL RAJAN
But you still think liberal democracy and capitalism can deliver for young people who’ve currently felt for a long time……
SIR JOHN MAJOR
The essential thing is that the economies begin to grow. Absolutely the essential thing is that the economies begin to grow, which is why one or two of the things the new Government are doing, I think, are wrong.
AMOL RAJAN
Such as?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think going for capital gains tax. If you want the economy to grow, don’t start penalising the people who provide the money for it to grow. But we’re already getting reports of extremely rich people taking their money out of the country and indeed moving out of the country themselves. That’s not what we need if we want the economy to grow and we want the living standards to rise. Should the broadest shoulders bear a larger share of the present need? Yes, I don’t have a disagreement about that, but I think at this moment, to go for capital gains tax is as unwise as providing a drunk with a case of whisky.
AMOL RAJAN
The Government says they need the money, need to raise £22 billion.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’ve heard that dreary tale forever, I spent time as a PPS in the treasury, I was Chief Secretary of the Treasury responsible for public expenditures. I was Chancellor and I was first Lord at the Treasury. I’ve heard that dreary tale again and again and again, and I think there’s a degree of hyperbole about what is happening at the moment, and the Labour Party have got themselves hooked on one or two silly policies before they’re really ready to pursue something more sensible.
AMOL RAJAN
We’re talking about democracy, and you’re advocating democracy over, for instance, autocracy. Isn’t one of the other reasons why faith in democracy, perhaps in this country, has suffered because, frankly, standards in public life, ethics in public life, have a lot of people would argue been in the gutter.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think that has played a role, yes.
AMOL RAJAN
You introduced the Nolan principles. You introduced the Committee on Standards in Public Life. You were known as the person who wanted standards to improve. What was going through your mind when you saw the revelations about, for instance, party gate, as it’s now known. That damages trust and democracy, I can tell you.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Yes, I think we have to take standards in public life seriously. I would make some changes, I would make the powers statutory. I would give people outside Number 10 the power to institute inquiries. I would change the way inquiries were dealt with in the House of Commons. I think there’s a lot we can do to provide a much more serious examination of potential poor behaviour and actual poor behaviour.
AMOL RAJAN
I don’t think anyone would ever accuse you of being chairman of the Boris Johnson fan club, but do you think he damaged standards in public life?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’m not going to get into individuals. I mean, I don’t really want to spend my time looking back on what has happened. It has happened generically. I talked about Brexit, that has happened, and although I was encouraged to express why I think it was so wrong, and I still do, I don’t want a political system that continues to look back at the 80s or the 90s or the 10s. It’s yesterday, it’s gone. I want people to actually look at what the position is going to be in the future.
When did you last hear from any party a senior politician make a lengthy, detailed speech on what we needed to do to protect our place in the world and our values and our wealth 25 years from now. What are the policies we should follow? Shouldn’t we be looking at that more often than just looking back and holding inquiries and all sorts of other things that are all backward looking?
AMOL RAJAN
You talked at the beginning of this interview about a new settlement. You said we need a new settlement. What are some of the elements that you would put into that new settlement? Obviously, we need an economy that’s growing, lots of people have different ideas about that.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
That’s the core, once you get an economy that is growing, so much changes. I’m sorry to go back to the question of money, but I’m afraid money is what gives people security. Money is what gives people some enjoyment in life, rather than people who never have any. You mentioned Boris Johnson, one policy he absolutely got right was the question of levelling up. The trouble is it never got much beyond the slogan because of the lack of money, but it was exactly the right policy, and it was the right determination of what we should be doing, and that will be true in the future as well.
AMOL RAJAN
So this is a good moment to turn to, I mean, this is looking at the past, but I do it with a view to the future, is to look at the lottery. I imagine the National Lottery is one of those policies that you’re proudest of in your time in power, and the thing that’s striking about it is that the benefits were really felt a long time after you were out of power. I wonder whether or not you think that that’s an important example of how one of the problems with democracy is that you’ve got to let other people take your successes.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Let me tell you how the lottery came about. I was Chief Secretary of the Treasury in the 80s, that is the cabinet minister who is responsible for negotiating public expenditure for each department. I noticed that the two things that the British public most enjoy, which is the arts, culture as one subject and sport as another, got petty cash from the government, absolute petty cash. They couldn’t compete with health or social security or defence, and so they’re always going to get petty cash. That’s what caused the lottery to be set up, because it was money that the Government didn’t have. It was outside the Government, and it went to the arts bodies or the other sports bodies. Do you know how much the lottery has now spent on good causes?
AMOL RAJAN
Tens of billions?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s coming up to £48 billion, and there’s hardly a part of the country that hasn’t benefited from it in some way. Providing it is efficiently run by the people in charge of it, there’s no reason and left alone by successive governments – that’s important – Government should keep their noses out of it, it’s a national lottery. It’s not a government piggy bank. Providing that, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t continue. And the difference it’s made in sport and the arts, I think, is significant. So yes, I’m very pleased to have done it, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that I’m way out of the way by the time the benefits become clear.
AMOL RAJAN
Well, I should be clear that the only reason I ask you about anything to do with your time in power is because of the lessons for the future. I was very struck by something you said to Chris Patten after winning the election in 1992, where I think you had a conversation with him, where you both agreed that the democratic elastic, as you called it, was close to snapping. And you basically, I think, knew after winning in 1992 it was very unlikely you would win again. I just wonder if you can tell us how that conversation went and how it informed your time in Government, because specifically I think there are important lessons for the coming Parliament.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’ll happily do that. Chris, of course, was chairman of the party when against the expectations of the world, we won the 1992 election, a fourth successive win. But Chris lost his seat in Bath, and he came to have a drink with me in the White Room upstairs in Downing Street the next day. It was at that day that we said we thought, with a fourth successive election in a democracy, we were stretching the elastic as far as it could go, and the probability was that unless the Labour Party imploded, they would probably win the next election. I said to Chris, what would you like to do now? You have lost your seat, I can offer you three options. I will put someone in the House of Lords, and you can fight the by-election. If you’re in the Lords, I can put you in the Cabinet. The third option is you can go and govern Hong Kong. And Chris thought about it, and he said, ‘I can’t fight another by-election, it was too unpleasant in Bath that election, I can’t put my family through that again’. He was too young to go to the House of Lords he said, I will go to Hong Kong, and that is how he did.
We did think that we were aware from the moment the 1992 Parliament started that the nature of the Conservative Party in Parliament had changed. All the old people who had served in the war, or after the war, had pretty much left then, and they were a glue that kept the party really together. We had lots more young people brought up in the more dramatic policies of the 80s who came in. We thought it was very likely that we would lose, and when things began to get very sticky, I remember a conversation with Sarah Hogg, who was head of my policy unit. Well, she said, ‘the great advantage of it being likely that we will lose’, of course, we wanted to win, and we’ve been doing all we could to win, but we weren’t making any progress really, ‘is that you can do what you think is right without worrying whether it is expedient’. We were in the Cabinet Room, but I’d never forgotten that conversation.
AMOL RAJAN
Did that give you some comfort when you had to do some very difficult things economically, which in particular would have hurt the very people you went into politics to help?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Yes, no-one has ever asked me that question before, but I’ll tell you exactly how I felt about it. The thing I hated most in politics was inflation. I had known from my childhood what life is like when the money runs out before the week runs out. I saw it at very close quarters, week after week after week. That is what happens under inflation for all sorts of families at any stage and we’d had huge inflation in the 70s and elsewhere. All my political lifetime, I’d watched governments try and get to grips with inflation and then back off, and then back off when it got too bad, and so it wasn’t killed. That was the reason for going into the Exchange Rate Mechanism, and that was the reason for staying in it when everybody was crying for us to come out of it.
We thought it would kill inflation and in the end, the way we came out was a political disaster, but it wasn’t an economic disaster. We were actually looking for a way to come out without people thinking we’d gone soft on inflation, when we were overwhelmed by the markets. It was a political disaster that never went away for the rest of the Parliament, but I simply observe in retrospect that we didn’t have inflation for nearly 20 years. It really had. I mean, the international environment changed, so that was certainly a part of it, but it really did get inflation on its knees in the way no Government had done since the Second World War.
AMOL RAJAN
We’d had inflation in this country pretty much since the war, I’m going to say the 60s or 70s.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I grew up with it and I hated it, and I actually said that once or twice, but that was why we stuck with the policies that were hard and it was why, frustratingly for me, when I became Prime Minister, all sorts of things I’d like to do, but we were heading for a recession. The economy was in a pretty sick state on the day I became Prime Minister, and so there was no money to do those things. When I left, the money was there, but I wasn’t.
AMOL RAJAN
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
They spent some of it wisely. They didn’t spend it exactly the way I would, but there were some of his policies that I would have approved of because maybe some were my policies before his. But I think the money was used to a significant extent, wisely, but not quite as I would have used it.
AMOL RAJAN
Let me ask you some final, quickish thoughts. What’s your biggest regret with your time and power?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It wasn’t long enough.
AMOL RAJAN
Your greatest achievement as Prime Minister?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think the way the economy was turned around, the Northern Ireland process, everybody said when we started that you’ll never get anywhere with this. When I went to tell John Smith about it, because in those days, there was a good deal more liaison than I think there is today between the leaders of the parties. I went to tell John Smith exactly what I was going to do with the process, and he smiled and looked quite right, very good. No votes in it, we’ll support you. And I think perhaps the lottery.
AMOL RAJAN
Your greatest hero in politics.?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
In politics, Pitt the Younger. In life, in my time, Mother Teresa, what’s hoping
AMOL RAJAN
I was hoping you would say Iain Macleod?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s a toss up, I mean, Iain Macleod was the greatest orator I ever heard, a man I was completely captivated by when I was a young man, his speeches were magnificent. They always included values as well as policies, but he could be quite brutal to his opponents. He had a sort of paralysis of the neck, which meant he held his head slightly on one side, and he was very bald, and he had this voice like a great bell, and it was absolutely hypnotic. I think the fact that his head was so unmoving was part of the hypnosis.
AMOL RAJAN
What’s your advice to someone willing to go into politics today?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Oh do. I mean, if people believe they can make a contribution to politics, I think they should, particularly young people. It ought not just to be left to people who spend 15 minutes to learn the political landscape and then go into politics. I want people to go into politics who care about the country, who would like to do something for the country. I’d certainly like more young people to do it, because we need young people to become engaged. If they get disengaged from democracy, we are in deep trouble.
AMOL RAJAN
Are you concerned about the calibre of people going into politics today? Do you think it’s changed in a bad way?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’ve not been in the House of Commons, so it’s difficult to say. But I think the range of people going in there has changed on both sides. The Conservative Party had less people from the armed forces who used to have a good knowledge of it, and less people from business, and I think that is a loss for them. You’d be surprised to hear me say this, but with the Labour Party, I think when they moved away from the traditional working class Labour member, who lived in his community, suffered the same hardships as his community and knew it from back to front, and he was replaced by students with degrees and left wing instincts, I think that was a loss to the Labour Party and to the nature of the House of Commons.
AMOL RAJAN
Just a few more. When did you last cry?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Watching the Paralympics. The Paralympic swimmers was when I last cried, the bravery that they have had to live through and the work to get there, and the number of people who have had to support them so they could get there. I think it’s immensely moving that they have actually been so brave as to give such dedication to their sports that they actually got to the Olympics. I just am full of admiration.
AMOL RAJAN
What’s your guilty pleasure?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Lemon Drops. Lemon Drop martinis, preferably in the plural.
AMOL RAJAN
I don’t think I know what a lemon drop martini is.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Then your life needs to be enhanced!
AMOL RAJAN
Last couple. How would you like to be remembered?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Fondly.
AMOL RAJAN
What would you still like to achieve?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think I’d like to live long enough to see my country at ease with itself.
AMOL RAJAN
I am going to ask you some nostalgic questions. Now, indulge me, we’ve talked about the future, and I want to talk about this. Ken Clarke said of you on Radio Four recently, he said he was very, very fond of you, great friends, but it was always a cause of regret to him that the thing about Sir John is he just never seemed to enjoy being Prime Minister. Ken Clarke said this was because you were very, very concerned, perhaps for understandable reasons, in particular, with what the press said. I want to ask you about those two things. Did you ever enjoy being Prime Minister, and were you too concerned about the press?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
On the latter part, the answer is probably yes. Ken knows me very well, also Douglas Hurd, so I accept that criticism, probably true. All I can say is, today people need be less concerned, because the press is less powerful than it was. They, of course, now have to deal with social media, which is an infinitely worse problem for them. Did I ever enjoy being Prime Minister? Yes, I did. I enjoyed bits of it. I didn’t enjoy all of it, I didn’t enjoy the unpleasant things you have to do, the unpleasant things that come up and hit you and I don’t think any Prime Minister does. So I don’t think I was unique in that.
AMOL RAJAN
If you could go back and relive one moment from your time in power, what would that one moment be?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think the 50th anniversary of the ending of the war. We were in France, with people from countries who had all fought in the coalition. We were at Arromanches, with the Queen, Prince Philip, heads of Governments from all over the place, and we were watching from on high the veterans marching on the sands at Arromanches. We thought they’d march for about an hour, smart blazers and trousers, with rows of medals and berets. They came and they came and they came, and it went on and on and on. There were tens of thousands of them, infinitely more than anyone could possibly have imagined. They marched even as the tide came in and began to come over their boots and up over their ankles, they just came on marching. And they were all very elderly by definition, and it was the most remarkable sight. And you really had a glimpse of what our country is really about. I think if I had one moment to relive that would be it.
AMOL RAJAN
When it all became too much, the stresses, the strains, the headlines, the pressure, was there somewhere that you found refuge?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
The Oval. It’s been my spiritual home since the early 1950s and I could always go to the Oval, switch off, watch some cricket. It didn’t have to be high class cricket, it might have been a junior Surrey team or something of that sort. But there’s something for me when I go to the Oval that takes me back to my youth, when I first used to sit there with a score book, a Tizer and sandwiches. It’s just a complete change, so that was my refuge.
AMOL RAJAN
Well, Sir John, this is the John Major room at the Oval, and it’s impossible not to wonder what the boy from Brixton would have made of the idea of you having a room at the Oval and a portrait of yourself as Prime Minister here.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, I think he’d have been surprised.
AMOL RAJAN
He’d been surprised that you’ve got the same tie on after 30 years as well! But what’s the story behind this bat as well?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
This is a Jack Hobbs bat and there’s a story behind that. I had just finished Prime Minister’s Questions and one of the messengers came in to see me and said ’there’s a very elderly lady outside who says she must see you, shall I tell her to go away?’ I said, ‘no, bring her in’. She came in, and she was very elderly and very small, and she was clutching a large brown paper parcel, and she introduced herself, and she said to me, I’d like to give you this, but I would like a promise from you that you will never give it away or sell it. I wasn’t sure what it was, but she didn’t look as though she was deranged, she looked perfectly genuine. So I made that promise, and she gave it to me and I unwrapped it, and it was a Jack Hobbs bat. It’s a bat with which he scored a century in the early part of the 1900s and it had been given to this elderly lady as a little girl, and she had no-one to leave it to, and so she came to the House of Commons to give it to me. I thought, I won’t be here forever, but the bat should go back to its natural home. So it is here in this room, and here it will remain.
AMOL RAJAN
Given this room is your room, it’s the John Major room, do you get to choose which of the Surrey icons are along here?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I do, everyone here was personally chosen by me. This is Billy Beldham, or silver Billy Beldham as he was called, and he was a great batsman in the early nineteenth century. His main period was 1800 to 1820, but he played cricket much longer than that. The point about Billy Beldham is not just that he was a good batsman, he was the first batsman not just to swing across the line, but to play down the line on pitted and horrible pitches. People tended to hang back and swing to leg, he didn’t, he learned that it was fruitful to play forward and hit the ball in the V.
AMOL RAJAN
Which is a lesson he obviously passed on to his great successor, Jack Hobbs, arguably the greatest opening batsman of them all.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
He would certainly be my choice and the longevity of his career is astonishing.
AMOL RAJAN
Hobbs played on it well over the age of 40 didn’t he?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
He scored 197 first class hundreds and he scored 100 of them after the age of 40. Don’t forget, he lost four years to the First World War, so he scored 61,00 ofirst class runs. Nobody else is remotely near it.
AMOL RAJAN
Tell you what, I’ve just hit my 40s. Do you think I’m about to enter my peak period?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think it’s undoubtedly so.
AMOL RAJAN
This is?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
This is Peter May, who when I was a boy was the finest batsman in England.
AMOL RAJAN
Did you watch him?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Oh, gosh, yes.
AMOL RAJAN
Here?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Indeed. He got me in huge trouble once. I was here watching and I was a huge admirer of Peter, he was my great hero as a boy. My father had only one possession of any value at all, that was a gold stopwatch that he’d been given at some stage during his music hall career, and I asked if I could borrow the stopwatch to time how long it took from Peter May hitting the ball on the on side, which was his great shot at the boundary. He lent it to me, and I was holding it like this to time how long it took and I pressed the button at the top, and it slipped out of my hands and crashed down on the then stone floor underneath the wooden benches, and it was an ex watch.
AMOL RAJAN
What did your father make of that?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Well, I was distraught, because I knew how much it mattered to him, and I was only 12 or so, 13, perhaps. I took it home and I showed it to him like this, and he was nearly blind then but he could feel it and see it well enough. And all he said was ‘tell me all you can about this Peter May’, it was the only thing he said, no reproach, he just wanted to know why I cared so much about Peter May, why I wanted to time how long it took the ball to hit the boundary from leaving his bat.
AMOL RAJAN
Sounds like a wonderful father. I’ll tell you what, with that follow through, he’d be very happy and at home in the modern game, wouldn’t he?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Certainly would. He was a powerful batsman. He didn’t often hit sixes, but he could and very big sixes.
AMOL RAJAN
Let’s go and watch some cricket.