Eminentoes/Yes, Minister
Brooks, David
Yes, Minister by David Brooks B ritish prime minister John Major's victory over Labour challenger Neil Kinnock was a stunning upset, and shocked nearly all observers except Major himself. Yet, when...
...The AdvertisementGermans run its monetary policy...
...Major just wants to be part of the process, to sit in well-lit rooms with other successful men and manage the world...
...I71 Advertisement The American Spectator November 1992 53...
...A London Times editorial titled "Mr...
...Yet in the House of Commons years back, when he was chancellor of the exchequer and She was prime minister, he could occasionally be seen during debates with head tilted back and a beatific smile on his face...
...Its officials occupy their time with European initiatives...
...Its most promising members—mostly Oxbridge graduates who had known each other since school days—formed a dining club called the Blue Chips, so named because each of them was a potential prime minister...
...Is there anything that arouses emotion in him...
...John Major was not asked to join...
...In the short run, Major's isolation from them served him well: while the Blue Chips waged a wet counterrevolution against Thatcherism, Major was consolidating his position as a junior minister...
...I see Britain as a much more outward-going influence that could be benevolent, and I want to see it exercised...
...And if the prime minister's role is to play within the EC process, then Major, in his dullness, may be the right man for the job...
...Major is extraordinarily stubborn, in many ways more unyielding than Mrs...
...At Maastricht, where European leaders hammered out the malevolent treaty of the same name, Major made Kohl look like a hapless uncle and Mitterrand a doddering old man...
...The Blue Chips were not Thatcherites but "wets," thoroughgoing moderates...
...Now he surrounds himself with Blue Chips and embodies many of theirhabits...
...Major entered the Commons in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, along with a distinguished crop of young MPs...
...Had Richard Darman been British, he would have been a good Blue Chip...
...Major also believes in controlling government spending...
...Indeed, his most recent foreign policy initiative is a proposal for streamlining the G-7 summits...
...and Chris Patten, who was made governor of Hong Kong after managing Major's recent campaign...
...Not a word about why Britain should play a role in world affairs, or about what it could achieve...
...Major Goes Native" expressed the common view that Major was so in love with his amendments to a bad treaty that he wanted to save the whole thing in order to preserve them...
...Major, who felt he had made a personal commitment to the other leaders, is punctilious on points of honor...
...They believed in fiscal prudence but disdained Mrs...
...In important ways he is their superior: he shares none of their superciliousness and is allergic to snobbery...
...At the same time, he has no use for intellectuals or for philosophic principles which in today's argot are known as "ideologies...
...It was the smile of a man who, after a hard climb up the ladder, discovers that . . . yes, it really is fun to have power...
...The EC sets its tax parameters...
...Moreover, he might be just right for Britain's current role, for Britain is now a nation that often finds its fate in the hands of others...
...Members of the hard-line No Turning Back group, these include Michael Portillo, who manages Major's budget...
...But when the Danes rejected Maastricht and gave Major the chance to deep-six the whole treaty, which had been Britain's wish going in, he instead became the champion of its rescue...
...Yet he is not George Bush, with the attention span of a cartoon character and a domestic policy record all over the map...
...It would have soured the working relationship between EC leaders and diminished Britain's influence—as Major defines influence...
...He won those talks, securing Britain the right to opt out of costly EC social provisions...
...If God loves Britain, Michael Portillo will one day be prime minister...
...Major is tougher, and holds oddballs and outside critics in low regard...
...This is his complete answer: 52 The American Spectator November 1992 I want to enhance Britain's position as a nation that is at the heart of Europe, in the center of the G-7 process, maintaining its important links to the Atlantic alliance and becoming, to a greater extent than it has perhaps been in some years in the past, the leader of the Commonwealth and again being seen as such...
...Not too long ago, he was asked by Time magazine what he would like to achieve as prime minister, a simple question that should have called forth his highest ideals...
...It was only under intense pressure that he gave in and devalued the pound when European currencies went berserk in September...
...If the British start taking their marching orders from Brussels, after all, there will be no need for a prime minister who is often ebullient and overjoyed...
...For example, he seems to be the first British prime minister viscerally to hate inflation...
...Thatcher, after all, was a softie, not good at firing those in her party who didn't have her best interests at heart...
...Closer to the truth is that, had Major moved to kill the treaty, it would have upset the other members of the board of directors...
...Among the group's leaders were Tristan Garel Jones, now Major's European affairs minister...
...He believes government can perform a wide range of duties if managed well...
...now Major's education minister...
...Major built his career in banking, and strikes the casual observer as one who is happy only when working through a mountain of paperwork...
...Major is good at summits...
...But Major's lack of true Thatcherite principle is evident...
...John Patten, David Brooks is deputy editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe...
...Yet, when victory was sure, and Major emerged from 10 Downing Street to greet his delirious supporters, he could do no better than drone on about the virtues of a national health service...
...Only when he had made something of himself, in 1985, was he admitted to the Blue Chips...
...He managed to have a maverick committee chairman deposed, andto intimidate a number of rebellious MPs...
...Major and his whips unleashed a lobbying campaign the likes of which Parliament has not seen in years...
...We've developed a distrust of establishments over the last few decades, but if anyone can make establishmentarianism work it will be John Major...
...William Waldegrave, who oversees Major's pet project, the Social Charter...
...John Major, who dropped out of high school and failed the exam to become a bus conductor, is an establishmentarian, and a happy one...
...To the crucial cost-containment posts in his cabinet he has appointed not Blue Chips but the true Thatcherites who dominate the parliamentary Class of 1983...
...But Major is an establishment conservative to the core, one who believes in a government of "the best men...
...Thatcher was, once he has made up his mind...
...After the Danish vote, more than a hundred Tory MPs announced they would oppose the treaty...
...Thatcher's confrontational-ism and her radical streak...
...Coming from a higher class than she, they saw less of a need to shake things up...
...and Peter Lilly, in charge of restraining social security spending...
Vol. 25 • November 1992 • No. 11
