A Major Meritocratic Success Story
08/09/25
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MAJOR DELIVERS AN ADRESS, IMAGE: CHATHAM HOUSE
John Major’s rise from Coldharbour Lane to Downing Street is an astonishing example of meritocracy in action, defying what the odds would pose as achievable. But, how did the man who failed his Maths O-Level achieve his ultimate ambition of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Britain’s Prime Minister for six and a half years? The answer is a cocktail of hard work, unwavering aspiration, and resilience.
To understand the politics of John Major, it is first imperative to understand his background and journey to power. Although he grew up less than four miles away from Downing Street, his upbringing could not have been further from some of its occupants during his younger years, such as Attlee and Macmillan. Major’s father owned a small business selling garden ornaments, whilst his mother was a librarian. Initially, Major described his upbringing as “comfortable but not well off”, but as his father’s health worsened, his business hit great financial difficulty, and the family was forced to relocate to a cramped flat on Coldharbour Lane, Brixton.
It was also during this time that Major’s academic results began to decline, citing that he was uncomfortable at Rutlish School due to his family’s worsening financial situation, and that he was registered with a double-barrelled name, which carried some social prejudices at the time. He would leave the grammar school in 1959 with three O-Levels.
After Rutlish, Major tried his hand at several jobs, but his real interest was in politics. He was an active member of the Brixton Conservatives, and the famous campaign image of Major standing on a soapbox delivering speeches, used heavily during the 1992 General Election campaign, stemmed from this time.
Alongside his political ambitions, Major, somewhat embarrassed by and believing his O-Level results to be a barrier to him progressing in life, chose to study a correspondence course in banking. Major candidly describes in his memoirs the 18–20-hour days he subjected himself to - awaking early to start work on his banking qualification, then going to work, evenings were dedicated to political campaigning and local party meetings, before returning home to do further work on his correspondence course. This hard work would begin to pay off, and by 1965, Major started working at Standard Bank. Here, Major, keen to travel the world, was posted to Nigeria, but a serious car crash ended his yearlong posting prematurely.
Upon rehabilitating at home, Major was elected a councillor for the first time in 1968, winning a seat in a Labour stronghold of Lambeth Borough Council on the back of Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech, sentiments Major had personally condemned. Major was a hard-working, public-facing councillor, often hosting surgeries and consultations with residents to hear their concerns. He took a keen interest in housing, understanding the conditions many people were living in from his own personal experiences. In 1970, he became chairman of the Housing Committee. Despite his best efforts, Major lost his seat in 1971.
MAJOR DELIVERS A SPEECH IN THE WHITE HOUSE, IMAGE: PUBLIC DOMAIN via WIKICOMMONS
After two unsuccessful bids to win St Pancras North in 1974 (a predecessor seat of Frank Dobson and Sir Keir Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras), Major landed a safe seat in the 1979 election - Huntingdonshire (renamed to Huntingdon from 1983). Within two years, he had taken the first step on the ministerial ladder, becoming a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) before moving to the Whips' office in 1983. By 1987, he had reached the cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, number two to Thatcher’s formidable Chancellor Nigel Lawson. After a brief stint as Foreign Secretary in 1989, a role that helped him develop diplomatic skills and international relationships, he succeeded his old Treasury boss Lawson as Chancellor of the Exchequer, achieving an aspiration that had been three decades in the making. Just thirteen months after taking the Chancellorship, Major found himself unexpectedly as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister after Thatcher’s dramatic fall from office.
Major’s leadership campaign had two key messages. He wanted to create a nation “at ease with itself”, in light of the divisive tenure of Margaret Thatcher, the hangover of which Major would have to deal with. The second was the idea of a “classless society”, where people had the opportunity to go as far as their talents would take them, regardless of where they started in life. This sentiment was very much inspired by the ascendancy explored in the first half of this piece.
When his first term began in November 1990, Major knew he had less than eighteen months to overturn a poll deficit somewhere in the region of 15% to Kinnock’s Labour Party. At home, Major had to find a solution to the future of local government financing. The Community Charge, colloquially known as the poll tax, had been introduced by Thatcher as the successor to domestic rates. The move away from the rates system was seen as a necessary move, but the poll tax was seen as unfair, as everyone, regardless of their income or wealth, would pay the same for local government services. This sense of profound unfairness led to significant public backlash, with the policy being so unpopular that it even incited riots in March 1990. Major quickly announced the repealing of the poll tax, effective from 1993 when the Council Tax was introduced.
On the international scene, Major became Prime Minister less than two months before the commencement of Operation Desert Storm, where British troops joined a US-led, UN-backed coalition to help liberate Kuwait, following the August 1990 invasion of the Arabian state by Iraqi forces. Major’s role was widely praised - he was seen as a strong, respected, and decisive statesman who played a key role in keeping the coalition together by resolutely sticking to the UN resolution, instead of going a step further and initiating regime change in Iraq, as Thatcher had called for. He was also praised for addressing British troops before they went into battle, stating it was “important” to him that they knew they had the nation’s support before they risked their lives.
Widely popular and having had some successes at home and abroad, Major went to the country in the spring of 1992. Stood on his soapbox, he addressed crowds across the country, taking his campaign directly to the people, and they responded with resounding approval. Major won over 14 million votes, the most of any Prime Ministerial candidate in history. Not even Thatcher or Blair achieved those numbers during either of their two respective landslides. However, his majority was greatly reduced to just 21, and this was to be fully eroded by the end of 1996.
MAJOR (FAR-RIGHT) AND OTHER PRIME MINISTERS WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH II ON THE OCASSION OF HER GOLDEN JUBILEE, IMAGE: UK GOVERNMENT
The honeymoon for Major’s second term did not last long. On September 16th 1992, the UK was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a policy Major championed as Chancellor. Interest rates were hiked by 5% in a single day in a desperate attempt to stay in the ERM, but the inevitable humiliation was confirmed that evening by Chancellor Norman Lamont. This, however, did not set the tone for Major’s performance on the economy; quite the contrary. Britain emerged from recession only months later, and by 1997, interest rates had been halved, inflation had fallen to a consistent 2% (and had remained around this mark for several years), and economic growth was strong and still improving. However, it did fuel the Conservative Party’s Eurosceptic sentiment, and there is no better example of this than the Maastricht Rebellion.
Just before the 1992 election, Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, but it only went through Parliament following the slashing of the government’s majority. 22 members of Major’s own backbenchers, led by the likes of Teresa Gorman and Bill Cash, voted against the second reading of the bill. Major only got it passed by boldly calling the third reading a confidence vote.
Major’s authority continued to diminish throughout his second term despite the economic recovery his government oversaw. His attempted ‘back to basics’ reset was undermined by a wave of sleaze, with a series of political and personal scandals damaging trust in the government and the Conservative Party. Increased tensions within the party, on the aforementioned topic of Europe, also ate away at the authority of Major. In June 1995, Major caught his opponents by surprise and called a leadership contest. Only John Redwood stood against the Prime Minister, and Major saw him off comfortably despite 89 Tory MPs voting against him.
Despite Major’s best efforts, including some impressive economic returns and essential milestones in social policy, such as the criminalisation of rape within marriage, the Conservative Party appeared tired and divided by 1997. A rejuvenated Labour Party, now under the leadership of Tony Blair, won a landslide victory over Major, who conceded graciously, bringing an end to 18 years of Conservative government. Since then, Major has grown into the role of an elder statesman, intervening in political matters laconically (apart from on Brexit, where I felt Major’s interventions were out of character), providing private counsel for some of his successors as Conservative Party leader and still being a much-respected voice. His reputation for honesty and decency survived relatively untarnished despite revelations of a four-year affair with Edwina Currie during the 1980s coming to light in 2002, revelations Major has since expressed tremendous guilt.
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