Major Mayhem

_82457801_82456970By Mike Small

Lord John Major today briefly displaced Gordon Brown’s position as the ‘Man to Step Out of the Shadows and Save the Union’ with a bizarre contribution to the constitutional debate.

Electing people would be “a recipe for mayhem,” Major told an enthusiastic audience of pensioners. “Mayhem,” Major repeated in a whisper.

“I love Scotland,” he said, having spent most of the speech explaining we were the equivalent of the Red Peril, adding: “I have many, many Scottish friends.”

It’s not just this ‘electing MPs’ bit that’s the problem, it goes far deeper than that according to John.

“I warned against Scottish devolution in 1992 and 1997. I always knew that nothing good would come of it.”

Hurtling backwards.

Back to Basics

It was a strange interjection from a politician that people had either forgotten of completely – or – if they had remembered him at all – was synonymous with sleaze and massive economic failure and corruption.

But in the mystery land of Westminster, Major is an ace card in the pack. They forget he is like a poster boy for Parody Britain, his most memorable quote being the remarkable evocation of :

“A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.”

Thankfully the mist has cleared.
Major, brought forth like some sort of Seer-Saviour is a relic of a sub-Panda politics, remember he was the last British Prime Minister to preside over a completely Tory Free Scotland.

Part of the political amnesia on display is the forgetfulness that Major’s government was embroiled in massive sleaze allegations, surpassed only by Blair’s cronyism. His administration ended in utter shambles, moral disgrace and economic farce as his Back to Basics message became a metaphor for political betrayal. By Black Wednesday we’re told by ‘mid-morning the selling was so intense that Bank of England officials were buying £2bn of sterling an hour.’

Now he’s pulled-out to scare you about economic insecurity.
In fact if you want to measure the point at which the perfect storm of the collapse of legitimacy of the British State, that leads us to today, Major’s catastrophic leadership is probably a good place to begin.
His reign brought us Arms to Iraq, Jonathan Aitken and Cash for Questions, all swept away down the Memory Hole by today’s insurgent unionist media fan boys. Now he lectures us on stability.
Poor old Major. Poster boy for a broken Britain, emblem for corrupt westminster, trundled out to prop up the failed state to barely concealed giggles anywhere north of Chiswick. You can read Peter Hennessy’s slim but revealing ‘The Kingdom to Come’ – a hilarious 126 page handy day-by-day guide to establishment panic in the last year for a backdrop to this perfect storm.
The reality is much simpler than the hyper-nationalism of rattled UK:OK. Deborah Orr states is simply:

 England can now see the political stalemate that Scotland has been able to see for decades now. That’s why she is dangerous. She reveals the truth about British democracy. Sturgeon is dangerous to the political classes, because she is offering voters a clearer view of how the political classes work.
– Deborah Orr (‘Why the hysteria over Nicola Sturgeon‘)

And, if the polling from Edinburgh proves right, and North and Leith, East and South West are to go to the SNP, then the panic Major is articulating is well justified. The significance of the surge in Edinburgh is that this is territory where No won.

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  1. junius45 says:

    Major obliged his Tory landowning chums by exempting their Scottish estates from paying business taxes in 1994.

  2. Absolutely astounding piece of nonsense wheeling this old duffer out. It’s all so shambolic, but against the backdrop of last year’s Project Fear, it’s now just boring and tawdry.

    You didn’t need to be a Seer to know it was coming.

    1. John Page says:

      Bella
      Valerie is spot on. Can we have a bingo type competition on what else is coming…….

      John Prescott on Buchanan St steps
      Intervention by Spanish Govt
      Cameron offers Stimulus package to Scottish Football………
      Jim Murphy promises 1000 more strikers for national team
      Keir Hardie’s bones on display in Bath St with candles and incense
      Leaked communications between Salmond and Putin: The MacZinoviev letter Part 6
      A secret deal between Martin McGuinness and John Swinney
      A NATO exercise in the Clyde…..oh wait that was Monday

      John Page

      PS I simply couldn’t bring myself to mention G Brown who is beyond parody

      1. jacquescoleman says:

        You forgot the resurrection of the Dear Margaret. If the auld yin will let her come.

        1. Frederick Robinson says:

          Having, in 1992, the year he became PM, suffered a stroke (in Glasgow) that paralysed my right side for two years, I don’t care all that much for Sir (not Lord) John Major; but you have to remember that he was the brake that stopped the juggernaut that was Thatcherism. Those ‘old girls cycling to holy communion’ were the (wholly inadequate) alternative he tried to offer to soccer violence, skinheads, police brutality, Cardboard City, drug addiction, hand-bagging, and the host of ills that the Thatcher era had come to represent And all the sleaze etc. was something (his Currie supper aside) he had to suffer from a party (including ‘the bastards’) going to the dogs with the decline and fall of their heroine.

      2. John Page says:

        …….mobile phone footage of Alex Salmond

  3. epicyclo says:

    Never mind all the above.

    A Lord lecturing us on democracy – does no-one in the MSM see the irony?

    1. Strategist says:

      Not a Lord actually, he refused a peerage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Major

      1. Frederick Robinson says:

        Thank you, Strategist; the record is so twisted by caricature these days you could make a fruit-bowl out of it.

  4. Malcolm McIntosh says:

    major was the most cowardly and ineffective pm Scotland has had the misfortune to be governed from afar by.

    If you recall he was propped up by Ulster unionists, no mention of some of the less than democratic paths they have gone down in the recent past.

    My main disgust with major centres on his “taking stock” of Scotland when he was pm and the tories lost all their political representation and any mandate to rule Scotland. No mention of tensions or fairness of democratic deficit then?

    “taking stock” meant ignoring the nation of Scotland, whilst people patiently waited for his big idea. The only big ideas major had was kicking Scotland into the long grass whilst being economical with the truth with his nearest and dearest!

    Lastly he says loves Scotland, I wonder when the last time he visited or whom he met?

    1. Frank M says:

      I seem to remember a certain Mr Cameron telling us how much he loved us just before the referendum. He had friends in Scotland too. Now how did that one pan out these last few months?

  5. jim says:

    It’s just a pity that Edinburgh is about 6 months too late, maybe this time & more importantly next time they will stand up for Scotland.
    I really hope so.

  6. HerewardAwake! says:

    Trailing wisps of vapour, the wraith-like figure of John Major appears from the deep freezer of Tory failure and shaking his dodgy credentials in the manner of Jacob Marley’s chains, this relic of Thatcherdom – who has done very nicely for himself since, of course – whispers about loving Scotland but not the mayhem he and his mistress caused over the whole Union. Not that he had the bone to stand up against the old dragoness – he had toothache, I seem to remember. Scotland, send this grey ghost back to rejoin the other Tory ghouls.

    1. Frank M says:

      Dante has a special circle for this lot.

  7. jacquescoleman says:

    It’s Apocalypse Now. The dead are walking the Earth.

  8. macart763 says:

    Oh, he’s got Scottish friends. That’s okay then.

    Good grief.

    We’re being lectured on democracy and morality by John Major? 😀

  9. majormacbloodnok says:

    …and Edinburgh South, please…

  10. Johnny come lately says:

    Get ready for it. Tarzan, aka Heseltine will be next. I don’t understand why major didn’t think of singing a duet with Edwina Currie, Barbara Streisands number “The way we were” would have gotten all of us ayearning for a yesteryear.
    Who can forget poor John touring Scotland on a ticket of “say no to a tartan Tax”? Who can forget his fantastic idea of returning the scone stone, thinking this would make everything just fine and dandy? Who can forget poor John sitting moaning on the banks of Loch Lomond after the yes vote for a Scottish parliament? “Independence is inevitable” he exclaimed on the day the result was announced. It appears that he still hasn’t got over it. Major mayhem I miss you. I’m sure Scottish Labour could use your talents.

    1. HerewardAwake! says:

      Ah, yes. I’d forgotten John Major’s partiality for curried eggs.

    2. Frederick Robinson says:

      And the referendum No vote? Have people got over that? Apparently not. Short ‘generations’ these days.

  11. david agnew says:

    This isn’t about Scotland, its about England. This is a last ditch attempt to try and scare floating voters to vote conservative and hopefully win without the need of a coalition. Bevan once said of the tories: “Every election they must have a bogeyman, when you don’t have a programme a bogeyman will do”. So lets monster Scotland and trash its reputation. Lets paint it as red in tooth and claw. We can’t let them impose a labour government on us. etc. etc. You have to conveniently forget that Scotland has been more or less voting for exactly that; a labour government, since before his party crashed and burned in 97. he didn’t seem too troubled then, to paint it as some sort of coup.

    They all seem to have conveniently forgotten. even Labour has gotten in on the act. Narrative and counter narrative competing with one another as to who will be under the SNP thumb. The end result is that they are creating a new narrative. One where there is now no party Scotland could ever vote for that wouldn’t be seen as un-democratic.

  12. Johnny come lately says:

    It wouldn’t be seen as undemocratic if Scotland voted for one of the unionist parties:)

  13. Big jock says:

    Fiddling fraudsters, flapping like flipper, fighting for fish!

    1. Frederick Robinson says:

      As someone said of one of Cameron’s cliches: ‘Alliteration instead of thought’.

  14. revjimbob says:

    ‘massive economic failure’
    Slightly unfair, considering the financial disaster which we had the following decade.

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      What, Black Wednesday wasn’t a disaster? They put up interest rates 15% in one day.

      1. dunderheid says:

        No they didn’t…it went up from 10% to 15% in one day and then back to 10% the next day after they exited the ERM…then down to 7% within 3 months

        But you know…don’t let facts get in the way some good old fashioned tory-bashing

  15. junius45 says:

    And he tucked his pullover into his drawers as Edwina kissed & told, the bitch. 🙂

  16. dunderheid says:

    Lets not let any facts get in the way of some tribalist tory-bashing shall we….

    Major was only against devolution because he believed it would inexorably lead to independence – given recent events he might not have been wild off base with that one

    Major did not preside over a “tory free” Scotland. In fact in 92 for his first election he won a record high (since 83) number of Scottish seats. Yes he did lose them all in the 97 election with a 8% swing in Scotland against him…but erm…that was less than the 12% national swing…seems he was more popular in Scotland in 97 than in England

    Black Wednesday was the result of trying to peg sterling against the deutschmark as a pre-cursor to full currency union (a policy the SNP – “Independence in Europe” – fully endorsed at the time). The markets didn’t agree with the rate at which the peg was set and started making massive currency bets against by selling sterling – to stop this the UK had the choice of pushing interest rates to levels that would bankrupt everyone who had any debt or exiting the ERM and by extension the future Euro and letting the currency float. I know the SNP have difficulty with currencies and how they work but i think you could still see why that was the good decision…

    As a result of the decision to let the currency float led to one of the most prolonged periods of growth in UK history and to us avoiding the disaster that has become the Euro. Again something the SNP until their damascene conversion in 2012 (brought on by reasoned and detailed macro-economic analysis and obviously not the fact they looked round and saw every European economy immolate themselves to prevent german housewives paying too much for fridges) were fully committed for an independent Scotland to be part of.

  17. Darien says:

    You spoke too soon Mike – Broon is being let uit the nicht tae speak tae whits left o’ the Labour faithful. In a kirk of course. Getting ready for another vow nae doot.

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