A Major difference in character

The events of the last few days surrounding Gordon Brown’s future have led me to cast my mind back almost exactly 14 years to when then Prime Minister John Major was facing increasing murmurings about his own leadership.

I’ve since found and now reproduce below an extract of the famous statement he delivered in the garden of Number 10 following his decisions to resign as Conservative leader on 22 June 1995. It makes interesting reading:

“I've been deeply involved in politics since I was sixteen. I see public service as a duty and if you can serve, I believe you have an obligation to do so.

“I've now been Prime Minister for nearly five years. In that time we've achieved a great deal, but for the last three years I've been opposed by a small minority in our party. During those three years there have been repeated threats of a leadership election. In each year, they have turned out to be phoney threats. Now the same thing again is happening in 1995.

“I believe this is in no one's interest that this continues right though until November. It undermines the Government and it damages the Conservative Party. I am not prepared to see this party I care for laid out on the rack like this any longer.

“To remove this uncertainty I have this afternoon tendered my resignation as leader of the Conservative Party to Sir Marcus Fox, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, and requested him to set the machinery in motion for an election of a successor.

“I have confirmed to Sir Marcus that I shall be a candidate in that election. If I win, I shall continue as Prime Minister and lead the party into and through the next election.

“Should I be defeated, which I do not expect, I shall resign as Prime Minister and offer my successor my full support.

“The Conservative Party must make its choice. Every leader is leader only with the support of his party. That is true of me as well.

“That is why I am no longer prepared to tolerate the present situation. In short, it is time to put up or shut up.”

The fact that Mr Major went on to preside over a massacre at the polls two years later is almost irrelevant, as the Conservative Party was essentially incapable of being led at that time. Indeed, he was much more popular with the British public than the party itself.

But my point is very simple – Gordon Brown does not possess either the guts or the principles to “do a Major” and gave his own party a chance to have a say on whether he should continue as their leader.

Instead, he prefers the classic Brown techniques of authorised briefings against perceived opponents – Environment Minster Jane Kennedy resigned yesterday after being his latest victim – strong-arm tactics from his whips and sheer, old-fashioned delusion.

I would imagine historians will, in years to come, judge John Major much more kindly than they will Gordon Brown.