23: John Major: From Brixton to Downing Street (Part 1)

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1:50So, welcome to another episode of The Rest is Politics Leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. it. And joined by, I think you're our first, you're not our first former Prime Minister, but you're our first Conservative former Prime Minister. Shame, we're going to say many of you choose from. There are quite a few, yeah. So welcome and thank you, Sir John Major. We're actually going to do, we're going to try and squeeze the lemon here. We're going to get two whole episodes out of you with a bit of luck, because it is, it's quite a story. And I wonder if we can start right at the beginning, your childhood.

2:22And I guess the question that's bugged me all my life, really, is why you became a Tory. Well, I think it was, as Macmillan would have put it, events, dear boy, events. It's quite a lengthy background. But I mean, briefly, my father was a Victorian man. He was born in 1879. He was 64, 65 when I was born, which was something of a surprise to my mother. But as a Victorian man, he did a business deal just by shaking hands. And in terms of shaking hands, the deal then went sour. And my father lost everything he had, which wasn't much. It was a small bungalow in Worcester Park and whatever savings he had.

3:03And we moved to Worcester Park to two rooms in Brixton. And although I didn't know it at the time, I wondered where we found these two rooms. Our landlord was my father's son, who I didn't know existed, who'd been born in 1902. So this was your half-brother? It was my half-brother. And what was the gap between you and age? Oh, the gap was 40, 41 years. So I had no idea who he was. And neither my mother nor my father told me. It was sometime when we moved there. I was about 10 before I actually realized who he was. But life was quite tough there. Both my parents were sick. There was no money to throw around.

3:40And at one stage, we were approached by the Lambeth Labour Council who offered to re-housers when they could. They were very kind. They were very decent. They were very gentle. but they couldn't actually do anything at the time. And I was more attracted, I was then 12 or 13, 12 I think, by the conservative creed that you took the opportunities to get yourself out of the difficulties in which you were in. And that was a quite binary choice at the age of 12 or 13. And did you feel political at that point? Yes, I mean, school for me was something I loathed from start to finish. I didn't work at school or too much of rebellion about me at the time.

4:17But the two things I cared about were history, which is essential to politics and English, which is essential as well, at least in this country for most people. I was very lucky then because I went to a local church, FATE, and I met the local Labour MP, Colonel Marcus Lipton. You may remember him. And he'd been the Member of Parliament since 1945. So he'd been there a long time. And he was very kind to me. He realised in talking to me that I was likely to be a Conservative, but we talked often. We met on these occasions. And he gave me some tickets to go to the House of Commons. And I went there in 1956 for the first time.

4:56And I saw one of those dreary afternoons where they're doing the finance bill in committee stage on the floor of the House. But I heard Harold Macmillan, who was then, I think, the Chancellor. And as I walked into Downing Street, before I saw the chamber, the atmosphere reached out and grabbed me. and I thought this is where I wish to be. As you walked into Parliament, you mean? As I walked into Parliament, yes. And so John, can I come in from this great distance in Doha and huge welcome and thank you for coming and sorry that I'm in the Middle East and bearing huge greetings from many people in Qatar towards you.

5:29I wanted to just develop this question a little bit more of becoming a Conservative. So I think you write about it quite well in your rather wonderful autobiography about why you were attracted to Conservative, not Labour. And you talked partly about language, so questions of envy or resentment, questions of class struggle, questions of individuals as opposed to political troops. I wonder whether you could develop a little bit about on what you were saying in the autobiography. Let me try. Well, in terms of inspiration, the politician who inspired me more than any other then and since was Ian MacLeod.

6:07And I don't know whether everyone listening will remember Ian MacLeod. He was quite a short man with a high domed bald head and a slightly paralytic neck. And when he spoke, it was like a great church bell ringing. And he was, to me as a child, truly inspiring. He didn't just talk about political things. He talked about the morality of politics. He talked a lot about what was right and wrong, about what should and could be done and what was intolerable. And how were you aware of him? Were your family political? Were you listening to the radio? How were you connecting to somebody like him? Well, in those days, of course, there was a proper parliamentary reporting.

6:45A couple of pages of blogs from East Moles, he said this and so on. So I saw a bit of that, but also he was often in the news. He was in the cabinet at the time and, of course, the party conference speeches. And they also issued a record of his speeches at times of general elections. So that was really how I heard him. And then I met him and was similarly inspired, metaphorically sitting at his feet when he was making a speech. So you're at school and you're, by your own admission, not working that hard on the schooling stuff. And yet you're becoming a bit of a political geek already. You left school before you were 16.

7:22You had three O levels. And yet you're sounding like somebody who's already decided as a teenager, I'm going to go into politics. I had. That was what I wished to do. Indeed, if you think about it for a moment, the choices were limited. For someone, I had no sponsors, no backers, no money, no background, no educational qualifications. Top of the civil service, unlikely. Top of the armed forces, unlikely. Top of sport, wasn't good enough. But politics, you lived on your wits and what you did throughout your career in a way that doesn't apply elsewhere. And I found that very attractive. And, Sir John, can I get you to come back to the question of conservatism and individuals against class and envy and resentment?

8:08Rory's getting very tribal in his old age. He basically wants you to say, Tory good, Labour bad. And actually, Sir John, I'd love to, as we talk, come back to that more, because obviously, you've become a great icon in later life of people like me and Alistair who are centrists, and people tend to forget that you were once a conservative. So I'd like you to talk a little bit about why you believe in the Conservative Party and why you were not attracted to Labour. The second half of your statement is only partly true. I never was especially tribal. I wasn't especially opposed to Labour. The Labour people I came across then in those days in Lambeth were straight up and down people with a left of centre view who were trying to do their best in very difficult circumstances and also at a time of massive immigration into the borough, which added to their difficulties.

8:58I had no particular opposition to them at all, but I did feel conservative. I wished to conserve. The rule of law to me seemed to be an extremely important thing. The chance of the individual's chance to do for himself what he wishes to achieve rather to have it collectively done was something appealed to me very much indeed. I did no work at school, but I did a great deal when I left to pass the exams that I hadn't passed at school and to get some qualifications. So I was really looking for a freedom to make of myself what I could. I wasn't sure what I could be made, but I wanted to try. And John, can I quote to you from your book?

9:40It's always a mistake to write books. No, it's not. I was attracted to the Conservative Party because it did not draw its language from the dark emotions of envy or resentment. It cared for the weak, the poor and the old. But unlike the Labour Party, it did not demand a lifetime of adherence to class struggle. It saw people as individuals, not as political troops. Well, politics was much more class-based in the 1950s and 1960s. I think it's more culturally based now, frankly, than class-based. But it was class-based in those stage, if you were middle class, if you were white collar, if you earned a good income, you were likely to be conservative.

10:22If you were a manual worker, and if you were relatively lower income, you were more likely to be Labour. So that was certainly how I saw it at that particular time. I'm not sure that that is as true now. In fact, I'm sure it isn't as true now as it used to be then. But class is still a very, very big part of Britain's. It's a very big part of Britain. And my dream of a classless society is something that has never come about. Yeah. But I'm not sure It's such a big determination in which way you vote anymore. I found in my first seat in Highgate, whenever I went up to a very large, well, well disposed house, it was a Labour voter for sure.

10:59It certainly wasn't a Conservative. And if I went around the council estates, I would find find more Conservatives. So in terms of the way people instinctively vote, it is less class based today. We were saying before Rory joined us that if you count Rishi Sunak, there are eight people alive today who can say they have been UK Prime Minister. Two of them went to the same school, Eton. The current one went to another of the top private schools. Tony Blair went to a private school. It's quite hard, I think, to imagine that somebody like you today would rise to become leader of the Conservative Party.

11:34Well, if it's hard today, it would have been harder before, and yet it happened. So I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. But you do accept that your vision of the class of society has not come about? No, it hasn't come about. I think there's been moves towards it in many ways. For example, politics is much more inclusive these days. I mean, the number of minorities around the House of Commons is immeasurably different, even from the time when I was there 20 years ago. And I think that is a necessary change. And of course, many of these minorities have now served in the cabinets of both Labour and Conservative governments and have constituencies where you would not have expected them to be chosen as a candidate 20 years ago, but which they are now and where in many cases they're very popular.

12:22So I think there has been a quite significant shift. Is it perfect? No. Will it ever be perfect? I very much doubt it. But I think in that regard, we're moving in the right direction. Now, you mentioned prime ministers coming from top schools. That's true. But what I was talking about was not who passed through the sieve to reach the top. What I was talking about was the general determination of people to vote. And that, I think, is less class based. And when you went for Huntington, did you not feel that your background was, was it an asset or was it a problem for you when you were going for selection?

12:58Well, going around generally, it was a problem, but not as big a problem as another issue. The other issue was whether I was in favour of capital punishment, which I was not, until I found a word, a form of response that beat off the people who were in favour of it. What was that response? Tell us what the response was. Oh, I pointed out that the country was pretty evenly divided between capital punishment and not. And if you maintain capital punishment, you diminish the chance of getting convictions for people, even though they might be guilty. And that piece of sophistry worked quite well. So I remember Tristram Garrell-Jones training me when I was standing to be a Conservative MP.

13:35And he said that what he always did on this selection was if somebody said, are you in favour of capital punishment? He would say, I'm not. But if somebody killed my sister, I would kill them myself. And everyone would cheer and put him through the next round. So when you went for Huntington, You had 300 people up against you, including Michael Howard, Chris Patton, Peter Lilly, Peter Brook. That is quite a ray. So what were the qualities that you felt in yourself at that time that thought you could become a Conservative MP in a rural constituency? And when did you start to feel in yourself, do you know what, I might actually be able to go the whole way?

14:13Well, as far as Huntington is concerned, it sounds like a very rural constituency. it had had a huge amount of London overspill much of it in Peterborough but also it had spilled out into the villages so there was a much it was a very different constituency from the one who had selected my predecessor in 1945 and so it wasn't as rural as you may think right and many of the problems that were arising in Huntingdon were problems that I had been familiar with from London So I did think I had a better chance than many people did. I was completely written off by the Sunday Express, who had a column in the middle of their paper each week.

14:53Crossbench, I think it was called. I was the unconsidered outsider, which I thought was quite helpful. I think Jock Bruce Gardine and Alan Hazlehurst and Charles Durow, now the Duke of Wellington, the other three in the final shortlist, all of whom were favoured in some way, and I was not. Do you think you've been underestimated throughout your whole life by the Conservative Party and by the country. Well, that's for others to judge, I think. You're looking very mischievous. I'm a mischievous chap. I'm particularly mischievous because Alistair keeps pointing at me to say that I'm going to ask the next question and then he jumps in there because he can't quite resist it.

15:27But I'm teasing him. Tell us a little bit about books. You talk a lot about loving books. Tell us about the books that you read as a young person and what kind of books you loved. Well, I read all the children's classics, things like Black Arrow. The whole of the bunter books, of course, were absolutely essential reading in those days. But I also gravitated to more serious books as well, as I have done subsequently. I remember reading a book called Below the Salt by Thomas Costain, probably out of print now, but a brilliant book, an absolutely brilliant book that excited me tremendously. Is that to do with the class, the salt, Below the Salt?

16:02Yes, it is. Yeah. Yes. Well, I won't tell you the story of the book. it'll take half an hour. But if anyone hasn't read it, they can get a copy of Below the Salt by Thomas Costain. It's one of my favourite books. You still read a lot, I believe. I do, a huge amount, yes. And tell us what you love to read and what you're reading at the moment. I'm reading Appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouvry at the moment. It's his first book, but I think it's one of the finest books about the lead up to the Second World War that I've yet read. It's beautifully researched, beautifully written, and raises it from an angle many people have not previously approached.

16:35So I thoroughly recommend it. Are you reading that? No, I'm not reading Alistair's book because Norma has got it. And it's only halfway through. I wasn't asking that. I was asking whether you... You weren't. Rory wasn't. I wasn't. I was... But you claim you have read my book. I do believe you're blashing. Because you wrote me a very nice letter about that book. I hope this is caught on camera. Yeah. Anyway, are you reading that book because you're interested in Hitler? Or are you reading that book because you're rather alarmed about the state of current politics and world affairs? Well, I am alarmed about the state of current politics and current world affairs.

17:14But I'm reading that book because I heard it was an extremely good book. I mean, what do you buy someone of my age at Christmas? You buy them books. And I think at Christmas I had about 24 books. So I've got two shelves of books that I'm still reading and will take some time to get through. Now, I want to come on to the start of your career as an MP. You didn't quite answer my question about when you started to think that actually, not only could you become an MP, but actually you're somebody who could reach the very, very top. Well, I don't know that I consciously did think that at any stage.

17:47My ambition was to get into the Treasury. And if I could, to be Chancellor. I don't know that I'd stretched it beyond that. Everyone who has become prime minister, other than the perhaps titans of politics, of whom there are a handful over the past 300 years, needs a measure of luck, time and circumstance to get there. So I didn't particularly sit there thinking, am I going to be prime minister? I did want to go to the Treasury. And so John, one of the things that seems to have happened is that you became, I get the impression, part of a group of quite a talented intake that came in with you. I remember sitting in someone's house seeing a very peculiar portrait with people like you and Matthew Paris and Chris Patton, all dining around the corner from the House of Commons and charging it from whips.

18:33Will you tell us a little bit about the group that came into the House of Commons with you and the friendships that you developed and what that was all about? Well, I think the group we're talking about is the Blue Chips. And they were a lot of centrists and maybe slightly centrists left. And one or two from the right, Robert Cranbourne, for example, who I don't think would call himself a centre-left Tory. And we liked one another. We were the same vintage. We came in at the same time. I think all of us came in in 1979. And we naturally gravitated together. Chris Patton, Matthew Paris, can you remind us who they were?

19:03William Waldergrave, John Patton, Tristan Garrell-Jones. There were a range of others as well. What was your relationship then, I suppose, coming in, given that that sounds a bit sort of centre-left-ish, Tristan Garrell-Jones, Chris Patton, quite pro-EU. How did that then work with Mrs Thatcher, who I guess was the dominant figure under whom you came? What was your sense of her? How did she embrace people like you? What was the difference between you and the wets? Was she suspicious of people like you? Well, how best to tackle this question? I was in the whip's office and it was my job as Treasury whip to keep an eye on what people thought of our economic policies in the early 1980s.

19:45I'm going to interrupt you because I'm going to I'm going to read from your book, because I think this answers this even better than you could right now, because you're probably thinking back through the mists of time. so I was up all night re-reading because as we know Rory keeps telling me you never read a book you re-read a book I was re-reading your autobiography last night and I particularly enjoyed this bit I regarded it as my role to tell the Prime Minister what the backbenchers were saying and I did so I set out in detail the grumbles that every whip present knew were the views of the vast majority of our backbench colleagues Margaret did not like the message at all and began to chew up the messenger I thought her behaviour was utterly unreasonable and I repeated the message.

20:28She became more shrill. I'm astonished at what you're saying, she snapped. I made it clear again I was merely reporting the views of members, but she continued to attack me. I became increasingly annoyed and I said, that's what colleagues are saying, whether you like it or not. It's my job to tell you and that's what I'm doing. Her tirade continued. It goes on. The meeting was dangerously close to collapsing in mutual recrimination. Jean Trumpington, one of the Lord's whips, attempted to lower the temperature and had her head bitten off her panes. It was an extraordinary performance by the Prime Minister.

21:00I have never forgotten it. Then, however, as we rose from the table for post-dinner drinks, her husband Dennis came up to me. She'd have enjoyed that, he remarked, and he drifted off happily, clutching a gin and tonic. So she didn't mind, you would be suggesting, being told what people thought, or did she mind? Well, I didn't know whether she'd mind at all at the time. And frankly, I was so fed up with the way she'd behaved. I didn't much care. But I found out pretty soon in a pretty spectacular way that it was easy to misread her. The whips thought I'd blown my career. Several of them said it.

21:32And I remember one of them putting his arms around me and said, never mind. She won't be there forever. You can always come back. But the very next day, I was the whip on duty sitting on the bench in the House of Commons. When she came from the prime minister's office at the back of the speaker, she had sat down beside me and said, I've been thinking about what you said last night. We must have another talk about it. I'll convene another meeting. And she did. And it was a much gentler meeting. And five weeks later, she appointed me a member of her government and gave me what I call a proper job.

22:04It is, she said, when she appointed me, the job I started with, parliamentary secretary at the Department of Health and Social Security. And Tories who understand health and social security are reasonably rare, reasonably rare. It was a wonderful place to start. So John, just to return to this bit, tell us a little bit about this tension between Mrs. Thatcher, Wetz, blue chips. Give us a sense of the ideological fight in the heart of the Conservative Party from Mrs. Thatcher coming in and what it meant her coming in from 79 to 83, the positives, the negatives? Well, first, if I may say so, it's overdone and was overdone by the media.

22:48Of course, she was right of centre in her attitudes and many of the others were left of centre, particularly on economic and social matters. But you will recall, she appointed all the people I mentioned to government. There was no question of having a Brexit government with only one conceivable view. She saw these people were talented. She knew she needed a government that brought in the best talent in the Conservative Party, and she appointed them. And she was prepared to argue her case and argue with them. I'll tell you something about Mrs. Thatcher, which people haven't particularly remarked.

23:19She could be extraordinarily brutal and blunt and occasionally rude, but only, only to people who were in a position to fight back. And if they did fight back, she didn't mind. If they didn't fight back, she thought they were wet as a stream. But what I never saw her do was be unkind or brutal to someone who was not in a position to answer back. So she accepted we were a party with a very broad base. And on that subject, what would she have made of somebody like Boris Johnson deciding to throw out of the party, Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames, and of course, including me? But what would she thought about the general view that you throw 21 MPs out of the House of Commons because they disagree with you on a no-deal Brexit.

24:03Well, I can only tell you that she was Prime Minister for 11 years. She threw nobody out and never even suggested it. And there were certainly plenty of differences. Apart from that exchange that you had with her, in terms of, because if you remember the whole sort of spitting images had a revival. I don't know whether Mrs Thatcher is still in it, but the image of her sort of, you know, utterly dominant within the cabinet. No, it's rubbish. What were cabinet discussions actually like? Well, they were very blunt. And if anybody seriously thinks you're going to stop people like Peter Walker saying exactly what they think in cabinet, even though it might be diametrically opposed to the prime minister, then they didn't know Peter Walker.

24:41And if they think Geoffrey Howe would be deterred because he has a gentle manner, then they don't know Geoffrey. And you could say the same about Willie Whitelaw. The belief that Margaret just said, we'll do this and we all do it. It is true that she tended to introduce the subject. And at the end of her introduction came her conclusion. but that is not how the discussions always ended did she change over time did she become more uh yes after after 83 and 87 well i wasn't in the cabinet at any degree but after 87 yes she did she became a bit more determined to get her own way after 87 okay rory john let's just take a very very short break back in a minute in america half of every dollar spent on brand medicines goes to entities who don't make them.