I know it must be intensely irritating to John Major (for younger readers, he was the British Prime Minister from 1990-1997) that he lost the 1997 general election, even if it was over ten years ago that it happened. It might be even more irritating to him if he could accept that he lost it because (a) he presided over one of the biggest economic disasters in recent decades - Black Wednesday (b) his parliamentary party was packed with liars and sleaze merchants and (c) he left the public services in a deplorable state of disrepair, with falling education budgets, soaring hospital waiting lists and the first stages of an immensely cack-handed privatisation of the railways. Or that he had any responsibility for the genocide of at least 80,000 Europeans because of his government's refusal to allow Bosnia to defend itself. Given this record, is this elder "statesman" really the best person to provide lectures on good governance? And is the Andrew Marr show really so short of guests that its highlight this weekend was giving the biggest grudge in politics since Ted Heath lost to Margaret Thatcher yet another airing?
Monday 17 December 2007
How long can this man hold a grudge?
I know it must be intensely irritating to John Major (for younger readers, he was the British Prime Minister from 1990-1997) that he lost the 1997 general election, even if it was over ten years ago that it happened. It might be even more irritating to him if he could accept that he lost it because (a) he presided over one of the biggest economic disasters in recent decades - Black Wednesday (b) his parliamentary party was packed with liars and sleaze merchants and (c) he left the public services in a deplorable state of disrepair, with falling education budgets, soaring hospital waiting lists and the first stages of an immensely cack-handed privatisation of the railways. Or that he had any responsibility for the genocide of at least 80,000 Europeans because of his government's refusal to allow Bosnia to defend itself. Given this record, is this elder "statesman" really the best person to provide lectures on good governance? And is the Andrew Marr show really so short of guests that its highlight this weekend was giving the biggest grudge in politics since Ted Heath lost to Margaret Thatcher yet another airing?
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Which grudge would that be? I seem to remember relations between Major and the Blairites as being exceedingly cordial, right up to Blair's little pangyric to Major on the steps of Downing Street in his "Today, enough of talking"-speech. Major is concentrating on sleaze here because he won't admit the real reasons his Party's loss - Black Wednesday and Maastricht, which resulted in his own crazy campaign "to f**king crucify the Right" - which was of course what happened. When the Socialists won in 1997 "the bastards" lost, and the Major agenda, on everything from Europe to gay right to the sodding Millenium Dome, went on as if nothing had changed. There's not much for the old fool to have a grudge about, really.
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