Looking back, with a perspective that somewhat contradicts the impression at the time, one can see that Sir John Major’s premiership was marked by a single act of outstanding statesmanship – keeping Britain in Europe.
With his party increasingly divided and hysterical about European integration, and faced with the equally driven determination of the major continental powers to press on with the next phase of “ever closer union” as set out in the Maastricht Treaty, Sir John skillfully managed to negotiate key opt-outs from that treaty, and to push it through parliament despite fanatical resistance from the Eurosceptics.
Somehow, he found a formula, in respect of the then nascent European single currency, that kept the party together and the UK’s options open. The prize he won was for the British people – taking full advantage of what the EU presented, he presided over a competitive economy, and achieved years of strong economic growth with low inflation.
In doing this, he built on the achievements of two Tory prime ministers who preceded him: Ted Heath, who took the UK into the European Economic Community in 1973, and Margaret Thatcher, who helped to launch the European single market in 1986. There was a time, strange as it may seem now, when the Conservatives were indisputably “the party of Europe”.
To Sir John, what has happened in the past decade – to him, to his party, and to the country – “hurts”. The advantageous terms he took such pains to secure in the negotiations leading up to the Maastricht Treaty – “game, set and match”, he called it then – were thrown away, never to be recovered.
He is rightly scathing about those who promised so much in the Brexit referendum but delivered so little – and it is noticeable how quiet Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, and the other guilty men and women of the Brexit debacle, seem to be these days. As the former prime minister pointedly remarks: “Michael Gove said that after we leave, we will hold all the cards. Well, the only cards they held were P45s, for people who lost their jobs.”
Sir John says that Brexit has cost the nation some £100bn a year in trade and £40bn in tax receipts. The point, as he makes clear, is that this lack of resources has also scarred the nation’s social cohesion: “Many of the difficult and unpopular decisions that have been taken would simply not have been necessary.” In other words, by going back in, the British could afford to rebuild the defence of the realm, lift people out of poverty, and invest in infrastructure and industry.
There have been no street parties, concerts at the O2 Arena or commemorative 50p coins to celebrate 10 years of “independence”. Instead, there is dismal reflection, for those who can bear it, on an astonishing act of national self-harm.
During the seven years or so that Sir John spent as leader of his truculent party, he constantly and bravely faced down his critics, and warned about the dangers of the “little Britain” mindset. He saw the damage being wrought by the obsession with absolute sovereignty, and the failure on the part of his internal opponents to understand how it was, and had always been, inevitable for nations to pool sovereignty and share it for a greater collective good – just as is still the case in Nato and the United Nations, in a manner that is greatly in the British national interest.
How he must wish that Kemi Badenoch, who otherwise receives praise for her leadership, would edge away from her militant opposition to forming closer links with Europe.
Sir John remains a powerful voice of good sense, and is deserving of our attention as he continues to make the argument for a stronger Britain in Europe. It now falls to him to point the way forward.
Ever the realist, he accepts that rejoining the EU is not on anyone’s immediate agenda – not even the Liberal Democrats’ or the Greens’. Instead, he proposes a pragmatic but momentous step forward – rejoining the EU single market within the next five years. That timescale may fall outside the term of this parliament, but the option could be debated at the next general election.
The project has already been started, to some modest degree, under Sir Keir Starmer’s remit. Brexit is extremely unpopular among younger voters, while older Leave voters are passing on. In the end, public opinion will prevail. Sir John’s European ambitions could be closer to reality than many might think.
