And a less favorable take on the same events:
mirror.co.uk
PARSONS: MAJOR'S THE CHIEF TORY HYPOCRITE
LIAR, liar, grey Marks & Spen-cer Y-fronts on fire - so John Major's "Back To Basics" philosophy has turned out to be "Back To My Place" after all.
In the light of the weekend's revelations, political commentators are busy reassessing Major's landmark speeches.
"What does this England mean to me?" Major once asked the Conservative Party conference. "I shall tell you. It means lukewarm beer, the sound of cricket ball against willow, old dears cycling to church, rosy-faced bobbies patrolling every suburban high street - and, once a week or so, really getting stuck into a curry."
And we all thought he meant a chicken tikka masala!
I am not usually censorious when it comes to the private lives of politicians. We should be more concerned about what they do with the economy, public services and all the rest than what they do with their shrivelled little private member.But John Major built an entire career around presenting himself as the Tory party's answer to Doris Day.
Here was the politician as professional virgin, watching in bemused horror as other Tories fell from grace with some starlet, harlot or PA (which in the Conservative Party during the Major years practically stood for Penis Assistant).
But Major's four-year affair with Edwina Currie represents rank hypocrisy in a way that David Mellor's liaisons in a Chelsea strip did not, and Alan Clark's South African coven did not, and even Stephen Milligan's orange did not.
Mellor, Clark, Milligan and all the rest of them, from Cecil Parkinson to Tim Yeo to Steven "Shagger" Norris, never presented themselves as squeaky-clean Mr Nice, high on family values and low on testosterone.
That is exactly what Major wanted us to believe. This was the Prime Minister as Ken Doll, nothing between his legs but smooth pink moulded plastic. Prime Minister Ken Doll, who could never resist wagging a prissy finger at the rest of us.
And that is why his deceit does far more than reveal that Tory sleaze began and ended right at the very top.
Alan Clark and the rest never pretended they were better than the weak, fallible man in the street. John Major did exactly that.
This little grey man, with all the dirty secrets surrounding his nasty little cocktail sausage, is a walking, talking definition of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy: 1. The assumption of moral standards to which one's own behaviour does not conform 2. Acting of a part, pretence.
There was something human about the sins of Alan Clark and David Mellor. But even now that John Major's dirty linen is being collected from the cleaners, he still seems a Tory party robot, programmed to mouth soothing, meaningless cliches. "It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed," says Major of his affair with Currie.
Really? And this from a spectacularly incompetent Prime Minister who, ignoring the advice of all those around him, caused this country incalculable economic hardship because of our membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
Lives were ruined, jobs were lost and the pound was ravaged because John Major couldn't tell the ERM from his elbow.
This true-blue buffoon would never have had the chance to cock up the British economy if this other cock-up had come out at the time. Strange days have found us. Here we are in the 21st Century, and the names in the headlines are John Major, Edwina Currie and Jeffrey Archer. I have heard of an 80s revival, but this is ridiculous.
Clare Latimer, the Downing Street caterer who was falsely accused of having an affair with Major, issued this damning verdict: "He kept it under his hat because he wanted to be Prime Minister. She's kept it under her hat because she wanted to make money from it."
It is certainly true that, had the affair been public knowledge, it would have scuppered Major's chance of succeeding Thatcher.
But in Currie's actions, as well as the sound of cash registers jangling, we can detect revenge - that dish best served cold - finally being taken.
Hell hath no fury like a woman who gets left out of the index of your autobiography, John.
Like Jeffrey Archer, and Robert Maxwell, and many other powerful men with secrets to protect, John Major once took legal action to "protect his reputation".In 1993 - the year we were all encouraged to go back to basics - he took legal action against two magazines, Scallywag and New Statesman and Society, who suggested he had had an affair with Clare Latimer.
Major won, and the victory served as a vivid warning to any other journalists who ever thought about making inquiries into the Prime Minister's tangled love life. Go there and we will bury you.
Like Maxwell, like Archer, Major used aggressive, bullying legal action to silence his enemies. But like Jeffrey Archer, he may now find that legal action coming back to haunt him.
Lord Archer is languishing behind bars because he told lies in court. And if Major didn't actually lie, he certainly did his very best to hide the grisly, Currie-shagging truth.
The accusations made by these magazines were of course false - John Major only ever touched Clare Latimer's vol-au-vents and her cheesy nibbles - although the suggestion that he was an adulterer turns out to be true after all.
So is the last Tory Prime Minister now going to give these little magazines their money back, or at least get down on his knees and offer them, and the rest of us, an apology? Or will John Major go to his grave as a hypocrite? |
