“It's not a game show” | Former Prime Minister Sir John Major on the current state of UK politics

Sir John Major was born on the 29th of March, 1943, to Gwen, a librarian and part -time dance teacher, and Tom Major Ball, a former trapeze artist and music hall performer, who later ran a successful garden ornaments business.Young John underperformed in school in Brixton, leaving with just three O -levels, but a chance meeting with his local MP led him into politics, becoming a Conservative MP in Margaret Thatcher's 1979 landslide victory, then rising through the ranks pretty quickly to become First Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor.And within 15 months of taking his first great office of state, he reached the greatest, replacing Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in November 1990 at the age of 47.He went on to win the 1992 election with the most votes ever recorded for a British political party before losing to Tony Blair's new Labour landslide in 1997.And I'm delighted Sir John joins me now.It's great to see you.

Thank you.Can you take us back to that church fete, the turning point, it seems, the moment where you discovered politics?

Well, I discovered it before that.I mean, I read a lot of history and politics always fascinated me. I remember the church fete very well.The vicar was a delightful man.So was his daughter.We were friends.And I was at the church fete and the local Labour member of Parliament, Colonel Lipton, Marcus Lipton, who'd been there since 1945, attended every church faith in the constituency.

I don't think church faiths were legitimate unless Marcus was there.And he talked to me, and we talked about politics.And he must have realized that I naturally moved to right of center rather than left of center.But he saw I was interested.And he kindly offered me some seats in the gallery in order to watch Parliament in session.And I did that.

And I saw a small part of a very boring part of the year, really.But not for me. I was thrilled.It was the debate on the budget.in the mid -1950s, and I saw her on the benches in London.Harold Macmillan was there, Rab Butler was there for a brief time.And when I walked into that building, it reached out and it grabbed me.

And I thought when I left, this is where I wish to be, and my mind never moved away from that.

It didn't focus you on your schoolwork, though.You clearly didn't think, I need to knuckle down if I want to get into the House of Commons.In fact, I was looking, you didn't do all that well at school.You were one of only eight prime ministers ever not to go to university.Grammar school boy, not privately educated.Did you think that, I mean, now we'd call that a great backstory, but do you feel like that held you back in your pursuit of getting into politics?

Of course it did, absolutely.And it was very stupid.The background to that is not straightforward.My father was 65 when I was born.When I was 10, 11, went to Rutledge, having passed the 11 plus, he was very sick.And he was also nearly blind with cataracts.

And he had lost all our money.We didn't have much, but what we had, he had lost in a business venture.And so we moved from a bungalow in Worcester Park to two rooms, four storeys up, in an old Victorian house in Brixton.

That is where we lived.

Now, is it still there?It is.It is.

It's still there.It's still there.It's hardly changed.

So we lived in just the two rooms.There was nowhere there to study and to say, They insisted that I stayed at Rutdish, which was at Wimbledon.So I had to travel back and forth from Brixton to Wimbledon every day.And I was pretty rebellious at school.I didn't like it.I wasn't comfortable there.

I felt alienated by life.It was extremely difficult.And so I just didn't work except for the things that interested me, which were mainly history and English.And the result of that was a lamentable record at school and the need to get up at 5 o 'clock after I left school at age 16.I was up at 5 o 'clock each morning studying, taking more O -levels and a banking degree and other matters.

These days, the House of Commons is very different to the House of Commons that you entered.Fewer trade unions in the Labour Party, business people in the Conservative Party, and so on.A lot has changed.Do you think that's been changed for the better?

No, I don't.I certainly don't.I mean, if you take both parties, If you look at the Labour Party, and I have no animosity against the Labour Party.I grew up in the Labour area.I didn't agree with their policies, but I saw decent men trying to do a decent job on Lambeth Council.But I looked at the Labour Party when I got in the House of Commons and there were lots of people If I mean ordinary everyday people, I mean people without money, without privilege, working class people who really knew their constituents.

They may not have got degrees in English, but my goodness, they knew how their constituents lived, and they cared about that, and they represented that in the House of Commons.That doesn't happen in the Labour Party now.They're much younger, much better educated.and in my judgment, much less close to their constituents than their predecessors were.And you can see on the Conservative side, where are the businessmen?Where are the soldiers?

Where are the people who would have been a staple part of the party in the 1950s, 60s and 70s?They're very sparse now on the Conservative benches.There's been a change in nature.And I think that's partly because of the way in which politics is disregarded by so many people these days.Many of the people who would be a very happy addition to people.simply will not contemplate going into politics.

I hear that theme again and again and again and there are many reasons for it which we both know and I think the whole world knows but it's a loss to Parliament in my view.

the John Major of when you first went into politics, from your background and from your experience, would you consider going into politics now?

I couldn't not do so.I mean, I'm out of politics now and I had no regrets about leaving politics when I was in my early 50s, no regrets whatsoever.But There are moments when I see things happening and I wish I was still there because I would have a voice to point out things that I had seen being done before and I know they went wrong.And experience and a long memory, an historic memory in Parliament is very useful.It can stop many mistakes being made.And so there are moments when I wish I was back in politics, but they are fleeting moments.

And they're entirely overridden by the fact I couldn't take the divorce where I still in politics.

Norma would have views on that.

Norma would have something to say.And so would my children.

Let's talk about this.You become an MP, and most people, when they become an MP, even if they only say it to themselves at night, probably privately harbour the idea that one day they might be called upon to become Prime Minister.But it happens to you in 1990.Conservatives have been trailing in the polls for months.Geoffrey Howell's devastating speech to Margaret Thatcher.

That is why I have resigned.In doing so, I have done what I believe to be right for my party and my country.The time has come for others to consider their own response.for the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.

You though, Sir John, you miss much of the drama because for some time you'd been nursing a painful wisdom tooth and you were under the dentist's anaesthetic while everyone else was plotting.And yet you wake up, you're coming around from the anaesthetic and the conversation almost immediately turns with Norma and your daughter Elizabeth to the prospect of you possibly throwing your hat in the ring.Was it the drugs?

Well, you may say so, others may wish so.No, it wasn't.I mean, the tooth has become a subject of myth over many years, with people saying he didn't have a problem at all, he was just getting out the way and plotting.which is entirely absurd, if anyone would care to go to the hospital in Essex, that we had the wisdom tooth out under full anaesthetic.It was an abscess under a wisdom tooth that I'd been nursing for a couple of months.I had a hospital appointment.

I wasn't going to cancel it.I'd suffered from that enough.And I didn't anticipate, frankly, the degree of drama with Michael's challenge to Margaret.But when Margaret decided she wasn't going to stand, I was approached by a lot of people to see whether I would stand.I hadn't been contemplating it.I can honestly say that.

My daughter was coming to A -levels, my son to O -levels.I just got the job I really wanted in politics, which was chancellor.I was honestly, I can say that hand on heart, not contemplating being prime minister.But I was approached by a number of people.I then learned that some people had been canvassing on my behalf.And I was then told by my parliamentary private secretary I said to him, look, I don't know how many votes.

I don't want to humiliate myself by getting a few votes.And he said, and he was a very good listener, one of those rare politicians who listens rather than talks.And he said, well, I think I can guarantee you 150 votes if you stand.Dare you stand?no to that?And I couldn't, really.

I remembered the old Ian McLeod maxim.It was McLeod as much as any individual politician who took me into politics.He was a magnificent orator, not just in how he spoke, but what he said.And he once said, if the ball comes out of the ruck, you grab it.It may never come out again.And that was pretty much how I felt.

I was confident that I wasn't going to be humiliated, so I decided I would stand.

But you write in your memoirs that for large parts of that period, actually right up until almost the moment you won, you were stuffed with painkillers.I was, yeah.It was an extraordinary moment.You were dealing with this pain in your mouth, but each day you were getting closer to becoming Prime Minister.

Yes, I mean by the time that, I mean the campaign only lasted a week and it was the best -natured campaign I think I've seen in all my years in politics between Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd and myself.We all knew one another extremely well.I was particularly close to Douglas Hurd.I didn't know Michael quite so well and it only lasted a week and as the campaign began, the painkillers were winning over the pain quite comfortably.So we sailed through the week's campaigning.And it wasn't a difficult week campaigning because we weren't in the business of slagging off one another.

We had worked together in the past, we would work together in the future.Whatever had happened, the three of us would have been together in the Cabinet.And so it was a very good -natured campaign and it went quickly.

It's an enormous encouragement to know that so many people in the parliamentary party are prepared to entrust me with the leadership of the Conservative party, and I will endeavour to discharge those responsibilities to the best of my ability.

Michael Haslam, of course, then concluded that he who wields the knife doesn't wear the crown.If you're the person who leaps first, then you end up not getting the top job.Do you think he's right about that?Are there lessons for today?

Well, I'm not entirely sure about that.Lloyd George might argue to the contrary, and so might others.But I think it can be a disadvantage.It depends on the nature of the relationship between the departing Prime Minister and the wielder of the knife, I think.

Tell me about that moment when you become Prime Minister.You go to the palace.You'd obviously been into Number 10 before, but it's very different going as a minister than it is as Prime Minister.What's going through your mind during that?

In the drive to the palace?Yes.Well, several things, really.Firstly, I wonder how this ceremony goes.Does kissing hands mean literally?It doesn't.

It means figuratively.And what exactly are we going to talk about?So I was thinking about the Queen and how that would work out.A different compartment of my mind was thinking about what am I going to say when I get back to the doorstep?And that was certainly occupying my mind.And two other things are occupying my mind.

New prime minister within two years from the election.we're going to have to have some cabinet changes.And that is going to be awkward.I had only been in a cabinet three years.I was younger than most of the cabinet.I'd been there less time than most of the cabinet.

And I was going to have to say to very senior people who had been there much longer than me that it was time to go and to bring in some new blood into the cabinet.And nobody likes destroying someone's career, only sadists like that.And so my mind was occupied also with that.And then beyond that, I was very conscious of the problems we faced.You touched on some of them.But the party was deeply split on the European Union.

I felt as though I was standing on either side of a widening chasm.The poll tax was still around and had to be destroyed.Michael Heseltine had to come back into the cabinet.Now those last two points were bound, inevitably, going to upset Margaret Thatcher, that her poll tax I was going to have to abolish it.And her assassin, as she saw Michael, was going to have to come into the cabinet.So one could see immediately there were going to be problems that lay ahead.

And it was a combination of those things, only a short ride from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace.But I remember very plainly, almost as though different components of the mind were thinking of them.

I hope in the next few years that we will carry on with much of the work that has been done in the last few years.In particular, I want to see us build a country that is at ease with itself, a country that is confident, and a country that is prepared and willing to make the changes necessary to provide a better quality of life for all our citizens.I don't promise you that it will be easy, and I don't promise you that it will be quick, but I believe it is an immensely worthwhile job to do.Because it will be neither easy nor quick, if you will forgive me, I will go into number 10 straight away.and make a start right now.Thank you very much indeed.

Wilson, Heath, Douglas, Hume.Were you able to sort of reach out?Clearly the relationship with Margaret was difficult because of the circumstances you'd become Prime Minister.Is there a gang of former Prime Ministers that you would all talk to each other?

I had no difficulty with the other Prime Ministers at all.The one who from time to time was most helpful was Jim Callaghan, who had a similar background to me, and he understood the difficulties.He understood the restraints in 1990s society and from time to time he was involved.helpful.Harold Wilson by then was clearly ill and when I talked to him we met in the corridors and we discussed Huddersfield Town Football Club of which Harold was a tremendous supporter.So I had no difficulties there and when I met Margaret there was never any difficulty.

The first time I met her was at a by -election in 1978 in Berwick and East Lothian, which we lost.And I was very impressed because it was thought we were going to win the by -election and she had been there for a morning and she came in and talked to me just after lunch and she knew we were going to lose it.Her sensitive political antennae had grasped the fact that it wasn't right.And I was hugely impressed by that.And I had a very good relationship with her.We had a furious fight when I was a young whip.

We disagreed severely about something.And everyone thought my career was over.And the next day, she came and sat next to the bench and said, well, we'd better regroup and discuss these matters again.And three weeks later, she gave me a job in government.And I remember her saying to me when she gave it to me, it's the job I started with.If you learn about social security, you'll be better equipped than most of the parliamentary party for the future.

You mentioned that when you become prime minister, you knew there was a general election, certainly within two years.In that election in 1992, there was an expectation that Labour were going to win it under Neil Campbell.

More than an expectation.It was almost written into the stars.

This is the party that's going to win the election and win for our country.

So what does that mean?for you, there's been endless, you know, was it the Sheffield Valley, was it the Soapbox, what for you is, what won it for you?

Well, I never quite agreed with the way the opinion polls were done.all the way through the campaign.And it may simply have been my naivety.But everywhere I went, I got a very large and warm welcome everywhere.There was no hostility.And I was surprised about that.

We had been in power for 11 years.And people were plainly tired of the problems over the poll tax in Europe.And yet, there was an immensely warm reception everywhere I went.So I had this blind faith.that having come from where I did to where I was, it wasn't going to end that quickly.And I thought throughout the campaign that we would win.

And we had a very large lead in votes, you may recall.It was only a slender lead of 21 in seats, but we had a 7 % lead in votes.We should have had a majority of 70 or so, if the votes had been equally distributed.But of course, they weren't.

In fact, it's the record for any party.Still is, yes.And do you think, in the way our politics is going, with more and more parties, do you think that record will ever be broken?

Well, ever's a long time.But I don't think it can be broken in the near future, because there are going to be a greater disbursement of votes, which raises a whole series of other questions.

Now, I know you soon after that 1992 election, you discussed with Chris Patton this idea of you having stretched the elastic, having defied expectations and what.And so you then spent the next five years assuming that you wouldn't win in 1997.And it gives you a different mindset.And I wondered whether it would be better for governments if they behaved like they were going to win and did what they thought was right by the country rather than sort of chasing percentage points in the polls.

Well, there was a bit of that.I mean, it sounds rather gallant to say you proceeded entirely on that basis.Of course we wanted to win the election, but we managed to find a way of losing it quite comprehensively.And we had a lot of assistance from my colleagues in doing so.We only had a tiny majority, and for European...There was a changing of the guard at 1992.

The elderly members who'd been in the war, or soon after, and in the services, They were very pro -European in the Conservative Party because they were pro -European and wished us to be part of Europe because they never wanted to see a European war again.A lot of them retired in 1992 and were replaced by much younger.and more recently baked conservatives who had a much more Eurosceptic view.So the huge majority for Europe in the Conservative Party that existed in 90 and 91 had gone in 92.And we faced a completely different parliamentary party.So although we had a majority of 21 nominally, on European matters, we barely had a majority at all.

And very soon with by -elections, that bare majority was whittled away.

If there's one little message I would seek to convey to the party and the government is it's become abundantly clear over the past few months that the general public are fed up to the teeth with the European Union.

Was it then in 92 that essentially the seeds of Brexit were sown?in that shift, that generational shift in the Conservative Party?

Well, they were there before.I mean, going right back to Enoch Powell and areas of that, there were people who were, let me say, unenthusiastic, would be a kind way of putting it, about Europe.But it was in the 1990s when the numbers began to grow.And they began to grow because of opposition to the Maastricht Treaty.And that was very odd.And you may say, why is it odd?

Because the Maastricht Treaty did all sorts of extraordinary things.But every one of those things was actually preordained in the 1986 Single European Act that we had signed up to a whole range of things that were in the Maastricht Treaty.The very people who had signed up to that treaty now opposed and opposed virulently.And the new members followed them.

And they became more and more of a thorn in the side for you.In 1993, you were caught on camera calling some of your, your most sceptic cabinet ministers, bastards.Do you have any regrets about that?

Well, I remember that very well.It was a BBC feed that was left on when I was speaking privately to a single person.And the feed crept under the door and they chose to use it.Of course, I shouldn't have said that.My only excuse is that it was true.

And then as the pressure built over time and you faced more criticism, in 1995 you pushed what many thought was the nuclear button and you challenged your opponents to put up or shut up.And in fact, one of our listeners, Mike, got in touch and said, my question to John Major would be, what would you do if you were in Keir Starmer's shoes?assuming local elections are bad as well.Would you advise doing what you did, put up or shut up?Always is a case of different party, different circumstances, different times.

I think the circumstances are very different and I think the times are.I think enough has been said by enough people about that particular issue.I don't really wish to add to it.

I have this afternoon tendered my resignation as leader of the Conservative Party to Sir Marcus Fox, the chairman of the 1922 committee.and requested him to set the machinery in motion for the election of a successor.I have confirmed to Sir Marcus that I shall be a candidate in that election.

Did you think you would win that when you did that back in the 90s?

I wasn't sure.

Yeah.

No, no, I was prepared for the fact that I might have to resign.I didn't think I was going to be defeated in the ballot, but I had put in a sealed envelope the number of votes I had to have in order for me, in my mind, to credibly stay.And we exceeded that number by three votes.So it was very close.It was close.Four votes less and I would have resigned.

Now when you weren't dealing with your own MPs, you were dealing with Tony Blair in latter stages across the Dispatch Box.And Prime Minister's questions is a part of politics that most people, you know, that's their main consumption probably when they see it on the news.And he was pretty remorseless to you during PMQs.

I lead my party, he follows his.

calling it week, week, week, I lead my party, he follows his.Is there any part of you that could enjoy Prime Minister's questions?

It was a very good line.I don't know who wrote it, but it was extremely good.And if I were in his position, I might have done exactly the same thing.Because I was in a position, whatever I did, I was going to have half the party disagreeing with it.And I was trying to bring the party together.My fear, from the moment I became Prime Minister, was that the European issue could break the Conservative Party apart, as free trade had done in the past.

And that was very inhibiting as to what you could do.And that provided Tony with that opening.

You've also faced a lot of hostility from the media during that period.Surely not.It said, and I was having interviewed people who worked with you at the time, there was a feeling amongst some that you spent, you focused too much on the media, you read the papers too closely.The benefit of hindsight now, do you think they're right?

Possibly, but it's difficult to know what you're facing unless you'veabout it and read about it.So it's very easy to say.I mean, I seem to recall that, was it Franklin Roosevelt who read 18 newspapers a day?Something of that sort.So yes, I suppose you could say I wasted too much time reading things that were unnecessarily read.

But you needed to be prepared.If you're suddenly asked a question and you don't know why the question has come, you could be in a very difficult situation.I mean, senior politicians face that today with social media.They may be going around the country, they'll be stopped, they'll be asked a question about an event that has happened the other side of the world, and they don't know of the event.And sometimes they are foolish enough to commit themselves and get themselves in a great deal of difficulty.

I was thinking about this and wondering about the way that everything's been sped up, rolling news, then social media.Thinking of a dramatic moment like Black Wednesday, do you think you could have survived Black Wednesday in a world of social media, with the frenzy that people whip themselves up with?

Well, it could hardly have been worse if social media had been there.I mean, there's a great deal behind that.Many of the myths in it still survive.But it was extremely difficult.It lingered a long time.And it marked the biggest danger of Black Wednesday.

Well, there were two things about Black Wednesday, really.Firstly, When we were forced out of the exchange rate mechanism after a market turmoil that began in North Europe, not with us, and injudicious remarks by the governor of the Bundesbank led them to concentrate on sterling, which was very, very unhelpful indeed, but When we were forced out of the exchange rate mechanism, I was already in discussion with the policy unit about how we could leave it, because its purpose had been to bring down inflation, and it had done that.Many people hated ERM because they thought it was a stepping stone to the euro, that we were going to join the EU.currency.That was never going to happen while I was there.I wasn't going to join the single currency.

We weren't ready for it.Parliament wouldn't have accepted it.And I didn't like it anyway.So there were good reasons why we weren't going to happen.But we went into the exchange rate mechanism because we had failed to get inflation down with every other policy.We and our predecessors in Margaret's time, in Ted's time, in Jim Callaghan's time, in Harold Wilson's time, inflation had come back again and again and again and destroyed parties.

And I was determined that we would sick it with the ERM until we had beaten inflation.And we did.And we enjoyed the benefit of that.right up to about 2010.So the incoming Labour government enjoyed, had a low inflationary position, and inherited a very good economy, I may say, in 1997.But because we had fallen out of the ERM, that masked the changes in the economy, the changes in interest rates, and we got none of the credit a government would normally have got for that, simply because we were thought to have been incompetent, because we were forced out of ERM.

So it was a political impact rather than an economic one?

It was a political catastrophe, but it wasn't an economic catastrophe.And the economy, we thought, could then sustain leaving ERM.The difficulty was how to get out.Out in the markets thinking you were weakening the anti -inflationary policy.That was the difficulty that we didn't solve.So when we were thrown out, it was catastrophic politically.

But it had done its job.I felt so strongly about inflation.And I will put it in a personal way, because it was how I felt.Because when we were living in those two rooms, There was barely a week when the money did not run out before the week and I saw my mother go downstairs and borrow money.to see us through the week, and then desperately try and find some way to pay it back, and then repeat the exercise week after week after week after week.

I knew what that was like.

And I knew that that was what inflation did, not just to my family, but to families all over the country.And I hated inflation with a passion.And I would rather have been forced out of government and out of politics than have given up on the anti -inflationary.on the anti -inflationary programme and that was the ERM.

All my adult life I've seen British governments driven off their virtuous pursuit of low inflation by market problems or political pressures.I was under no illusions when I took Britain into the exchange rate mechanism.I said at the time that membership was no soft option.The soft option, the devaluers option, the inflationary option, in my judgment, that would be a betrayal of our future at this moment.And I tell you categorically, that is not the government's policy.

And the other point I would just make about it, with all my critics, I remember even the Daily Telegraph with banner headlines saying, at last we're going to have some economic discipline, on the day I went in.It's amazing.how successes have many fathers and failures are orphans.

Can I ask you as well, like you said, a lot of criticism for the papers, can I ask about spitting image?Did you watch Spitting Image?I mean, we had various questions sent in of people asking about you being portrayed as the grey man of politics, despite having the background you came from, winning a general election, beating older...Politics is a rough old trade.

That was originally a joke across the tea room by a friend of mine when my hair started to go grey when I was about 48.And that's where it came from.from and it was a very useful way to portray something quite different and it was used mercilessly because politics is sometimes a rather fierce trade but you know that when you go into it there's no point in crying over it.

Did you watch it at the time?

I stopped watching it when I saw the portrayals of Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher which I thought were downright crude so I did watch it occasionally but When I began to feature in it in an indelicate way, I thought the same people who told me I ought not to read the newspapers now say, why didn't you watch Spitting Image?

Did you watch any sort of political TV shows?The Thick of It, Yes Prime Minister, or was it all a bit too much like...

The only one I watched was Yes Prime Minister, which I thought was pure genius.It got so close to a parody of reality.I didn't think The Thick of It quite achieved that.I didn't watch that very much.

Can I ask you about the job of being Prime Minister and how you approached it?And the sense that, since you've been there, we've had, what, eight sins?Seven or eight sins.Is it getting harder, do you think?

In some ways, yes.It's certainly getting harder because of the external pressure of social media.That is undoubtedly getting harder.On the other hand, the newspapers matter less than they did politically.They're not as powerful as they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s.The problems are wider today and there seems to be a shorter time frame in which people feel they can deal with problems and push them aside.

Most of the big problems we have in this country at the momentare long -term problems.How are we going to cope with an ever -increasing number of elderly people who will live longer and need more medicine and more expensive medicine?How are we going to prepare for that?How are we going to prepare for people having their own pensions when the government keeps producing measures that will reduce the private pensions that people actually earn and save for in their own lifetime?They're forcing more people into state assistance when they retire by the policies they're following now.

That is not only wrong, it is plain stupid.And then there are other things like climate change.Some people deny climate change.I don't know what planet they're living on.But when they say, I don't believe in climate change, it's a cop -out.It's a cop -out, so they needn't put the money towards the policy, and they can spend it on something else that's more politically popular.

But I only have to look at my own garden.The daffodils come up six weeks earlier.The climate is different.The ice caps—they're not in my garden, by the way—but the ice caps are melting and changing the positions inside the oceans.There are more hurricanes.the world.

are saying to my children and your children and their grandchildren is, tough luck, chaps.We're not only leaving you a difficult economy with too many old people that you can't afford to care for, we're going to leave you with climate change that we should have put right for you and didn't.The first role of any government, in my view, is to leave something better for the next generation than your generation inherited.And this is not done now.The youngsters of today are inherited.a more difficult world and a less favourable world for them than my generation.

And their successors may be in exactly the same position unless now we begin to take seriously those very long -term problems.I'm sorry that's a long and tedious answer, but I feel very strongly that it demeans politics.The role of...You're not there as a politician.It's not a game show.You're not there just to provide political advice.

fodder for the media and project your own career.You're there to deal with problems that the ordinary people elect you to do.We are a representative democracy.We send representatives to Parliament to make sure that our lives are better.And if you ignore and deny those issues, our lives will not get better and those Parliaments will have failed.

I mean, some of those issues you talk about, changes to pensions and so on, are unfolding under the Labour government.But some of the things, climate change and net zero, those are ideas which are taking hold in the Conservative party as well.This is a cross party.

I'm not making a point against any one government.It has been going on for quite a long time.And well, let me put it to you in this one question.You know politics better than most people, I would guess.When did you last hear a senior politician, a senior politician, actually deliver a detailed lecture about the problems we face and what we must do to make those problems better over the next 30 years.Can you remember such a speech?

Not off the top of my head.

No, neither can I. Is that because our politicians...Don't you think the people out there would actually like to hear someone standing up and saying, we've got these things wrong.We've really screwed up.We've really got to take this particular policy more seriously.We cannot cope with the population growth and the growth in the length of years people live and the more expensive medical treatment.We cannot cope with it unless we begin to take action on those things at this moment.

We cannot delay on that.

So what is the problem?Is it the quality of the politicians?Is it the quality of MPs in Parliament who get restless too quickly?Is it partly... our fault, the electorate's fault, that we are impatient, that we want quick and easy answers to big, complicated problems.

I'm afraid we do.And that is because nobody is telling us we can't have that.And instead of saying, well, these are the difficulties we've got to face, and you can't have that, nobody's doing that.I mean, too many people listen to focus groups, parody the focus groups in their policies, which naturally means more expenditure, inevitably means more expenditure and that inevitably in the short term or the longer term either means more debt or higher taxes.Governments have lost the capacity it seems to say no and part of the job of politics is to say no.

I suppose that the counter argument is that if you say no you lose elections and you're not in a position of power anymore.Well, do you?Just a minute.Just let me pause you on that.

I mean, I'm not entirely sure that's the case.I would guess there are millions of people out there who'd be only too pleased to hear a politician stand up and set out absolutely clearly and honestly and unmistakably the depth of the problems we face and the sort of measures we are going to have to take in order to protect ourselves.and they say you can't do that, you'll lose votes.Really, when you're setting out a policy that will ease the lives of their children.and their grandchildren, are we so self -centred that we can't take in that message?I don't believe it.

six o 'clock news or reading a newspaper which might have a broad range of issues and voices.If you're just watching people that you agree with that reinforces the idea that this person has all the answers.

I'm afraid that there's been a lot of that over a long time where people mix with other people who have the same views, read newspapers that echo their views or indeed shape their views.I'm afraid this is happening in a much bigger way in America, I may say, but it is certainly happening here as well.And it's very dangerous.You can't debate and change the world unless you meet the people with whom you disagree and try and persuade them.If in fact, instead of that, you avoid the people you disagree and form your own clique with your own views, then nothing is going to change in terms of really addressing the problems that lie before us.

You've talked in the past about believing in a rough and ready decency.Do you think we see enough of that in our politics today?

Sometimes you do.

Is it more rough than it is decent?

There are a lot of very decent people in politics.I don't know the present parliament as well as I knew earlier parliaments.I'm not a member of the present parliament.But I know a number of MPs from Conservative Party, Labour Party, not so much the Liberal Democrats these days.And there are lots of them who have very decent instincts.And the curious thing is, many of their instincts as to what they would like to achieve are the same.

What they differ about is how to achieve it.The economy is a practical example.The Conservative Party would say we have to deal with it with much more free enterprise, much less regulation.Many people in the Labour Party would also want a much better economy, but would go a completely different way.We need a good deal more state direction.Now, everyone can have their own view on that.

But the interesting thing is that the objectives are the same.The very nature of the House of Commons, with Her Majesty's opposition being two sword lengths apart from Her Majesty's government, actually promotes the idea that opposition must oppose everything.Well, I'm not sure that I agree with that.I think opposition have a duty to point out shortcomings, but I think when the objectives are the same, I think it would be a better way to proceed if people acknowledged similar objectives and began more practically to suggest mutual ways of meeting those objectives.The classic example I would give you, I do not think we will get a proper concordat on health, probably the single most important issue to many people, until the main parties agree the broad parameters of it, and that includes funding.And I think that's something they ought to be looking at.

We can't have one party coming into government, setting out a series of policies, making changes, and the other party denouncing them, and because they've denounced them, coming in and feeling they have to change them.That's poor politics.

And yet, when we look at how politics has unfolded over the last few years, promises don't get very long.And whether it's their own MPs, the media, the electorate.

Maybe if they met these long -term problems, they would.And in any event, the fate of individual politicians doesn't really matter as much as the development of the right policy.I mean, it isn't a good idea to keep changing prime ministers.I think there's also a limit.If I give you a term of years, it'll undoubtedly cause trouble.But I think it is an idea to have a limited number of years.

I think the Americans who have two terms of a president and then stop.I think that's sensible.

We can't get to two years at the moment before speculation.I know.

I know.I know.I know.But this is a phase we're going through.And it's partly a function of the many, many difficulties that we face at the moment.So if Keir Starmer picked up the phone.

And the frustration that people don't believe those problems show signs of being solved.The best aphrodisiac in politics is hope.If people can see a change, there's a change in atmosphere.It doesn't have to be politics.If we win the Ashes or the World Cup, there's a total change in atmosphere in the country.If you see interest rates going down rather than up, there's a total change in people's capacity to invest and their belief in what is going to happen in the future.

The moment the economy turns, politics will turn too.

It sounds as if Keir Starmer picked up the phone to you.I don't know if he ever does.It sounds to me like your advice to the old Churchill even phase, keep buggering on.

I'm not going to offer it.I've been in politics a long time and I've made many mistakes.One mistake I'm not going to make is advising a Labour Prime Minister in public.And no, I have not been asked to advise a Labour Prime Minister in private either.

You talked about Her Majesty's opposition, obviously now His Majesty's opposition, when you were there as the Queen.Tell me about the...Obviously, you met her on the first day you become Prime Minister.The weekly audience.How...You know, I've heard other Prime Ministers talk about how...

important was it for you?

It was very important.I don't mean for me. I think the prime minister meeting, the monarch weekly, is very important for the monarch, too.I've no intention of telling you the sort of things we discussed.I will tell you it wasn't all politics, but by any means.And the only people, well, the only others present at those meetings ever were the corgis.If someone had bugged at the corgis, it would have been.

Quite a revelation.Are you a dog fan?You're a fan of dogs?Oh, yes.You got on with the corgis?

Yeah, the corgis were fine.We even have an office therapy dog.You do?No, it's not my dog.It's my chief of staff's dog.Oh, great.

What sort of dog is it?

Oh, I'm not going to go into the dog.

Oh, okay, fine.

I don't want the dog to become famous.

When you were Prime Minister, it was quite a turbulent time for the royals.We've since had cabinet papers which have been released of you when the Queen went through an annus horribilis and that sort of thing.Did you feel that the royals were really under pressure at that moment?Did you feel like you helped turn things around?

I have no intention of commenting on that, except to say I did share an annus horribilis with the Queen at the same time.So we had plenty to talk about.

1992.is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an anus horribilis.

You talked about how you had a small majority after 1992 and obviously that made your life hard.Is there a point, is there a sweet spot for a size majority?Is there a point where having a massive majority is also a problem?Absolutely.

Something between 40 and 50 is a sweet spot.I mean, one of the problems the Labour Party have got at the moment, they've got such a big majority.A large number of people who know in their hearts they're a one -term Member of Parliament for that particular constituency.And unless they defy political gravity, they will lose at the next election.And that will encourage many of them not to take difficult decisions, but to cry out against difficult decisions so they can be seen to defending their constituents against something that may be necessary, but is unpopular.And that makes any government's job much harder.

I just want to finally end on a couple of your reflections.Any regrets, your biggest regret from your time as Prime Minister?

Oh, have you an hour or two?There were lots, yes.I think the biggest regret I have...No, I won't say it's the biggest, but a big regret I had.When I negotiated the Maastricht Treaty, it was hugely well -received in Parliament.And we didn't put the bill for the Maastricht Treaty through Parliament before the 1992 election because it had such support.

I mean, there were 500 or 600 members of Parliament voting for it.We didn't put it through.We put through other measures.that were more immediately relevant.And so we left the Maastricht Treaty after the 1992 election.And as I explained earlier, after the 1992 election, the complexion of the Tory party had changed remarkably, without which we would not have had all the troubles we had with the Maastricht Treaty, which had a great deal to do with the eternal damnation of the Conservative government at the time.

So that is a regret.I could have got it through just...

And that might have then changed things for what followed afterwards.

Yes, there wouldn't have been a bill that they could spend a whole year...

And on the positive side, George, who's a listener, got in touch and said, does Sir John feel he did not get enough credit for the national lottery?Lottery -funded elite sports and Team GB's success at the Olympics.Please thank him for me.

Well, I'm very pleased it's done so well.I'll tell you how I came about to do it.I was Chief Secretary at the Treasury in 1987 to 9.and the chief secretary negotiated public expenditure with every individual minister.And so he had, although he was a junior member of the cabinet, he had more power than most members because he could redirect money.And I noticed in doing that, that the things the public most cared about, sport and the arts, got petty cash from the government.

And I could never see a circumstance in which you could take money away from health or education or defence or social security in order to enhance leisure.Governments have never been big on leisure, if you go back as far in history as you'd like.And so I was looking for some external way of funding something that the public really loved, sport and the arts.And the answer was the lottery.And since then it has now, I don't know if you know how much it has given, apart from the prizes, how much do you think it has delivered to the public in good causes?

I mean, it must be billions.

Have a rough guess.

Three billion.

50 billion.

50 billion, wow.

And that was 18 months ago, so it would be 51 rising 52 now.52 billion.And you can go to almost every village in the country and you'll find something badged with the National Lottery money.

And if you see that badge, do you think, I did that?

Well, it wasn't only me.Lots of other people there.One takes personal blame and one takes personal credit, but neither of those things are fully justified.You shouldn't entirely get the blame.nor entirely receive the credit.But I am very pleased it went well.

A final thought then, going back to where we began, the young 13 -year -old John, not working that hard at school, difficult at home, parents distracted by trying to make ends meet.If that young John now was to come across our conversation, and they've got an interest in politics, what would you say?What would you say to them?

Well, I would say to young people, we need you in politics.If all the talent in this country concentrates on how can I earn more money, how can I avoid public service like the plague because I don't like the idea of it, then we are in deep doo -dah.We do need people to go into politics and we need our best people to go into politics and that may mean some changes in the way in which Parliament works.It will certainly require a change in attitude where public service, whether it is elected public service in the House of Commons or appointed public service in the civil service or any of the government bodies, local government particularly, we need that sort of career to be attractive and to be socially attractive as well as financially attractive.I'm not suggesting one is more important than the other.We need both.

When you have respect for those, then I think we're getting back into a much more healthy position.And so very silly to argue and denigrate public service.We shouldn't do it.

Sir John Major, it's been fascinating to talk to you.Thank you for your time.

My pleasure.Thank you.