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At the Oval, I reflected once again on John Major's remarkable legacy as PM
Spectator, The, May 26, 2007 by PARRIS, MATTHEW
Cricket. Aargh. My gorge rises at the very word. Days -- months -- years of schoolboy misery; long, wretched, empty afternoons of boredom, fear and wasted time. Which is no way to say thankyou to Sir John Major for inviting me to a remarkable book launch for what looks and sounds like rather good book: More Than a Game. But the truth is that I made my way to the John Major suite at the Oval in south London on Monday last week more out of affection for Sir John than for cricket.
I'm so glad I did. That busy, crowded room will fix itself in the memory as a sort of still-life of Majorism and his seven long years as prime minister from 1990 to 1997, a strange time in British politics. Sir John's Oval party reminded me of everything I admired about him, and everything that bemused.
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The room was full of chalk and cheese. A sprinkling of young suits; a gathering of old blazers; young bloods; old rogues; young Sloanes; High Tories; loyal Conservative workers; Cockneys; peers -- and -- ooh!
there goes a Heseltine shaking his mane -- look -- quick -- there -- just behind that herd of sportsmen. And in the centre of it all this decent, quick-minded, thoughtful, original, slightly edgy man from south London: a total one-off, not an exemplar of any type.
The word I'm trying not to use for the book-launch is 'eclectic' because eclectic suggests the sort of mix that acquires a flavour and potency from its very diversity: 'big tent' -- that sort of thing. 'Eclectic' is almost contrived: a quality one might consciously aim for in an anthology, a political party or a social gathering. When, on the other hand, the variety is almost haphazard, 'eclectic' is not the word. One would not observe, of a Northern Line Tube carriage at rush-hour on a Tuesday, 'what an eclectic crowd!' The differences between people at the Oval last week arose not from a planned heterogeneity but from the fact that there was really only one thing that united all of us there: not cricket, not Toryism, not literature, but the fact that we all personally liked John Major.
And -- for all the criticism (sometimes scorn) his government and he himself attracted in the 1990s -- the truth is that it is hard to imagine any other figure capable of stringing along a late-20th-century Conservative administration so many years beyond the end of its natural life. This was a personal achievement, and though in his autobiography Major seems to regret he never 'stamped' his authority or mark on his epoch, or ever quite found his pace, or tone, or stride, I believe that if anyone had stamped at all hard, the whole administration would have fragmented. It was his hard-to-get-a-handle-on yet hard-not-tolike quality that kept things together.
Michael Heseltine would certainly have stamped. As leader I doubt he'd have won the general election in 1992, but if he had won, then the Tory civil war Major strove so long to avoid would have broken out within months. And neither Margaret Thatcher herself nor any neo-Thatcherite successor could have done other than go down gloriously (and fast) with all guns blazing.
Was that, though, all Major achieved -- an unlikely prolongation of the Conservative sunset? I would argue otherwise. This month, as Tony Blair departs Downing Street after a comparable time in office, is a good time to pose the question; for the more you look at how modest have been the achievements of Mr Blair's ten years, despite three whopping majorities and (at first) the whole nation and its news media willing him onwards, and how considerable were the achievements of John Major's seven years, despite a tiny majority sinking to zero, and a media climate which soon turned violently against the Conservative party, the more solid appear the fruits of an era at first sight shapeless.
The first fruit, of course, was the opt-out for sterling from monetary union. Major himself was never convinced by the case for the euro (my private impression was that he was quietly hostile) but had he tried to commit a Conservative government to perpetual opposition, the administration would have fallen apart. The narrow ground he chose -- 'maybe one day but not yet' -- was at the same time the only ground from which the 1990s parliamentary Conservative party could be held together, and the best way to let our European partners down gently.
Gordon Brown was to play the same game with his pro-euro Prime Minister, Blair. And it was Major who committed us to the singlecurrency referendum whose threat proved Mr Brown's best weapon. Postponement is such a powerful strategy in politics, as elsewhere, yet so hard to trumpet as the achievement it often is. Major saved the pound -- it's a simple as that.
The second was the National Lottery. I dislike gambling, but it is hard not to acknowledge the substantial force this lottery has become. Imagine that Blair had thought it up and carried it through -- he'd be crowing about it endlessly now, and probably demanding to announce the draw in his final week.
