Back to Basics

It was a lecture on personal morality — what did you *think* was going to happen?

John Major, 1993

I was hanging out on YouTube over the weekend and being served with hit after hit: the small Brooklyn business that makes 300,000 cannolis a year by hand, an animated retelling of a 1964 phone call in which President Lyndon Johnson orders trousers and a compilation of all six Karel Poborský goals for Manchester United.

Then, just as my mouse hovered over the ‘close tab’ icon, the algorithm threw one final tempter: John Major’s address to the 1993 Conservative Party conference, better known as ‘Back to Basics’. If you saw the speech on the evening news, a couple of questions: first, did you remember to take your statins this morning? And second, how many Tory ministers can you remember falling foul of the new standard of morality?

Most were disappointingly short on name recognition. There was heritage secretary David Mellor, whose affair with an actress breached containment largely as a result of the detail about him wearing a Chelsea kit during sex — though this was revealed to be a fabrication dreamed up by publicist (and later convicted sex offender) Max Clifford.

Other MPs caught up in various trysts include Tim Yeo, Rod Richards, Robert Hughes, Gary Waller and Richard Spring of “three in a bed sex romp” News of the World front page fame. Less amusing was the case of Stephen Milligan, who died of asphyxiation as part of an apparent auto-erotic act.

Of course, sex was only one part of what became widely known as ‘Tory Sleaze’. In addition, there were the usual irregularities, from ‘cash for questions’ and ‘homes for votes’ to Jonathan Aitken’s eventual perjury conviction. Personally, I hold a candle for junior Scotland Office minister Allan Stewart, who resigned in February 1995 after waving a pickaxe at an anti-motorway protester¹. For good measure, Stewart stood down as an MP at the 1997 election following allegations of an affair.

Back to Basics, Bitch

The prime minister later claimed that he never intended the slogan to be a lecture on personal morality, and therefore that media efforts to construe it as such were terribly unfair. And cards on the table — for a combination of personal and ideological reasons, this newsletter has at times been a nakedly pro-Major publication.

From a young age, I could do a serviceable Major impersonation (it’s essentially Kermit the Frog turned down to a three or four). And as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to admire a political tradition predicated on preserving social stability, building on existing institutions and recognising the importance of free markets for generating wealth (and funding the social safety net).

So it is a pity that the present-day Conservative Party has lurched quite so far to the populist Right.

But Major’s central contention — that ‘Back to Basics’ in no way made the private lives of Tory MPs or their “silly indiscretions” fair game — is worth examination. Because, having both watched and read the speech, I’m not entirely sure I agree. Consider the crucial paragraph:

Do you know, the truth is, much as things have changed on the surface, underneath we’re still the same people. The old values — neighbourliness, decency, courtesy — they’re still alive, they’re still the best of Britain. They haven’t changed, and yet somehow people feel embarrassed by them. Madam President, we shouldn’t be. It is time to return to those old core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting a responsibility for yourself and your family and not shuffling off on other people and the state.

In other words, can we kind of forget about the social reforms of the 1960s and pretend Roy Jenkins never stepped foot in the Home Office? Sure, Major doesn’t pretend to be Moses clasping some stone tablets with the words ‘Thou shalt not shag your secretary”. But come on.

If you’re going to tell other people how to live, don’t be surprised if they take a view about your life choices too. Look, I don’t think anyone, public or private, should be ‘outed’ by a national newspaper or indeed anyone else. But if that person votes to ‘protect’ marriage as being between a man and a woman, then they have made themselves fair game.

Only homophobes hate homosexuals —whereas everyone hates hypocrites.

And while the word ‘sex’ does not pass Major’s lips, he does take the time to promise a “big crackdown” on the “loathsome trade in pornography”. Though, given how much extra-marital sex so many of his backbenchers appeared to be enjoying, it is difficult to imagine they had sufficient time alone to make use of any such illicit material.

Tomorrow (that’s right, another double bill), we return to the speech, consider why Major did it (hint: Maastricht, Thatcher’s memoirs) and gawk at the frankly glaring similarities it had with another Tory chancellor-turned-prime minister under pressure and trying — not wholly persuasively — to overturn several decades of political consensus for short-term political gain. What fun.

It’s my birthday today! Not got me anything? Why not give the gift of Lines To Take to someone you think would enjoy it. Thanks, Jack.

1. Specifically, construction of the M77, which runs for 20 miles between Glasgow and Fenwick. What? I just think Lines To Take readers expect a little more.