Reconsidering Thatcher, Major and Europe with some help from Boris Johnson

Going through a long overdue paper clearout of my office, I came across a fascinating article by Boris Johnson (written back in 1995 when he was still a humble hack for the Daily Telegraph) on the similarities between Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

If the attitudes of public opinion and political commentators are anything to go by, the passage of time has been much kinder to her legacy than to Major, whose premiership is often ranked alongside that of Anthony Eden as the least distinguished in post-war British politics.

However, Johnson's thesis is somewhat different and there were some passages in his article that were particularly striking. For example, he points out that taxation as a proportion of GDP soared from 34% under the Callaghan government in 1979 to 40% in 1983 under the Conservatives and was higher during the Thatcher era than it was for the majority of Major's premiership. Similarly, Johnson quotes spending statistics on social security spending which rose from £17 billion to £60 billion by the time Thatcher left office. Admittedly, these figures have to be taken into context. The massive hike in spending was, of course, not because Thatcher was committed to a benevolent welfare policy but rather the result of the near tripling of unemployment to over 3million during her time as Prime Minister. Nonetheless, the statistics are still at odds with Thatcherite claims that their heroine stood for lower taxes and lower welfare spending.

Similarly, on Europe, one of the more ironic features of recent British politics that Margaret Thatcher is a heroine to Eurosceptics despite being, in many ways, one of the most integrationist Prime Ministers. While Major's handling of the Maastricht Treaty is commonly regarded as the great betrayal by British Eurosceptics, as Johnson points out, the Single European Act agreed and ratified by the Thatcher government was "a more significant European treaty", adding that "if ever a crucial constitutional change was swept under the carpet, it was the Single European Act, forced through the Commons at dead of night by means of a guillotine procedure". Meanwhile, Britain's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (one of the biggest single factors that brought down the Major government when the unsustainably high exchange rate at which the government chose to join of 2.95 Deutschemarks to the pound led to Black Wednesday, costing the exchequer £15bn in a day, and causing British withdrawal from the ERM) was agreed, not by Major, but by Mrs Thatcher!

Johnson's article finishes by posing a question: was Thatcher's record really better or was it that "she better disguised her failures"? It seems pretty clear that the new Mayor of London, and most powerful office-holding Conservative politician in Britain, tends towards the latter.