'E fawgot to mention 'Er Majesty ! Oh. The First World War ! What would he know ? He wasn't even born ! Economics is really about who gets what ! The First World War ? Think of the millions that went over the top ; to be industrially slaughtered ! Think of the economists that said : 'Germany must pay !' They essentially brought on Hitler. And then. Another industrial phase was brought on. This time much much more intense. Economics again. Perhaps the reason why Herr Doctor Speer didn't swing.
I really don't get why people have a strong dislike for John Major. He was a decent PM. He was not aggressive and did his best to put this country back into shape again, and after the dramatic force of Thatcher. He wasn't the most powerful PM, but he was honest and hard-working and that's what I liked about him. Blair fucked up this country once again when Major resigned and things got worse when Brown came into the office.
John wasn't a bad old stick really. Sure he isn't very memorable but crucially, he didn't try and do something wacky and fuck the country up like all the others before him. "Ain't broke, don't fix it". Kudos John... Kudos.
@RicoRichmond ERM hardly ruined the country did it? You're just nit-picking. Can you honestly say any other PM in the last 50 years or so have left thr country in a better state then the last?
@R33Racer 'You're just nit-picking', hardly, the ERM did enormous damage to the economy, and destroyed the conservative parties reputation for a generation. Your just biased.
'Can you honestly say any other PM in the last 50 years or so have left the country in a better state then the last?' Talk about a non sequitur, I'm not talking about any other Prime Minister but John Major. I'm not attacking him personally, but 'wacky' is exactly what the ERM was, and it did enormas damage.
@R33Racer Well you said I needed to look up my facts again, with 'facts' in inverted commas, which implies I got facts wrong. Anyhow, I guese we'll just have to agree to disagree.
The Country was ticking along nicely in 1996 - good healthy economy, all indicators improving, finances coming back to in the black, immigration low, britpop et al
John Major was the last good Conservative Prime Minister. David Cameron has destroyed all that Thatcher & Major set out to do - REDUCED BORDER CONTROL, BUDGET CUTS bordering upon the unbelievable sponging money from the working classes, UNEMPLOYMENT RISING, a FAILING OVERALL ECONOMY with the country in serious debt, HIGH INFLATION & INTEREST RATES - - - we need a new political party, OR, get John Major back...
I'm 15 years old, and have been watching the election nights here on Youtube, as well as numerous other political clips. And I can quite positively say now that after 13 years of a Labour government, John Major, despite what people say was a very good PM. I may not have been old enough to remember, but Mr. Major was a good man and as @UK31337 said below me, a wonderful PM, unlike Mr. Blair and the horrors of "New Labour."
They did John, Tony Bullshit and his gang wasted billions of your legacy. Bankrolled by the trade unions they set about increasing public sector employment and wages with little to show for it. The deficit has been made much worse by Labour.
Explain how privatisation caused 'the cuts.' And what cuts? Public spending has risen 1.2% since 2010. It will be 15% higher by 2015 than it was when the Coalition assumed power. Around £90 billion higher. There aren't any spending cuts.
John Major was too nice a personal to be PM but he did serve as PM for 7 years and the country was better for it, of course Spitting Image on ITV loved him as the grey man who wore his Y fronts over his shirt! My Favourite PM.
How prophetic his words were. Labour were handed everything on a plate by the Tories, and in 13 short years they squandered everything.
John Major was a good Prime Minister, his calm and measured style was the perfect antidote to Mrs Thatcher's confrontational style. Between them they reversed Britain's decline seen throughout much of the post war period. That is fact.
@RichardElden But you dismiss millions of ENGLISH voters as 'worthless northern trash on benefits', lol. How glib, generalised and unsubstantiated is that eh ?. Millions of those are ALL English, go to work and hate the Tories.Those who maybe out of work for various reasons and durations are entitled to benefits they have often contributed to, and even Surrey is northern to Sussex ; what about those on benefits in THOSE places as well eh ?, lol. Your prognosis is infinitely protracted Wan my Son
@RichardElden That's the thing about you Wan, your 'arguments' soon regress into typically glib, fascist and shallow rants that reveal your general emotional immaturity as you malign with cheap, empty and generalised right wing propaganda much of the 'English' population who are not extreme right wingers (that's the majority) thus completely contradicting your former comments concerning English territorial validity
@RichardElden It doesn't matter how many votes Blair got in 2005 ; Thatcher still won with less than 50% of the public vote and hundreds of thousands of people in important English regions like Tyneside, Teeside, the West Midlands as well as cities such as Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, all hated the Tories and didn't vote for them
@RichardElden You cant honestly believe that the Tory party's trouncing in 2005 under Howard the prince of darkness, as amusing as his image is, was merely administered territorially, LOL ; much of the English renounced the old cad as well
@ukipwarrior What ridiculous hyperbole. I'm guessing this must have been your own personal hell, because for me, and most other people the 13 years were pretty good apart from when the greed of the banks fucked us all over.
During the Major years there was corruption and sleaze galore. He was a dull, limited, unimaginative man who let us not forget had the full backing of the evil Murdoch media machine behind him in the most personalised election ever in '92. That year saw a stock market crisis and the implosion of the property market with 19% interest rates. New Labour carried on with the same policies more or less in '97 with the same results. We have nothing much to thank geek-boy for really do we now.
@murrchops i know its bloody awful! at least this goverment isnt cutting all the public services and making the military smaller than the isle of Wight, good old george eh?
@temporaldisplacement Powell? I presume you mean old Enoch and he was never Prime Minister, the traitor and closet socialist Heath took his place instead, Powell would have been a great PM though.
@DukeofWellington91 Howard Macmillan and Harold Wilson were good. During their times Britain had very very low unemployment and the economy was doing well. Churchill was good during WW2, he backed us up and Clement Altee, to name a few.
@boffinme80 Wilson had a very bad record really, the devaluation of the pound, and the beginning of the crisis we faced throughout the 70s. Both Macmillan and Wilson presided over periods of low unemployment, true, but at what cost it is easy to have full employment, the difficulty is to have people doing productive jobs and throughout the post-war period Britain lost competitiveness to rivals and sowed the seeds of the future destruction of our manufacturing.
@DukeofWellington91 I really don't get people on the internet. I mean seriously -_- Wilson was not BAD, he was a lot better thah the current pms we have now. When Wilson was in power we weren't in debt, there were no strikes, he wanted the best for our country. I've never heard Wilson having a bad record. He had his flaws yes, but he didn't lead us into economy crisis. It was Edward Heath and the useless lot in the Conservatives who lead us into the recession in the late 70s.
@boffinme80 The problem with economics is that things can appear to be very good when actually you are sowing the seeds for future problems. When people study the boom bust cycle they mistakenly look to the bust and not the boom as the source of the problem. Post-war policy under both parties but particularly Labour undermined business, destroyed our culture of enterprise and empowered the trade unions, Britain suffered the results of this in the 1970s. Wilson shares much of the blame.
@DukeofWellington91 : Yes. And per example. Britain's coal mines are closed. Railways are closed. Islamic immigration becomes the commodity instead of Her Majesty's 'pound stirling'.
@3NUNS Do you know that Christianity is correct? The world around us reveals that G-d DOES exist, and the historical evidence reveals that Jesus Christ really did come to this earth and there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ really did physically rise from the dead. Jesus is coming again and the signs of the end times that were foretold in the Bible are coming to pass.
@donniegerrard Actually he did resign as Prime Minister, there is no imperative for a Prime Minister to leave office other than the Queen removing him or parliament failing to pass either the Budget or the Queens Speech.
Some say Jonny Major was a good man...but a good man would never have signed the Maastricht Treaty...as a man who has served in high office, Major would have knew he was consigning the British people to future slavery under undemocratic rule.
Anyone who wants to know what is really going on in the world needs to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it was written in the 1800s at the latest and they have followed it to the letter.
I have no problem with John Major he did a lot for the economy and helped the country along steadily after the terrible and harsh years under Thatcher
Major was be-devilled internally in his own party by the Europe question. The fact is the EU is totally out of control and has been trying for years to become a federal govt. Lisbon treaty went a long way, undemocratically, towards that agenda. Major, ironically, was much more a working-class lad made good by effort than Blair. But time was on Blair's side. Whether Major would have become a Bush poodle like Blair did is hard to know.
Major was correct in his final comment. Labour/Blair were very lucky to arrive at the time they did. Most incomming governments face some sort of crisis, like the present coalition does. Regrettably Labour may return to power in just 4-5 years because of way the economic cycle will work. The Millibands must have been delighted to lose this summer's election because they are the right age to take over in 5 years time.
the day britain went up in smoke,when the lefty scum got in,if we'd have kept the conservatives in,this country would have been a very different place to live in-shame they got rid of thatcher
@ailingequation Major did not show any compassion for the under dog who had a mortgage. He kept raising interest rates up and up and up even bragging that "If it isn't hurting it isn't working". He caused hundreds of thousands of families to lose their homes in a negative equity trap. Major said "It was a price worth paying to bring economic stability". The only stability it brought was a Labour landslide and thirteen years of Labour mess on top of his Black Wednesday mess.
@aeronuk1 Major’s crippling mortgage rates cost hundreds of thousands of families their homes when they got caught in the negative equity trap.
City speculators such as George Soros made billions at the tax-payers expense because the contrary Major refused to leave the ERM. John Major’s Black Wednesday mess brought Blair to power in a landslide giving Labour 13 years to go on a massive borrowing binge. How did any of that help to control inflation?
i still celebrate this corrupt bullshitter leaving downing street , a great day for this country. he kept his affair with edwina curry secret , just like he kept secret the fact he was talking to the ira , while telling parliment it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira.
Major was competent to deal with the economy and was certainly a better Prime Minister than Cameron, but he will never be forgiven for signing the Maastricht Treaty, destroying the difference between universities and polytechnics, abolishing the Christian Sunday and lowering the homosexual age of consent. All of these things damaged our society.
Whilst they inherited a perfect economy, Labour came to power at a time when public confidence in politicians was at an all-time low. Over the past thirteen years, we have come full circle.
When Labour came to power in 1997, the economy was perfect. I am not the biggest fan of John Major, considering he was the one who ratified the Maastricht Treaty, but credit where it's due; the economy was far healthier during the eighties and nineties that it is now.
Like Harry Truman in many ways, history has judged him to be very good whereas he was unpopular at the time. As he said, he left the economy in a good state, 13 years later we're fucked, and nobody from Labour has taken responsibility or held their hands up, in what world could in not be their fault.
piss off major , what a failure as prime minister , he led his 'party' to absolute defeat like nothing known in our lifetime. good riddance , the ignorance of those with anything good to say about this waster is staggering. they must have forgotten the poll tax which he supported , black wednesday , and telling parliment it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira while doing just that. lets not forget the classless society bullshit either.
he may have been rather a weak prime minister but he sure was a genuine and honest man who warned us of the dangers of labour and we did not listen to him, we have paid that price. He was one of the last prime ministers to be the real genuine thing, but we just did not want to listen, and it's a shame. God Bless you John Major!
Sometimes the boring ones are the best ones. Listen to what he says in his speech about what the incoming Labour government has inherited - a golden economy with low interest rates, strong growth, low inflation, low unemployment. 13 years latter the Conservatives are back in and have to fix Labours mess............again!
It would be nice if once, just once that a Labour government could leave office with an economy intact.
@Freddie1980 Tbh, you have to look at what caused the global financial crisis. Irresponsible and unrestrained capitalism. Yes Labour participated in it, but Thatcher initiated Britain's financialisation. She dismantled industry and converted the UK into an almost completely service-based economy.
Labour's only mistake was not to save more during the boom years. Brown handled the crisis well and helped lead the world out of recession.
an english gentleman ?? this corrupt tosser had the spite and bullshit to tell parliment it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira while he was secretly talking to the ira... only a wicked and perverted tosser would do this , also dont forget the pure bullshit about the classless society , and the poll tax which he supported , fuck off major , only an ignorant bigot would have anything good to say about this wanker.
No dont be stupid theres no way that wud happen mayor has retired and wont ever come back his eating discorder has taken over etc and anyway Cameron will become PM within the next week or so with the help of Mr clegg
Since David Cameron has failed to win the election outright, perhaps rerun the election with John Major as Tory leader on the basis of a national unity coalition with him as prospective PM.
ha ha ha , im still celebrating all these years later , good riddance and go to hell the most rotten and corrupt politician britain has ever had to suffer , who told us it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira while he was talking to the ira. bye bye major , your friend cameron cant win a general election either , ha ha .
What an awful Prime Minister. He was doing a fairly good job until he signed the Maastricht Treaty. That really was the final nail in the coffin of his electability.
I do believe that the problem John Major had was...Tony Blair.
Major in essence was an OK PM...He brought the economy back on track after the poor years of 1988-1991 and then from 1992 onwards. He was a stepping stone unfortunately. The British electorate wanted a change. After 18 years of the same government, it was never a question that the electorate would not want a change especially in the prospects of New Labour and most significantly the youthful leadership of Tony Blair
@domofwigan I agree with you in part. He deserves a great deal of credit for holding the Tories together after the brutal and deeply divisive overthrow of Thatcher and the fact that he went on to win the '92 election with such a thumping personal mandate is testament to his initial ability to connect with a large portion of the electorate who broadly agreed with Thatcherism but wanted a more conciliatory style of leadership in the '90s.
@domofwigan However, the big black mark against him is his arrogant and bullish attitude toward the ERM, an issue on which he refused to head the many economic warning signs in a somewhat bizarre attempt to force the German currency into line with the GBP (Andrew Neil has a very revealing account of this in his memoirs). This of course was sheer lunacy and was always going to end in tears + that robbed the Tories of their most important advantage over Labour - reputation for economic competance.
Interesting how Major says he is handing the in-coming (Labour) Government a decent set of books, a growing economy etc.... and wishes them all the best...... Fast forward to 2010 and
When Labour went it was a totally different story, gold sold off cheap, government borrowing at very high levels and a "spend spend spend" attitude which has left the UK in the financial difficulty it now faces. Not quite as bad as the PIGS - however many do ask, what did Labour do with all out money?
@WelshyM Oh well I'm glad they managed, after 18 years, including 2 painful recessions, massive unemployment and the destruction of a large number of communities to deliver a 'decent set of books'. And if you think that had the Conservatives been in power 1997 to 2010 we would be in any better state now then you must be smoking some of the strong stuff. Until 2008 Cameron was calling for less regulation of the banks - nope, the Conservatives would undoubtedly been even more lax.
@domofwigan You have some very good valid points,he did indeed bring the economy back on track and left the country in a far better state economically than what the Tories found it in back in 1979.I still think that had Major have won the election in 1997 and his party win the following ones,then this country may not be in as bad a position financially as it is today,a lot of which is thanks to 13 years of Labour mis management.
Major was an utterly uselss PM. He signed the Maastricht Treaty without a referendum. He cut public spending, resulting in a massive wave of unemployment. I always find it ironic that so many people blame Thatcher for the recession; my dad was happily employed under Thatcher, but was made redundant almost immediately after Major took office.
@ailingequation I agree with you, but I dislike your negative attitude towards Thatcherism. Thatcher was one of the best leaders the world has ever had.
May I remind all the supporters of John Major that he was the one who signed the Maastricht Treaty, which made us all citizens of the European Union. The man was an utterly useless PM who paved the way for New Labour. He was a joke.
Of course they did, Thatcher didn't stand in the second round of the leadership ballot and the only person standing against the odious Heseltine was Major. They certainly weren't going to vote Heseltine.
In 1997 the Tories were like Labour were in 1983... totally unelectable... there is no way the Tories would have won in 1997... regardless of their policies, regardless of who was their leader or regardless of who was the Labour party leader or their policies. A lot of Thatcherites say they would have won with Redwood or Portillo. That's bullshit. The public was utterly pissed off with them... They lost the election on 16th September 1992.
I'm not the biggest fan of John Major, but I must say that compared to Blair and Brown, he was pretty good. At least he had the decency to congratulate New Labour, which is more than Brown will do when the Tories win the next election.
Well she was great for them for much of the 1980's, but I would argue that her rule also played a big part in keeping them out of power for over a decade.... the fact is, Major was ejected from power in May 1997... Thatcher in November 1990... yet some Tories are still mentally living in the Thatcher era... even Archie Norman told the party in 2001 to move on from Thatcher....
I have noticed with a lot of Tories, particularly Thatcherites, that they distance themselves from the Major years and say "It's a long time ago now" or "We've moved a long way from then" but yet keep harking back to the Thatcher years, even though she's been out of power for almost 20 years. Surely if we should move on from the Major years, they should stop living in the Thatcher era as well....
He did lie about VAT though. In 1992 he said the Tories had no plans to raise the scope of VAT, It increased on domestic gas and electricity bills and in general from 15% to 17.5%.
'E fawgot to mention 'Er Majesty ! Oh. The First World War ! What would he know ? He wasn't even born ! Economics is really about who gets what ! The First World War ? Think of the millions that went over the top ; to be industrially slaughtered ! Think of the economists that said : 'Germany must pay !' They essentially brought on Hitler. And then. Another industrial phase was brought on. This time much much more intense. Economics again. Perhaps the reason why Herr Doctor Speer didn't swing.
3NUNS 3 weeks ago
I really don't get why people have a strong dislike for John Major. He was a decent PM. He was not aggressive and did his best to put this country back into shape again, and after the dramatic force of Thatcher. He wasn't the most powerful PM, but he was honest and hard-working and that's what I liked about him. Blair fucked up this country once again when Major resigned and things got worse when Brown came into the office.
boffinme80 1 month ago
lets hope cameron resigns as pm in 2015 that what the country needs
abhudson14 1 month ago
major and curry ha ha puke
tonythatjesusloves 2 months ago
John wasn't a bad old stick really. Sure he isn't very memorable but crucially, he didn't try and do something wacky and fuck the country up like all the others before him. "Ain't broke, don't fix it". Kudos John... Kudos.
R33Racer 2 months ago
@R33Racer '...he didn't try and do something wacky...' Oh no? Never heard of the ERM?
RicoRichmond 2 months ago
@RicoRichmond ERM hardly ruined the country did it? You're just nit-picking. Can you honestly say any other PM in the last 50 years or so have left thr country in a better state then the last?
R33Racer 2 months ago
@R33Racer 'You're just nit-picking', hardly, the ERM did enormous damage to the economy, and destroyed the conservative parties reputation for a generation. Your just biased.
'Can you honestly say any other PM in the last 50 years or so have left the country in a better state then the last?' Talk about a non sequitur, I'm not talking about any other Prime Minister but John Major. I'm not attacking him personally, but 'wacky' is exactly what the ERM was, and it did enormas damage.
RicoRichmond 1 month ago
@RicoRichmond I think you need to look up your 'facts' again.
R33Racer 1 month ago
@R33Racer I think you do, name me one thing I got wrong.
RicoRichmond 1 month ago
@RicoRichmond I didn't say you got it wrong, I said it was a gross overstatement.
R33Racer 1 month ago
@R33Racer Well you said I needed to look up my facts again, with 'facts' in inverted commas, which implies I got facts wrong. Anyhow, I guese we'll just have to agree to disagree.
RicoRichmond 1 month ago
@RicoRichmond Whatever makes you happy...
R33Racer 1 month ago
@R33Racer Namely, the truth.
RicoRichmond 1 month ago
Looking back he wasn't a bad prime minister. Look what labour did.
Sheila1932 2 months ago
cheerio cheerio cheerio!
TheCoon2000 2 months ago
The Country was ticking along nicely in 1996 - good healthy economy, all indicators improving, finances coming back to in the black, immigration low, britpop et al
Then came new labour...
aerozeppelin2 2 months ago
John Major was the last good Conservative Prime Minister. David Cameron has destroyed all that Thatcher & Major set out to do - REDUCED BORDER CONTROL, BUDGET CUTS bordering upon the unbelievable sponging money from the working classes, UNEMPLOYMENT RISING, a FAILING OVERALL ECONOMY with the country in serious debt, HIGH INFLATION & INTEREST RATES - - - we need a new political party, OR, get John Major back...
ChrizmanTV 3 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
oh yeah? Have a look at what they scumbag tories did in the years before!
Please ignore this complete cunt, he is living in a tent at the moment cracking a plan to shit in your garden.
MilibandDavid 3 months ago
And then came along Tony and that fucking bitch of a liberal wife to fuck up the whole country!!!
hearts76100 3 months ago
I'm 15 years old, and have been watching the election nights here on Youtube, as well as numerous other political clips. And I can quite positively say now that after 13 years of a Labour government, John Major, despite what people say was a very good PM. I may not have been old enough to remember, but Mr. Major was a good man and as @UK31337 said below me, a wonderful PM, unlike Mr. Blair and the horrors of "New Labour."
MrPerson542 3 months ago
he is a very good loser
weatherallc05 3 months ago 5
They did John, Tony Bullshit and his gang wasted billions of your legacy. Bankrolled by the trade unions they set about increasing public sector employment and wages with little to show for it. The deficit has been made much worse by Labour.
MilibandDavid 3 months ago
Wonderful Prime Minister. Thank you for everything.
UK31337 4 months ago
@UK31337 You obsequious little sycophant ; Uriah Heep was less of a brown noser
TheKenfig 3 months ago
I'm not being funny or anything, but how did Major spend 7 years in Government?
97Lordflash 4 months ago
@97Lordflash Neil Kinnock was in opposition. Believe me, that says a lot.
Overfiend002 2 months ago
May I recommend the book Alone And Asleep by Oh Sam Bin Laden.
garyw930 4 months ago
@RichardElden Why should we privatise them?
TheJaaysog 4 months ago
@RichardElden The torys mass privatisation has caused the cuts, also save the banks to save YOUR money sunshine
TheJaaysog 4 months ago
Explain how privatisation caused 'the cuts.' And what cuts? Public spending has risen 1.2% since 2010. It will be 15% higher by 2015 than it was when the Coalition assumed power. Around £90 billion higher. There aren't any spending cuts.
Bastiat90 3 months ago
@RichardElden and that was caused by major yes
TheJaaysog 4 months ago
@RichardElden Liebour? Oh dear. Sad Tory Twat.
markinyo76 4 months ago
Excellent Prime Minister.
Bushcamper4Sale 4 months ago
does anybody know where the full video is viewable?
FEEFDAWG 4 months ago
John Major was too nice a personal to be PM but he did serve as PM for 7 years and the country was better for it, of course Spitting Image on ITV loved him as the grey man who wore his Y fronts over his shirt! My Favourite PM.
cnaptakmockba 5 months ago
How prophetic his words were. Labour were handed everything on a plate by the Tories, and in 13 short years they squandered everything.
John Major was a good Prime Minister, his calm and measured style was the perfect antidote to Mrs Thatcher's confrontational style. Between them they reversed Britain's decline seen throughout much of the post war period. That is fact.
morgansifer 5 months ago
Comment removed
aeronuk1 5 months ago
@RichardElden Get a grip on reality.
sierra5720 5 months ago
@RichardElden But you dismiss millions of ENGLISH voters as 'worthless northern trash on benefits', lol. How glib, generalised and unsubstantiated is that eh ?. Millions of those are ALL English, go to work and hate the Tories.Those who maybe out of work for various reasons and durations are entitled to benefits they have often contributed to, and even Surrey is northern to Sussex ; what about those on benefits in THOSE places as well eh ?, lol. Your prognosis is infinitely protracted Wan my Son
TheKenfig 5 months ago
@RichardElden That's the thing about you Wan, your 'arguments' soon regress into typically glib, fascist and shallow rants that reveal your general emotional immaturity as you malign with cheap, empty and generalised right wing propaganda much of the 'English' population who are not extreme right wingers (that's the majority) thus completely contradicting your former comments concerning English territorial validity
TheKenfig 5 months ago
@RichardElden It doesn't matter how many votes Blair got in 2005 ; Thatcher still won with less than 50% of the public vote and hundreds of thousands of people in important English regions like Tyneside, Teeside, the West Midlands as well as cities such as Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, all hated the Tories and didn't vote for them
TheKenfig 5 months ago
@RichardElden You cant honestly believe that the Tory party's trouncing in 2005 under Howard the prince of darkness, as amusing as his image is, was merely administered territorially, LOL ; much of the English renounced the old cad as well
TheKenfig 5 months ago
@RichardElden Which people of England, those rioters ?
TheKenfig 5 months ago
@RichardElden Ere we go with more of your nonsense Juan ; I love it !
TheKenfig 5 months ago
Try this:
In YouTube, search for 'Timekode, Rod Stewart' and listen to 'You've Broken Thru' -
the voice of Sir John Major makes a cameo appearance at the very end!
rebelVHS 5 months ago
@RichardElden How the fuck do YOU know ? ; you'd scarcely been BORN when it started
TheKenfig 5 months ago
Couldn't wait to get down the Cricket and fuck Edwina Currie more often
TheKenfig 6 months ago
cue 13 years of hell......
ukipwarrior 6 months ago 30
@ukipwarrior What ridiculous hyperbole. I'm guessing this must have been your own personal hell, because for me, and most other people the 13 years were pretty good apart from when the greed of the banks fucked us all over.
markinyo76 6 months ago
@markinyo76 Im pretty sure you are an estate agent, an immigrant or a public sector worker.
ukipwarrior 6 months ago
@ukipwarrior I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. 1979 - 1997 was 18 years of hell for a lot of people.
markinyo76 4 months ago
A dignified speech however @dutchgoing, and I am not a Conservative, he was extremely gracious in defeat too !!
MCH42PLUS1 7 months ago
During the Major years there was corruption and sleaze galore. He was a dull, limited, unimaginative man who let us not forget had the full backing of the evil Murdoch media machine behind him in the most personalised election ever in '92. That year saw a stock market crisis and the implosion of the property market with 19% interest rates. New Labour carried on with the same policies more or less in '97 with the same results. We have nothing much to thank geek-boy for really do we now.
dutchgoing 7 months ago
how waffly
Xanaseb 8 months ago
and look what Labour did: greed, debt, humiliation, and shame.
murrchops 9 months ago 23
@murrchops i know its bloody awful! at least this goverment isnt cutting all the public services and making the military smaller than the isle of Wight, good old george eh?
TheJaaysog 4 months ago
@murrchops oh yeah? Have a look at what they scumbag tories did in the years before!
Upeter2 4 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
I wonder if all the people here writing.
"Oh was'nt Major a nice guy, he was so underated"
"So much better then the champagne Socialists of new Labour that followed"
The same people who booed him when left Downing street, back in 97.
JONNOG88 9 months ago
It is true to say that the Labour in 1997 did inherit a far healthier economy than the Conservatives had in 1979.
sirjosh2009 9 months ago
I invite the poeple; name a better prime minister than John Major.
temporaldisplacement 10 months ago
@temporaldisplacement Thatcher? Churchill? Not many this century I grant you...
DukeofWellington91 9 months ago
@DukeofWellington91 Powell, yeah ....not many.
temporaldisplacement 9 months ago
@temporaldisplacement Powell? I presume you mean old Enoch and he was never Prime Minister, the traitor and closet socialist Heath took his place instead, Powell would have been a great PM though.
DukeofWellington91 9 months ago
@DukeofWellington91 Correctly corrected.
temporaldisplacement 9 months ago
@DukeofWellington91 Howard Macmillan and Harold Wilson were good. During their times Britain had very very low unemployment and the economy was doing well. Churchill was good during WW2, he backed us up and Clement Altee, to name a few.
boffinme80 1 month ago
@boffinme80 Wilson had a very bad record really, the devaluation of the pound, and the beginning of the crisis we faced throughout the 70s. Both Macmillan and Wilson presided over periods of low unemployment, true, but at what cost it is easy to have full employment, the difficulty is to have people doing productive jobs and throughout the post-war period Britain lost competitiveness to rivals and sowed the seeds of the future destruction of our manufacturing.
DukeofWellington91 1 month ago
@DukeofWellington91 I really don't get people on the internet. I mean seriously -_- Wilson was not BAD, he was a lot better thah the current pms we have now. When Wilson was in power we weren't in debt, there were no strikes, he wanted the best for our country. I've never heard Wilson having a bad record. He had his flaws yes, but he didn't lead us into economy crisis. It was Edward Heath and the useless lot in the Conservatives who lead us into the recession in the late 70s.
boffinme80 1 month ago
@boffinme80 The problem with economics is that things can appear to be very good when actually you are sowing the seeds for future problems. When people study the boom bust cycle they mistakenly look to the bust and not the boom as the source of the problem. Post-war policy under both parties but particularly Labour undermined business, destroyed our culture of enterprise and empowered the trade unions, Britain suffered the results of this in the 1970s. Wilson shares much of the blame.
DukeofWellington91 1 month ago
@DukeofWellington91 : Yes. And per example. Britain's coal mines are closed. Railways are closed. Islamic immigration becomes the commodity instead of Her Majesty's 'pound stirling'.
3NUNS 3 weeks ago
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@3NUNS Do you know that Christianity is correct? The world around us reveals that G-d DOES exist, and the historical evidence reveals that Jesus Christ really did come to this earth and there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ really did physically rise from the dead. Jesus is coming again and the signs of the end times that were foretold in the Bible are coming to pass.
marionetemanJ 6 days ago
@DukeofWellington91 *Attlee.
boffinme80 1 month ago
@temporaldisplacement
I can't but then again I can name 2 worse and both of them were Tories.
SiorafasNaCillini 9 months ago
@SiorafasNaCillini Well said.
temporaldisplacement 9 months ago
He did not resign, he lost the election.
donniegerrard 10 months ago
@donniegerrard True he did lose the election. However, he did resign (and this is his resignation speech) as the Conservative party leader.
alcazaba 10 months ago
@donniegerrard Actually he did resign as Prime Minister, there is no imperative for a Prime Minister to leave office other than the Queen removing him or parliament failing to pass either the Budget or the Queens Speech.
DukeofWellington91 9 months ago
no-one ever talks about john major. such a boring prime minister
daconor91 11 months ago
@daconor91
Would you remember him more if he had lap dancers following him, pink hair and a 6 pac. If you want exciting, go to Disney land
nisht123 10 months ago
@nisht123 maybe i will go to disneyland and you can go bum john major
daconor91 10 months ago
Some say Jonny Major was a good man...but a good man would never have signed the Maastricht Treaty...as a man who has served in high office, Major would have knew he was consigning the British people to future slavery under undemocratic rule.
aeronuk1 1 year ago
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Anyone who wants to know what is really going on in the world needs to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it was written in the 1800s at the latest and they have followed it to the letter.
stepheng1483 1 year ago
I have no problem with John Major he did a lot for the economy and helped the country along steadily after the terrible and harsh years under Thatcher
BackFromNowere 1 year ago
Major was be-devilled internally in his own party by the Europe question. The fact is the EU is totally out of control and has been trying for years to become a federal govt. Lisbon treaty went a long way, undemocratically, towards that agenda. Major, ironically, was much more a working-class lad made good by effort than Blair. But time was on Blair's side. Whether Major would have become a Bush poodle like Blair did is hard to know.
corpbs1 1 year ago
pazzerhead- die
lewyovdarlo93 1 year ago
Nice peas dear.
ElizabethR1558 1 year ago 4
HIS PROBLEM WAS HE WAS TOO BUSY GETTING HIS COCK SUCKED OFF EDWINA' the egg' CURRIE!
MrJazzaman1 1 year ago
@MrJazzaman1 At least it wasn't Ken Clarke.
WizardKing78 1 year ago
Always liked Major, good guy and decent PM.
Kozzy06 1 year ago 4
Major was correct in his final comment. Labour/Blair were very lucky to arrive at the time they did. Most incomming governments face some sort of crisis, like the present coalition does. Regrettably Labour may return to power in just 4-5 years because of way the economic cycle will work. The Millibands must have been delighted to lose this summer's election because they are the right age to take over in 5 years time.
Kidsgrove49 1 year ago
the day britain went up in smoke,when the lefty scum got in,if we'd have kept the conservatives in,this country would have been a very different place to live in-shame they got rid of thatcher
pazzerhead 1 year ago 3
This was the best day of my life.
PsuedoMacro 1 year ago
@ailingequation Major did not show any compassion for the under dog who had a mortgage. He kept raising interest rates up and up and up even bragging that "If it isn't hurting it isn't working". He caused hundreds of thousands of families to lose their homes in a negative equity trap. Major said "It was a price worth paying to bring economic stability". The only stability it brought was a Labour landslide and thirteen years of Labour mess on top of his Black Wednesday mess.
makedoandmend2 1 year ago
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aeronuk1 1 year ago
@aeronuk1 Major’s crippling mortgage rates cost hundreds of thousands of families their homes when they got caught in the negative equity trap.
City speculators such as George Soros made billions at the tax-payers expense because the contrary Major refused to leave the ERM. John Major’s Black Wednesday mess brought Blair to power in a landslide giving Labour 13 years to go on a massive borrowing binge. How did any of that help to control inflation?
makedoandmend2 1 year ago
i still celebrate this corrupt bullshitter leaving downing street , a great day for this country. he kept his affair with edwina curry secret , just like he kept secret the fact he was talking to the ira , while telling parliment it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira.
bye bye major you wanker.
hammys123 1 year ago
lets hope its not long before David Cameron making the same speech
abhudson14 1 year ago
Major was competent to deal with the economy and was certainly a better Prime Minister than Cameron, but he will never be forgiven for signing the Maastricht Treaty, destroying the difference between universities and polytechnics, abolishing the Christian Sunday and lowering the homosexual age of consent. All of these things damaged our society.
JoshPHooker 1 year ago
@JoshPHooker No, they didnt. They only damaged YOUR society, not the mass populations.
Kozzy06 1 year ago
Whilst they inherited a perfect economy, Labour came to power at a time when public confidence in politicians was at an all-time low. Over the past thirteen years, we have come full circle.
MrYoungIndependence 1 year ago
When Labour came to power in 1997, the economy was perfect. I am not the biggest fan of John Major, considering he was the one who ratified the Maastricht Treaty, but credit where it's due; the economy was far healthier during the eighties and nineties that it is now.
MrYoungIndependence 1 year ago
They won't win election 2015, LABOUR LANDSIDE 2015:)
lukespencer91 1 year ago
@lukespencer91 Only if the population suffer mass hallucination on part of Labour's mass cannabis smoking :)
MegaBigCake 1 year ago
Like Harry Truman in many ways, history has judged him to be very good whereas he was unpopular at the time. As he said, he left the economy in a good state, 13 years later we're fucked, and nobody from Labour has taken responsibility or held their hands up, in what world could in not be their fault.
kkwillsaveus 1 year ago
After 13 years of Labour - I can see that John Major was a very good PM
GoldenLegends 1 year ago 15
And we all know what happened next... 13 years of hell.
readsta77 1 year ago 5
piss off major , what a failure as prime minister , he led his 'party' to absolute defeat like nothing known in our lifetime. good riddance , the ignorance of those with anything good to say about this waster is staggering. they must have forgotten the poll tax which he supported , black wednesday , and telling parliment it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira while doing just that. lets not forget the classless society bullshit either.
hammys123 1 year ago
and we got labour 'maggie part 2'
jambun1 1 year ago
He did a good job...come back! (assuming Thatcher is too infirm to take up office again).
billiepipersteeth 1 year ago
he may have been rather a weak prime minister but he sure was a genuine and honest man who warned us of the dangers of labour and we did not listen to him, we have paid that price. He was one of the last prime ministers to be the real genuine thing, but we just did not want to listen, and it's a shame. God Bless you John Major!
scunny1994 1 year ago
most boring prime minister evar
Shnufkin 1 year ago
@Shnufkin
Sometimes the boring ones are the best ones. Listen to what he says in his speech about what the incoming Labour government has inherited - a golden economy with low interest rates, strong growth, low inflation, low unemployment. 13 years latter the Conservatives are back in and have to fix Labours mess............again!
It would be nice if once, just once that a Labour government could leave office with an economy intact.
John Major - a good man who lead bad people.
Freddie1980 1 year ago
@Freddie1980 Tbh, you have to look at what caused the global financial crisis. Irresponsible and unrestrained capitalism. Yes Labour participated in it, but Thatcher initiated Britain's financialisation. She dismantled industry and converted the UK into an almost completely service-based economy.
Labour's only mistake was not to save more during the boom years. Brown handled the crisis well and helped lead the world out of recession.
Shnufkin 1 year ago
@Shnufkin Nonsense - it was overegulation.
RicoRichmond 1 year ago
an english gentleman ?? this corrupt tosser had the spite and bullshit to tell parliment it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira while he was secretly talking to the ira... only a wicked and perverted tosser would do this , also dont forget the pure bullshit about the classless society , and the poll tax which he supported , fuck off major , only an ignorant bigot would have anything good to say about this wanker.
hammys123 1 year ago
All downhill from there onwards
ProcyonAlpha 1 year ago
good ridance you boring corrupt wanker .
hammys123 1 year ago
@hammys123 Good riddance you bigoted wanker :)
MegaBigCake 1 year ago
No dont be stupid theres no way that wud happen mayor has retired and wont ever come back his eating discorder has taken over etc and anyway Cameron will become PM within the next week or so with the help of Mr clegg
charlieiscool1000 1 year ago
Since David Cameron has failed to win the election outright, perhaps rerun the election with John Major as Tory leader on the basis of a national unity coalition with him as prospective PM.
mawkernewek 1 year ago
This is what Gordon should have done on Friday except he would have to say the opposite when he summed up the state of the economy.
Labour got less vote % than the Conservatives did in 1997.
RileyCEO 1 year ago
Thats how you do it Gordon
steffdrum33 1 year ago 3
ha ha ha , im still celebrating all these years later , good riddance and go to hell the most rotten and corrupt politician britain has ever had to suffer , who told us it would turn his stomach to talk to the ira while he was talking to the ira. bye bye major , your friend cameron cant win a general election either , ha ha .
hammys123 1 year ago
History is set to repeat itself.
On Friday 7th May 2010.
It will be Gordon stood where John is.
New Labour 1997-2010 RIP
matsui2001 1 year ago 4
The best ecomomy for 90 years when is left, and look at us now. Ken C will get it sorted
max31198 1 year ago 6
I cant wait for Browns speech in 1 weeks time. He will have to say the complete opposite to what major said about the economic figures.
TheBritishWatcher 1 year ago 6
Spends all his time watching cricket and wanking over pictures of Edwina Currie
kenfig 1 year ago
John Major was a traitor.
Libertarianism4UK 1 year ago
He was more socialist than any labour member
jambun1 1 year ago
People slate the tories but the fact is when they are in the economy and imigration is never an issue.
silversynth 1 year ago
New Labour inherited an almost flawless economy-and ruined it with their socialist antics!
No2EUYes2Democracy 1 year ago
@No2EUYes2Democracy Explain how the near collapse of the economy had ANYTHING to do with socialism
onesy1 1 year ago
What an awful Prime Minister. He was doing a fairly good job until he signed the Maastricht Treaty. That really was the final nail in the coffin of his electability.
LoveEuropeHateTheEU 1 year ago
I do believe that the problem John Major had was...Tony Blair.
Major in essence was an OK PM...He brought the economy back on track after the poor years of 1988-1991 and then from 1992 onwards. He was a stepping stone unfortunately. The British electorate wanted a change. After 18 years of the same government, it was never a question that the electorate would not want a change especially in the prospects of New Labour and most significantly the youthful leadership of Tony Blair
domofwigan 1 year ago 20
@domofwigan What a sensible and even handed comment - you are right.
coveneyr 1 year ago
@domofwigan I agree with you in part. He deserves a great deal of credit for holding the Tories together after the brutal and deeply divisive overthrow of Thatcher and the fact that he went on to win the '92 election with such a thumping personal mandate is testament to his initial ability to connect with a large portion of the electorate who broadly agreed with Thatcherism but wanted a more conciliatory style of leadership in the '90s.
UnitedBritannia 1 year ago 3
@domofwigan However, the big black mark against him is his arrogant and bullish attitude toward the ERM, an issue on which he refused to head the many economic warning signs in a somewhat bizarre attempt to force the German currency into line with the GBP (Andrew Neil has a very revealing account of this in his memoirs). This of course was sheer lunacy and was always going to end in tears + that robbed the Tories of their most important advantage over Labour - reputation for economic competance.
UnitedBritannia 1 year ago
Interesting how Major says he is handing the in-coming (Labour) Government a decent set of books, a growing economy etc.... and wishes them all the best...... Fast forward to 2010 and
When Labour went it was a totally different story, gold sold off cheap, government borrowing at very high levels and a "spend spend spend" attitude which has left the UK in the financial difficulty it now faces. Not quite as bad as the PIGS - however many do ask, what did Labour do with all out money?
WelshyM 1 year ago
@WelshyM Oh well I'm glad they managed, after 18 years, including 2 painful recessions, massive unemployment and the destruction of a large number of communities to deliver a 'decent set of books'. And if you think that had the Conservatives been in power 1997 to 2010 we would be in any better state now then you must be smoking some of the strong stuff. Until 2008 Cameron was calling for less regulation of the banks - nope, the Conservatives would undoubtedly been even more lax.
markinyo76 6 months ago
@domofwigan You have some very good valid points,he did indeed bring the economy back on track and left the country in a far better state economically than what the Tories found it in back in 1979.I still think that had Major have won the election in 1997 and his party win the following ones,then this country may not be in as bad a position financially as it is today,a lot of which is thanks to 13 years of Labour mis management.
RobW581 10 months ago
@domofwigan The Tories never reacted to the simple fact that Labour moved to the centre. They just plodded on the same as they always did.
dlk1dlk1 7 months ago
Nice to see that Labour heeded his advice to not squander the economic situation they inherited. Oh wait...
TheFlyingPurpleHippo 1 year ago 4
13 years of growth? The Torie3s were famous for their recessions in the 70's and 80's.
mrjamest2000 1 year ago
Major was an utterly uselss PM. He signed the Maastricht Treaty without a referendum. He cut public spending, resulting in a massive wave of unemployment. I always find it ironic that so many people blame Thatcher for the recession; my dad was happily employed under Thatcher, but was made redundant almost immediately after Major took office.
UKIndependent 1 year ago
@ailingequation I agree with you, but I dislike your negative attitude towards Thatcherism. Thatcher was one of the best leaders the world has ever had.
Democracy4UK 1 year ago
May I remind all the supporters of John Major that he was the one who signed the Maastricht Treaty, which made us all citizens of the European Union. The man was an utterly useless PM who paved the way for New Labour. He was a joke.
Independence4UK 1 year ago
John Major was a great man and the best PM ever.
shussey100 1 year ago 3
@shussey100 He wasn't the best, but he was a decent bloke.
Democracy4UK 1 year ago
Useless. Utterly useless.
The Conservatives became unelectable as soon as Major was elected.
MrUKIndependence 2 years ago
They became unelectable when Ted heath took us into the Common Market without a referendum!
Independence4UK 1 year ago
There was a referendum. There were two in the seventies, weren't there ? I remember one in 1975.
kealyc 1 year ago
substance here.
xxxToomy07 2 years ago
reasonably brief interregnum.
,.... oh dear john, oh dear
happychump 2 years ago
Weak weak weak.
pardeepsinghk 2 years ago
DAH i though Major wouldve made i throught the 90s.
dim432 2 years ago
First of all, when Thatcherites moan about Major, they should remember that it was mainly they who elected him as leader in November 1990.
Kevinasp 2 years ago
Of course they did, Thatcher didn't stand in the second round of the leadership ballot and the only person standing against the odious Heseltine was Major. They certainly weren't going to vote Heseltine.
gregorioallegri 2 years ago
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In 1997 the Tories were like Labour were in 1983... totally unelectable... there is no way the Tories would have won in 1997... regardless of their policies, regardless of who was their leader or regardless of who was the Labour party leader or their policies. A lot of Thatcherites say they would have won with Redwood or Portillo. That's bullshit. The public was utterly pissed off with them... They lost the election on 16th September 1992.
Kevinasp 2 years ago
The teletubbies would have beaten the Tories in 1997, just as they would have beaten Labour in 1983....
Kevinasp 2 years ago
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Kevinasp 2 years ago
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Kevinasp 2 years ago
I'm not the biggest fan of John Major, but I must say that compared to Blair and Brown, he was pretty good. At least he had the decency to congratulate New Labour, which is more than Brown will do when the Tories win the next election.
DavidCameron4UK 2 years ago
And his comments about the state that he left the economy in when he left Downing Street will certainly not be repeated by Stalin Brown!
AndrewJM70 2 years ago
Well she was great for them for much of the 1980's, but I would argue that her rule also played a big part in keeping them out of power for over a decade.... the fact is, Major was ejected from power in May 1997... Thatcher in November 1990... yet some Tories are still mentally living in the Thatcher era... even Archie Norman told the party in 2001 to move on from Thatcher....
Kevinasp 2 years ago
I have noticed with a lot of Tories, particularly Thatcherites, that they distance themselves from the Major years and say "It's a long time ago now" or "We've moved a long way from then" but yet keep harking back to the Thatcher years, even though she's been out of power for almost 20 years. Surely if we should move on from the Major years, they should stop living in the Thatcher era as well....
Kevinasp 2 years ago 2
@Kevinasp Thatcher was the second best Prime Minister this country has ever had; she shaped the Conservatives into what they are today.
DavidCameron4UK 2 years ago
He did lie about VAT though. In 1992 he said the Tories had no plans to raise the scope of VAT, It increased on domestic gas and electricity bills and in general from 15% to 17.5%.
Kevinasp 2 years ago
He did one good thing... laid the spadework for the good Friday agreement.. and he never got the credit he deserved for that.
Kevinasp 2 years ago
democracy is a lie. land is power and elite financiers have bought it all with our own money. same as it ever was. now back to work - SLAVES.
ianupton 2 years ago