"We'd won a vote of confidence two years before, we were still popular with the public, in spite of the scandals that plagued the party since then. The Conservative Party could've won an election comfortably. What he did made absolutely no sense to the party, to the house or to the people."
- Former Chancellor of the Exchequer (1993-95), Ken Clarke
For John Major, life as Prime Minister was never the same after Black Wednesday. Britain's forced removal of the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (EERM) in September 1992 threw the country's stance on Europe up in the air, and this also took its toll on the Conservative Party. The formation of the European Union divided the Tories, with the Eurosceptic "Maastricht Rebels" calling for a vote of confidence motion. Major narrowly won this, avoiding defeat and a second General Election in fourteen months, but his tenure was never the same, as those same Eurosceptics rallied against Major in the party, which, coupled with the revelations of "sleaze" attributed to several key government figures, resulted in the Prime Minister becoming hugely unpopular.
"Major had to make that choice, either he walked, or the party died, never to return from the backbenches, simple as. It's just a shame that he couldn't rescue the Conservative Party either way. Too many bridges had been burned."
- Former Leader of the Opposition (2001-2003, 2005-2006), Lord Hague
With pressure mounting against him both publicly and privately, the Prime Minister made the choice to call a leadership election, believing that no dominant figures within the party would stand against him.
How very wrong he was.
This timeline explores British politics over the last twenty-one years, drawing from the personal accounts of notable politicians in that time to bring you an unrestricted view of how the government of the United Kingdom became respected again, after years of relative unpopularity. It's time to explore...
The Seeds of Revival
A timeline of British politics from 1995 to 2016, and beyond...