Could John Major have been re-elected in 1997?

[aaronupright]

Or is it near ASBish?
By every measure, he was a **good** PM, as his increased reputation post premiership illustrates even discounting the massive buyer's remorse the British suffered about Blair.
My own take has been that he was fucked post-ERM* dropout regardless of what he did. What kind of POD do we need?
(I also think that this is when Britain leaving the EU became inevitable since the massive amount of upper middle-aged leave voters in 2016 were people who had mortgages and young children in 1992 and they really took a beating with interest rated going up like twice in a day?)

 

[thevaliant]

Could John Major have been re-elected in 1997?
No.

It's not ASB, but its pretty darn close.

This presumes a 1992 victory (hence the 're-election' point) by Major.

A slightly more interesting question is, could the Conservatives have won re-election in 1997, assuming a post April 1992 POD?
That is potentially doable, but requires:
1. Major to be removed, ideally in 1996 so the new PM hasn't had time to taint himself. The new PM should be Heseltine or maybe Ken Clarke. I don't see either Portillo or Redwood (The only other two viable alternatives having a chance) will be acceptable to the British public.
2. Labour literally need to be unelectable. That means the leader can't be John Smith (so, OTL then), Blair, Brown, Cook or even Prescott. I'd suggest Corbyn, but even he has shown in 2017 that sometimes even the hard left can go forward.
3. Even with (1) and (2), which is extremely difficult at this point; you might just want to make sure Ashdown also isn't a party leader. Well liked, popular and leading the Lib Dem revival. Voters may still look at the Tories and think, "Nawh." Turning to Labour, maybe they see the same, so they instead put Ashdown in charge.

 

[marktaha]

The real Jim Hacker. In 1997 had lost all credibility years before

 

[V-J]

No, it's not realistic for him to be re-elected in '97 with anything resembling OTL. There is of course plenty of ATLs where he doesn't become PM when he did - Mrs T holding on and then losing the election etc - where he could have a different premiership. He was, after all, a relatively young man when he became PM in OTL.

He suffered from circumstantial problems which any other PM in his position would also have suffered from - the tiny majority, the Tories being the most polarised on Europe they've ever been (Though I think you can say he managed this situation very poorly) etc - but no, he fundamentally wasn't cut out to be PM, and was over-promoted at that level. Like May, he was fundamentally a managerialist with almost no politicial vision or strong convictions - both could have been passable PMs in less trying circumstances, but neither had the stuff leadership is really made of. Tellingly, neither had a real constituency in the party - because they didn't merit one.

 

[gaitskellitebevanite]

With a post 1992 POD its pretty much ASB, there are factors which could have altered the scale of the Tory defeat - had Smith lived Labour's majority would have probably been only around 80-100, had Portillo become Tory leader in 1995 the Tories would have lost even more seats - but nothing enough to actually see Major returned to office.

With a much earlier POD it is just about plausible, say if Thatcher hadn't vetoed Britain joining the ERM in 1985, which butterflies away Black Wednesday, or if Labour had lurched even further to the left in the early 80s. But with a Post 1992 POD it is effectively ASB.

 

[Thoresby]

If he wakes up on 10th of April 1992 with 20/20 foresight he might just be able to defuse the ERM bomb and get enough right that the Tories can win a comfortable majority in 1997 on the back of a booming economy.
As everyone else has said with a post ERM PoD it is basically impossible for Major to win a majority, even with 20/20 foresight you would need every other political leader in the country to self destruct with perfect timing.
However I don't think it is completely impossible for Major to remain PM at least for a bit. If you have him play every card perfectly post ERM while John Prescott as Labour leader instead of Blair does badly and the Lib Dems start focusing more on eating into the soft left Labour vote in big cities, rather than their OTL strategy of just targeting the Tories by appealing to Tory voters and asking Labour supporters for tactical votes, you might just get a hung Parliament with sufficiently friendly arithmetic that Major can carry on as PM, though the Coalition would be very unstable.

 

[V-J]

had Portillo become Tory leader in 1995 the Tories would have lost even more seats

Very doubtful IMO. Aside from just the tonic of fresh leadership, Portillo wouldn't have had the enormous strife on Europe at his back and would have been much closer to where the party and its voters were on that issue than the Major-Ken-Hezza triumvirate were in OTL, with Major's (in hindsight rather incredible) position of being open to Euro entry. This issue of course IOTL massively contributed, even beyond people who cared about it, to the image of the Tories as dysfunctional and divided, not to mention the ultimate shedding of votes to the Referendum Party.

Major was a complete busted flush by 1995 - he should have resigned then, and it's very hard to see any alternate leader arising from a contest, be it Hezza, Portillo or whoever else, doing worse than the OTL rout.

 

[Thoresby]

Very doubtful IMO. Aside from just the tonic of fresh leadership, Portillo wouldn't have had the enormous strife on Europe at his back and would have been much closer to where the party and its voters were on that issue than the Major-Ken-Hezza triumvirate were in OTL, with Major's (in hindsight rather incredible) position of being open to Euro entry. This issue of course IOTL massively contributed, even beyond people who cared about it, to the image of the Tories as dysfunctional and divided, not to mention the ultimate shedding of votes to the Referendum Party.

He may have been in alignment with the Tory membership and voters but he wasn't in alignment with half the Parliamentary party. The basic problem for any scenario was the Tory Party was moving from being a Europhile party to a Eurosceptic one and I don't think there was any plausible way for that transition to happen in a way that isn't a completely toxic nightmare.

 

[V-J]

He may have been in alignment with the Tory membership and voters but he wasn't in alignment with half the Parliamentary party. The basic problem for any scenario was the Tory Party was moving from being a Europhile party to a Eurosceptic one and I don't think there was any plausible way for that transition to happen in a way that isn't a completely toxic nightmare.

Disagree. The position of Heseltine and Clarke of being actively in favour of Euro entry was, even by the mid-nineties, a minority position and confined to a small number of the parliamentary party and the grandees. The strength of it relied not on numbers but on the position of Clarke and Heseltine in the government - Major was utterly terrified of Clarke resigning.

Of course, the parliamentary party was not close to being majority outright anti-EU either - it wasn't even in 2016. But a substantial breadth of people were hostile to Euro entry without being hardcore eurosceptics, as was demonstrated in 1997, when around 200 parliamentary candidates issued their own manifestos signalling they were against it - including such people as a certain David Cameron, hardly a radical eurosceptic.

Major made a rod for his own back in promoting Clarke and then Heseltine to where he did - those are decisions he made, not a structural problem. I think people are too deterministic on this.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Or is it near ASBish?
By every measure, he was a **good** PM, as his increased reputation post premiership illustrates even discounting the massive buyer's remorse the British suffered about Blair.
My own take has been that he was fucked post-ERM* dropout regardless of what he did. What kind of POD do we need?
(I also think that this is when Britain leaving the EU became inevitable since the massive amount of upper middle-aged leave voters in 2016 were people who had mortgages and young children in 1992 and they really took a beating with interest rated going up like twice in a day?)

No one lost anything when the interest rates went to 15% as they went straight back down again.

If Major and co could have renegotiated the pound's position in the ERM prior to Black Wednesday then this may have been enough to make 1997 close. And to bankrupt George Soros. But there were so many other own goals and external issues impacting his ministry it will always be a long shot.

 

[thevaliant]

No, it's not realistic for him to be re-elected in '97 with anything resembling OTL. There is of course plenty of ATLs where he doesn't become PM when he did - Mrs T holding on and then losing the election etc - where he could have a different premiership. He was, after all, a relatively young man when he became PM in OTL.

He suffered from circumstantial problems which any other PM in his position would also have suffered from - the tiny majority, the Tories being the most polarised on Europe they've ever been (Though I think you can say he managed this situation very poorly) etc - but no, he fundamentally wasn't cut out to be PM, and was over-promoted at that level. Like May, he was fundamentally a managerialist with almost no politicial vision or strong convictions - both could have been passable PMs in less trying circumstances, but neither had the stuff leadership is really made of. Tellingly, neither had a real constituency in the party - because they didn't merit one.

I think you're being a little harsh.

Major did manage a win in 1992 when most commentators suspected the best the Conservatives could hope for was largest party in a hung parliament (and many suspected a Labour majority).
But I agree he can't win in 1997. By then he's in too deep and most of the problems of the last seven years are being ascribed to him and his party.

 

[gaitskellitebevanite]

Very doubtful IMO. Aside from just the tonic of fresh leadership, Portillo wouldn't have had the enormous strife on Europe at his back and would have been much closer to where the party and its voters were on that issue than the Major-Ken-Hezza triumvirate were in OTL, with Major's (in hindsight rather incredible) position of being open to Euro entry. This issue of course IOTL massively contributed, even beyond people who cared about it, to the image of the Tories as dysfunctional and divided, not to mention the ultimate shedding of votes to the Referendum Party.

Major was a complete busted flush by 1995 - he should have resigned then, and it's very hard to see any alternate leader arising from a contest, be it Hezza, Portillo or whoever else, doing worse than the OTL rout.

I'm not so sure. Remember Major was considerably more popular than his party in 1997 (just as Callaghan was in 79), he, and Clarke's record as Chancellor, were the Tories main electoral assets. Portillo, prior to re-inventing himself as the Conservative Kinnock was not a partiularly well liked outside of the Conservative base, and seen as a unreconstructed Thatcherite - "Who Dares WIns" etc..

Heseltine on the other hand was probably the Tories best bet to reduce the scale of the defeat at the next election - considering had Heseltine won the OTL 1990 leadership election he planned to call a snap election, it seems reasonable that had Major gone in July 1995 and Hezza taken over there'd be an election either in October 1995 or the summer of 1996. His biggest disadvantage was his health, if the stress of the premiership and an election campaign is going to cause issues with his heart. His staunch support for the Euro will alienate the hardline eurosceptics, but support for leadership candidates wasn't quite as clear cut along european lines. In 1990 (granted, pre-Maastricht) two of his strongest leadership supporters were Edward Leigh and David Evans, and when he was being pushed to run for the leadership in 1997 he had the private support of Michael Howard.

 

[V-J]

I think you're being a little harsh.

I don't think so. It's more or less a standard mainstream view, even by fairly establishment historians.

I'm not so sure. Remember Major was considerably more popular than his party in 1997 (just as Callaghan was in 79), he, and Clarke's record as Chancellor, were the Tories main electoral assets. Portillo, prior to re-inventing himself as the Conservative Kinnock was not a partiularly well liked outside of the Conservative base, and seen as a unreconstructed Thatcherite - "Who Dares WIns" etc..

Heseltine on the other hand was probably the Tories best bet to reduce the scale of the defeat at the next election - considering had Heseltine won the OTL 1990 leadership election he planned to call a snap election, it seems reasonable that had Major gone in July 1995 and Hezza taken over there'd be an election either in October 1995 or the summer of 1996. His biggest disadvantage was his health, if the stress of the premiership and an election campaign is going to cause issues with his heart. His staunch support for the Euro will alienate the hardline eurosceptics, but support for leadership candidates wasn't quite as clear cut along european lines. In 1990 (granted, pre-Maastricht) two of his strongest leadership supporters were Edward Leigh and David Evans, and when he was being pushed to run for the leadership in 1997 he had the private support of Michael Howard.

Your recollection is different to mine in respect of Major's personal polling, but I confess I don't have my books at the moment and can't find anything immediate online. He certainly lagged massively behind Blair on 'Prefered PM' - and that's very much the business end of personal polling. I am sure you are right on the economic team preference polling, but on that polling, Brown and Darling were prefered in 2010 - it usually skews towards the incumbents. In reality Black Wednesday created a massive dent in the Conservative standing on the economy generally.

It's worth bearing in mind, btw, that unreconstructed Thatcherism had much more of a constituency in the mid-nineties than it does today - even Major IOTL ran heavily on 'choice' in the public sector in 1997, while Labour of course was absolutely paranoid about any kind of exposure on public spending or tax.

 

[Garrison]

I think you're being a little harsh.

Major did manage a win in 1992 when most commentators suspected the best the Conservatives could hope for was largest party in a hung parliament (and many suspected a Labour majority).
But I agree he can't win in 1997. By then he's in too deep and most of the problems of the last seven years are being ascribed to him and his party.

Victory in 92 was the start of Major's problems. The Conservatives ran a campaign warning about 'Labour's Tax Bombshell' in the expectation that labour would win. Because of course they knew that whoever won was going to have to significantly raise taxes. So they win and look like massive hypocrites for doing exactly what they accused Labour of planning. And of course the narrowness of the win guaranteed endless guerrilla warfare by the 'bastards' on the backbenches. Nothing damages a party more than the public seeing it as divided and out of control.

 

[Chris Nation]

By every measure, he was a **good** PM

And which measures are those, exactly?

 

[aaronupright]

And which measures are those, exactly?

When he left office, the country was at peace and prosperous, he had made most of the work of the N Irish peace process,the economy was good.

 

[Chris Nation]

When he left office, the country was at peace and prosperous, he had made most of the work of the N Irish peace process,the economy was good.

I say this as someone who would almost certainly have voted for the Tories in 1997, but the Tories deserved to lose that election. They were in a shambles, running around trying to atone for the most popular postwar British prime minister, who happened to have led them to three general election victories, by parading damp squibs like Major around.

He appealed to no one, other than apparently Edwina Currie.

 

[Finbarr the Fair]

I say this as someone who would almost certainly have voted for the Tories in 1997, but the Tories deserved to lose that election. They were in a shambles, running around trying to atone for the most popular postwar British prime minister, who happened to have led them to three general election victories, by parading damp squibs like Major around.

He appealed to no one, other than apparently Edwina Currie.

By 1990 Thatcher had become a turnoff to the majority of the voters, despite retaining her fan base within the party membership. Major won an election almost any other Tory would have lost.

He was done in by the ERM crisis (karma as he took the UK into it at the wrong time and rate) and the breaking out of the Tory Civil War on the EU. While first Kinnock and then Smith detoxifified Labour.

I think there was very little Major or the Tories could do to win in 1997. History will probably look favourably on him as a man (Currie affair aside), give him credit for starting the Northern Ireland Peace Process and possibly for the successful reversal of economic policy after White Wednesday. But sentiment had shifted against him by 1993. Leading the Sun and other papers to abandon him too.

 

[Look More Closely Later]

Or is it near ASBish?
By every measure, he was a **good** PM, as his increased reputation post premiership illustrates even discounting the massive buyer's remorse the British suffered about Blair.
My own take has been that he was fucked post-ERM* dropout regardless of what he did. What kind of POD do we need?
(I also think that this is when Britain leaving the EU became inevitable since the massive amount of upper middle-aged leave voters in 2016 were people who had mortgages and young children in 1992 and they really took a beating with interest rated going up like twice in a day?)

Whether John Major was a 'good' or 'awful' PM, I suspect, is likely to be shaded by whether the viewer believes that the UK being in the EU was a good or bad thing.

But I don't see John Major winning the 1997 election against a charismatic, messianic, Tony Blair, after closing in on two decades of Tory government, increasingly beset with scandals (and mocked for its 'back to basics' agenda.) Not the man that Spitting Image mocked as being completely grey (although apparently they and the rest of the UK media at the time had managed to miss the adulterous affair in the 1980's with Edwina Currie.)

 

[Chris Nation]

By 1990 Thatcher had become a turnoff to the majority of the voters, despite retaining her fan base within the party membership. Major won an election almost any other Tory would have lost.

Saying nothing of the impeccable records of the distinguished members of the British Polling Council, Margaret Thatcher had reached an approval rating low of 23% between the 1979 and 1983 general elections. She improved on that between 1983 and 1987, reaching a low of 24%. Her approval rating in April 1990 was 20%, amid a massive economic slump.

Once more saying nothing of the impeccable records of the distinguished members of the British Polling Council, this seems to tell a story of voters who tended to dislike her between general elections, but they voted for her when it came time to put a cross on a ballot.

Too much is made of the Poll Tax Riots, and much too much is made of the supposed recoiling of the British people from her assertiveness in the cabinet.

I see no reason that Essex men would have deserted her in 1992.

I think there was very little Major or the Tories could do to win in 1997. History will probably look favourably on him as a man (Currie affair aside), give him credit for starting the Northern Ireland Peace Process and possibly for the successful reversal of economic policy after White Wednesday. But sentiment had shifted against him by 1993. Leading the Sun and other papers to abandon him too.

I think history will look back on him rather in the same way that it looks back on the Earl of Bute.

As in "Who?"