Once he had been elected as an MP, however, Major’s progress was startlingly swift. He became prime minister after only two years in the cabinet, during which time he had been foreign secretary and chancellor of the Exchequer. This remarkable ascent was to prove a mixed blessing; he had little experience and almost nothing in the way of identifiable political conviction. His great strengths, however, were already apparent. Where other politicians would pay attention chiefly to those they thought might be of use, Major greeted everyone with unaffected warmth. If anything, he paid more attention to ordinary people, seeming happiest when chatting to elderly mothers or attendant wives. He was, moreover, famous for an almost photographic memory for names and faces, and an attention to detail which impressed all who spent even a little time in his company. It was as well that Major had already established a reputation for emollience, for the clan of which he found himself head was a bloody and fractious one. Sharply aware of this, he divided his cabinet almost equally between the left and right wings of his party. His would be a rule by consensus, cabinet ‘as it should be’, as one former minister put it.
The ‘flagship’ of Thatcherism, the poll tax, had evoked Thatcher at her most doctrinaire, and was popularly thought to have destroyed her. Aside from its tainted association, the tax proved as unworkable as it had been unpopular. Fittingly, it fell to Michael Heseltine to put the already moribund community charge out of its misery. He replaced it with the ‘council tax’, a comparatively innocuous levy that is still with us. The poll tax had been in existence for less than a year, costing over £1.5 billion to set up and dismantle. In other respects, too, it proved costly. The Tory presence in Scotland took more than a generation to recover.
But before any domestic matters could be settled, the instinctively pacific John Major found himself leading a nation at war. In the previous year, a crisis had arisen in the Persian Gulf. Saddam Hussein, the bellicose ruler of Iraq, had invaded the gulf state of Kuwait, ousting its emir and redirecting its oil supplies to Iraq. The crisis came in the last stages of the Cold War, and President Bush had other reasons for bringing about a swift conclusion. The international community was supportive of the United States, and Britain, the United States’ chief ally, could scarcely be seen as a laggard.
Bush invited Major to Camp David. The gesture was presented as a meeting of families as much as of war leaders, but few doubted its true purpose. The president felt it best to address the real issue immediately: Iraq had been given until Thursday, 2 November 1990 to withdraw, but the president was under little illusion that it would comply. Diplomacy would still be employed, but, ‘John,’ he said, ‘if all this fails, we’re going to have to commit our troops in battle.’ Major assented. The United States could count on its ally, and it was made clear that neither cabinet nor parliament need be consulted. Like Thatcher, Major had been expecting war; unlike her, he approached it with no relish. He concealed his reservations so well that the president saw only wholehearted support. The meeting was otherwise affable and informal. Major’s style was more friendly and casual than Thatcher’s had been and the president warmed to him accordingly.
Saddam proved intransigent and the deadline for withdrawal loomed. War had become inevitable. On 16 January, the air attack would begin, a largely American effort intended to destroy at least 50 per cent of Saddam’s airborne strength. The counterinvasion was to be termed Operation Desert Storm. Before sending his troops to possible death, Major wanted to speak to them. He had no military experience of which to boast, even in the form of national service. All the more reason therefore for him to speak and, above all, to listen. When he met the troops, he quickly discovered that uncertainty was the chief concern. When Major told them that in all probability they were to be called upon to fight, he sensed mass relief. In spite of his military inexperience, he was in his element. The troops found him approachable and good-humoured. And Major was struck, above all, by the youth of the soldiers; they were, he reflected, no older than his own children.
He had promised the troops that the nation was behind them. This was true in part, but to people in their late teens and early twenties, weaned on a progressive and even pacifist education, this was a war fought not to contain aggression but to keep the oil flowing. But if expressions of disquiet were small and even unpopular – it was not unknown for students to be jostled or even assaulted – they established a precedent that would be followed on a far greater scale. The war itself was won by the spring. As a war leader, Major had been vindicated. Now a very different kind of struggle beckoned, one which he was determined should not bear the character of a conflict.
1991 was the year in which the communities of Western Europe met in Maastricht to determine the future direction of the European project. Major described himself as neither Europhile nor Eurosceptic, but as chancellor he had made his support for Britain’s entry to the ERM plain. It was at Maastricht that the strands of theory, economic expediency and political necessity were woven together. There, the European Economic Community became the European Union. Major’s was among the younger, more vigorous voices, and this, combined with his tenacity, ensured that two treasured ‘opt-outs’ were embedded in the final document. The United Kingdom would be obliged to accept neither the Social Chapter, in which were enshrined the rights to a minimum wage and to a maximum working week, nor, in the immediate future, monetary union. But critics were quick to point out that these assertions of power placed Britain on the fringes of influence, while doing nothing to halt the federalist advance. The treaty cannot be said to have aroused much enthusiasm among the English people, but it had consequences that were overlooked in the usual partisan squabbling. The Single European Act of 1987 had turned the Common Market into the Single Market; Maastricht removed any doubt that something far more comprehensive lay ahead.
57
The fall of sterling
The journalist Simon Heffer went so far as to proclaim that ‘nothing happened at Maastricht to keep Britain off the conveyor belt to federalism; indeed, quite the reverse’. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but it could not be doubted that, in obtaining the concessions it did, the Major government was implicitly offering a concession of its own. Britain could be only a rock in the midst of the federalist tide; it had no power to turn it. When Major commended the treaty to the House of Commons, he appeared to acknowledge as much, if only by omission: ‘This is a treaty which safeguards and advances our national interests. It advances the interests of Europe as a whole. It opens up new ways of cooperating in Europe … It is a good agreement for Europe, and a good agreement for the United Kingdom. I commend it to the House.’
In the eyes of moderates across the House, quiet persistence had succeeded where intransigence had failed. Even some Eurosceptics were pleased, or at least relieved. Thatcher herself largely kept her counsel, though in a private letter to Sir Bill Cash, a prominent Eurosceptic, she expressed the belief that the new direction of the EU was ‘contrary to British interests and damaging to our parliamentary democracy’. The rapture, or relief, in England was not altogether echoed on the Continent. Many were irritated by the opt-outs that Britain had secured. A federal Europe was the inevitable destination, so why did Britain insist on a back route? It should be noted that throughout the process, the mandarins of the Commission were perfectly clear in their intent. As one negotiator observed, ‘It’s getting tiring having to drag Britain along … we can lose the word “federalism” if they want, but …’ The elision was eloquent. In the event, ‘subsidiarity’ was the genial obfuscation selected in preference.