John Major: Office Went Away...

This is as an update of post first published in 2014.

Transcribed extracts from the Reflections with Peter Hennessy programme in which Sir John Major talked about his views on immigration have subsequently been published on his website.  You can read them here.

Sadly, from the point of view of this blog, the transcription doesn't include two bits of the interview of particular interest to students of the Office of Prime Minister Emeritus.  So we've transcribed them. We'll deal with the first one in this post.


Peter Hennessy spoke of Lord Hailsham, 'Quintin Hogg was asked did he regret not becoming Prime Minister?'  Lord Hailsham replied to this question, 'I've known every Prime Minister to a greater or lesser extent since Balfour and most of them have died unhappy.  It doesn't lead to happiness.'

Lord Hennessy asked Sir John, 'Are you happy, John?  Will you die happy?'

Sir John replied, 'I very much hope so.  I'm not planning to do so immediately.  I shall hope to hang on a while.'

He went on:

'I think there are different sorts of Prime Ministers once they leave office.  There are those for whom office never really goes away.  There are others, and I hope I'm one of them, who have been able to say, 'That was yesterday and I now have other things that I must do with the rest of my life.'.

'So the advice I would give to anyone who wishes to be Prime Minister is, when it it over, there is a very remarkable world out there, try and see it, and try to make up for the things you necessarily and rightly had to sacrifice when you were in politics.'

Sir John's comments provide us with a useful way of comparing Premiers Emeritus.  Did office go away? Or did it stay around?  I'm sure we can categorise most Prime Ministers pretty easily according to those distinctions.  

Sir John is certainly a former Prime Minister for whom office went away.  And quickly.  Indeed, during his statement outside Number Ten on the day after the 1997 General Election, he commented: 

'I propose to see Her Majesty in just a few moments. The second reason I shall say no more now is that after that I hope that Norma and I will be able, with the children, to get to The Oval in time for lunch and for some cricket this afternoon.'

Interestingly, and not unsuprisingly, cricket has been one of his post-prime ministerial themes.  We'll cover that in another post, but for now, let's stay with that Downing Street Declaration for Sir John also said something else. 

'When the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage and that is what I propose to do.'

As Sir John's life since that day has shown he has, from time to time, returned to the stage.