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The Right Honourable Sir John Major, Knight of the
Garter|KG, Order of the Companions of Honour|CH
(born 29 March 1943) is a United Kingdom|British
politician who served in the Cabinets of Margaret
Thatcher as Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs|Foreign
Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer before
succeeding Thatcher as Conservative Party
(UK)|Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1997. He
retired from the British House of Commons|House of
Commons in the United Kingdom general election,
2001|2001 general election.
==Early life==
John Major was born on 29 March 1943, the son of
Tom Major-Ball, a travelling showman.  He was
christened John Roy Major but only the name John
is shown on his birth certificate. He used the
middle name Roy until the early 1980s.

He was born at the St Helier Hospital, Carshalton
in the wealthy Worcester Park area of London
Borough of Sutton|Sutton and he grew up in the
much poorer Brixton where the family were forced
to move after the failure of his father's
business. He had an undistinguished education at
Rutlish Grammar School and left school at 16. He
applied to become a bus conductor, but his
application was rejected, allegedly because of
poor arithmetic.  His first job was as a clerk in
an insurance brokerage firm in 1959, and, for a
time, he manufactured gnomes with his brother,
Terry Major-Ball. He eventually went to work as an
executive at Standard Chartered Bank in May 1965
where he rose quickly through the ranks, before
leaving on his election to Parliament of the
United Kingdom|Parliament in 1979.  He is an
Associate of the Institute of Bankers.

He married Norma Major|Norma Wagstaff (now Lady
Major) on 3 October 1970.  They have a son (James
Major) and a daughter (Elizabeth Major).

==Political career==
===Early political career===
Major was interested in politics from an early
age, giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton
market. He stood as a candidate for London Borough
of Lambeth|Lambeth Borough Council at the age of
21 in 1964, and was unexpectedly elected in the
Conservative landslide in 1968. While on the
council he served as Vice-Chairman of the Housing
Committee, being responsible for the building of
several council housing estates. Despite moving to
a ward which was easier for the Conservatives to
win, he lost his seat in 1971.

He stood for election to Parliament in St. Pancras
North in both general elections of 1974 but failed
to win the traditionally Labour Party (UK)|Labour
seat. In May 1976 he was selected by Huntingdon
(UK Parliament constituency)|Huntingdonshire
Conservatives as their candidate at the next
election, winning the safe seat in the United
Kingdom general election, 1979|1979 general
election. Following boundary changes, Major became
Member of Parliament|MP for Huntingdon in 1983 and
subsequently won the seat in the United Kingdom
general election, 1987|1987, United Kingdom
general election, 1992|1992 and United Kingdom
general election, 1997|1997 elections. He stood
down at the United Kingdom general election,
2001|2001 general election.

He was a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1981
and an whip (politics)|assistant whip from 1983.
He was made Under-Secretary of State for Social
Security in 1985 and became political
minister|minister of the same department in 1986.
He entered the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the
Treasury in 1987, and he was appointed Secretary
of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs|Foreign Secretary in 1989. He spent only
three months in that post before becoming
Chancellor of the Exchequer after Nigel Lawson's
resignation in October 1989. Major presented only
one budget (the first one to be televised) in the
spring of 1990. He publicised it as a budget for
savings and announced the TESSA (Tax Exempt
Special Savings Account) arguing that measures
were required to address the marked fall in the
household savings ratio that had been apparent
during the previous financial year.

When Michael Heseltine's challenge to Margaret
Thatcher's leadership of the Conservative Party
forced the contest to a second round and Thatcher
withdrew, Major entered the contest alongside
Douglas Hurd. Though he fell two votes short of
the required winning margin of 187 votes in the
second ballot, Major's result was sufficient to
secure immediate concessions from his rivals and
he became Leader of the Conservative Party on 27
November 1990. The next day, 28 November  1990,
Major was summoned to Buckingham Palace and
appointed Prime Minister

===Major as Prime Minister===
Major was Prime Minister during the Gulf War.
During the first years in office, the world
economy slid into recession after the long boom
during the 1980s. Expected to lose the United
Kingdom general election, 1992|1992 election to
Neil Kinnock, Major took his campaign onto the
streets, famously delivering many addresses from
an upturned soapbox as in his Lambeth days. This
populist "common touch", in contrast to the Labour
Party's more slick campaign, chimed with the
electorate and Major won an unexpected second
period in office, albeit with a small
parliamentary majority. This proved to be
unmanageable, particularly after the United
Kingdom's forced exit from the Exchange Rate
Mechanism|ERM on Black Wednesday (16 September
1992) just five months into the new parliament.

Despite Major's best efforts, the Conservative
Party collapsed into political infighting. Major
took a moderate approach but found himself
undermined by the right-wing within the party and
the Cabinet. In particular, his policy towards the
European Union aroused opposition as the
Government attempted to ratify the Maastricht
Treaty. Although the Labour opposition supported
the treaty, they were prepared to undertake
tactical moves to weaken the government, which
included passing an amendment that required a vote
on the social chapter aspects of the treaty before
it could be ratified. Several Conservative MPs
voted against the Government and the vote was
lost. Major hit back by calling another vote on
the following day (23 July 1993), which he
declared a vote of confidence. He won by 40 but
had damaged his authority.

Later that day, Major gave an interview to ITN's
Michael Brunson. During an unguarded moment when
he thought that the microphones had been switched
off, Brunson asked why he did not sack the
Ministers who were conspiring against him. He
replied "We don't want another three more of the
bastards out there. What's Lyndon B. Johnson's
maxim?..." Major later claimed that he had picked
the number three from the air, but many
journalists immediately named the three as Peter
Lilley, Michael Portillo and Michael Howard, who
were three of the more prominent "Eurosceptics"
(throughout the rest of Major's premiership the
exact identity of the three would be blurred, with
John Redwood's name frequently appearing in a list
along with two of the others). The tape of this
conversation was leaked to the Daily Mirror and
widely reported, embarrassing Major. (The maxim
referred to is Johnson's famous comment about J.
Edgar Hoover. Johnson had once sought a way to
remove Hoover from his post as head of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation|FBI, but upon realizing
that the problems involved in such a plan were
insurmountable, he accepted Hoover's presence
philosophically, reasoning that it would be
"better to have him inside the tent pissing out,
than outside pissing in").

At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference, Major
began the "Back to Basics" campaign, which he
intended to be about the economy, education,
policing, and other such issues. However, it was
interpreted by many (including Conservative
cabinet ministers) as being about personal
morality. As a result, it disastrously back-fired
on him by providing an excuse for the British
media to expose "sleaze" within the Conservative
Party and, most damagingly, within the Cabinet
itself.

Despite opening talks with the IRA when he took
office, Major continually denied he had done so.
When, in November 1993, he declared in the House
of Commons that "to sit down and talk with Gerry
Adams|Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA...would
turn my stomach", Sinn FÊin gave the media an
outline of the secret talks held regularly since
February. An IRA ceasefire was called in 1994. In
the House of Commons he refused to sign up to the
first draft of the "George Mitchell Principles"
which in turn ended the 1994 IRA cease fire. In
March 1995, Major refused for several days to
answer the phone calls of United States President
Bill Clinton, angered at his decision to invite
Gerry Adams to the White House for Saint Patrick's
Day
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,124363
8,00.html.

In 1995, tired at continual threats of leadership
challenges that never arose, he resigned as Leader
of the Conservative Party, and announced he would
be contesting the resulting leadership election.
John Redwood, the Secretary of State for Wales
stood against him. Major won by 218 votes to
Redwood's 89 (with 12 spoiled ballots, 8
abstentions and 2 MPs not voting at all) - easily
enough to win in the first round, but only 3 more
than the target he had privately set himself. 

His re-election failed to restore his authority. 
Despite his best efforts to restore or at least
improve the popularity of the Conservative party,
Labour remained far ahead in the opinion polls as
the election approached.  By December 1996, the
Conservatives had lost their majority in the House
of Commons. Major managed to survive to the end of
the Parliament, but called an election in March
1997 as the five-year limit for its timing
approached.  Major delayed the election in the
hopes that an improving economy would help the
Conservatives win a greater number of seats, but
the gamble failed and Labour won a massive
majority.

===1997 General Election Defeat===
On 1 May 1997 the Conservative party suffered one
of the worst electoral defeats since the Great
Reform Act of 1832.  In the new parliament Labour
won 418 seats, the Conservatives 165, and the
Liberal Democrats 46.  After the defeat
commentators speculated on whether or not it would
be possible for the Conservatives to overturn such
a large majority in a single election.

John Major himself was reelected in his
constituency of Huntingdon with a majority of over
18,000.  However, 179 Conservative MPs were
defeated and only 165 were returned, leaving the
Labour party with a majority of 179.

At about noon on 2 May 1997, John Major officially
tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom to Queen Elizabeth II.  Shortly
before his resignation, he gave his final
statement from Number Ten, in which he said that
"when the curtain falls, it's time to get off the
stage."  Major then said that he would go and
watch cricket later that day with his family.

Following his resignation as Prime Minister, Major
briefly became Leader of the Opposition and
remained in this post until the election of
William Hague as leader of the Conservative Party
in June 1997.

===After leaving office===
Few were surprised when Major lost the United
Kingdom general election, 1997|1997 general
election to Tony Blair, though the immense scale
of the defeat was not widely predicted. This loss
led to his resignation as Leader of the
Conservative Party. Since then Major has, in
marked contrast to his predecessor (Margaret
Thatcher), tended to take a low profile and to
stay out of front-line politics, contributing only
occasionally from the back benches and indulging
his love of cricket as president of Surrey County
Cricket Club.  In March 2001 he gave the tribute
to Colin Cowdrey at the latter's memorial service
in Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was elected to
the Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club
(MCC), historically the governing body of the
sport, and still guardian of the laws of the game.

Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in
1997, Major was appointed a special guardian to
Princes Prince William|William and Prince
Harry|Harry, with responsibility for legal and
administrative matters.

He has been a member of Carlyle Group's European
Advisory Board since 1998 and was appointed
Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. He stood
down from Parliament at the United Kingdom general
election, 2001|2001 general election and has so
far declined the customary life peerage and seat
in the House of Lords that is given to former
Prime Ministers. He was knighted in 2005. He has
played only a very limited role in Conservative
Party politics since 1997, although he did support
the (unsuccessful) campaign of his former
Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, for the party
leadership in 2001, against strong Eurosceptic
Iain Duncan Smith.

Major's quiet retirement was spectacularly
disrupted by the revelation in September 2002
that, prior to his promotion to the Cabinet, Major
had had a four-year sex scandal|extramarital
affair with a fellow MP, Edwina Currie.
Commentators were quick to refer to Major's
previous Back to Basics platform to throw charges
of hypocrisy.

In February 2005 it was reported that Major and
Norman Lamont were holding up the release of
papers on Black Wednesday under the Freedom of
Information Act. Major angrily denied doing so,
saying that he had not heard of the request until
the scheduled release date and had merely asked to
look at the papers himself.

==Media representation==
During his leadership of the Conservative Party,
Major was portrayed as an honest ("Honest John")
but otherwise dull man, unable to rein in the
philandering, bickering and general sleaze within
his party. John Major's appearance was noted in
its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large
glasses, all of which were exaggerated in
caricatures. For example, in Spitting Image,
Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer
to that of a grey man who ate dinner with his wife
in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear".
The media (particularly The Guardian cartoonist
Steve Bell) used the fact that Major was observed
by Alastair Campbell tucking his shirt into his
underpants to caricature him
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,737
1,802577,00.html wearing his pants outside his
trousers, as a pale grey echo of Superman.

Private Eye parodied Sue Townsend's The Secret
Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13¾ to write The
Secret Diary of John Major, age 47¾,
featuring "my wife Norma Major|Norman" and "Brian
Mawhinney|Mr. Dr. Mawhinney" as recurring
characters. The magazine still runs one-off
specials of this diary (with the age updated) on
occasions when Sir John is in the news, such as on
the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the
launch of his autobiography.

Owing to the fact that he grew up in Brixton, the
so-called "capital of the Jamaican community in
London", he was regularly joked about as being
Rankin' John Major by Curtis Walker and Ishmael
Thomas, the hosts of an early 1990s BBC comedy
programme called Paramount City
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/p/param
ountcity_7775080.shtml.
Later he would also be depicted as Johnny Reggae
by the cast of 
The Real McCoy,(BBC)|The Real McCoy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/r/realm
ccoythe_1299002606.shtml. His Brixton roots were
also used by the Conservative Party's 1997
Election campaign in 'Black' newspaper The Voice,
using the slogan 'What can the Conservative Party
offer a working class kid from Brixton? It made
him Prime Minister'.
He is also most likely the Prime Minister featured
in J.K. Rowling's novel Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince

==Honours==

In the New Year's Honours List of 1999, John Major
was made a Companion of Honour for his work on the
Northern Ireland Peace Process. On April 23, 2005,
Major was made a Knight of the Garter|Knight
Companion of the Order of the Garter by Elizabeth
II of the United Kingdom|Queen Elizabeth II. He
formally received the honor on June 13, along with
Mary Soames, Baroness Soames|Lady Soames and Tom
Bingham, Baron Bingham of Cornhill|Lord Bingham of
Cornhill. Membership of the Order of the Garter is
an honour traditionally bestowed on former British
prime ministers (though, since it is an order
associated specifically with England, a
Scotland|Scottish prime minister would most likely
be made a Order of the Thistle|Knight of the
Thistle). It is limited, however, to twenty-five
people; the deaths of Francis Aungier Pakenham,
7th Earl of Longford|Lord Longford in 2001, the
Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire|Duke of
Devonshire late in 2004 and the former Labour
prime minister James Callaghan in March 2005
reduced the number of members of the Order to
twenty-two. This enabled Major and two others to
be appointed on St George's Day, the traditional
date of accessions to the Order. (Another vacancy
was apparent in July 2005 after the death of Sir
Edward Heath.)

==Titles and honours==
===Styles from birth===
*John Major, Esq ( 1943 - 1979 )
*John Major, Esq, MP ( 1979 - 1987 )
*The Rt Hon John Major, MP ( 1987 - 1999 )
*The Rt Hon John Major, CH, MP ( 1999 - 2001 )
*The Rt Hon John Major, CH ( 2001 - 2005 )
*The Rt Hon Sir John Major, KG, CH ( 2005 -    )

===Honours===
*Privy Council|Lord of Her Majesty's Most
Honourable Privy Council (1987)
*Companion of Honour|Member of the Order of the
Companions of Honour (1999)
*Knight of the Garter|Knight Companion of the Most
Noble Order of the Garter (2005)
==See also==
*Major Ministry
==External links==
*http://www.nmplive.co.uk/ Book John Major for
Keynote and Conference Talks
*http://politics.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,9174,
534415,00.html John Major's "bastard" quote from
The Observer
*http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/ An unofficial web
site about the 1990-1997 Conservative
administration.
*http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpn=John_Majo
r&mpc=Huntingdon The Public Whip - John Major MP
voting record

start box
succession box |
  before=Geoffrey Howe|Sir Geoffrey Howe |
  title=Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs|Foreign Secretary |
  years=1989 | after=Douglas Hurd

succession box |
  before=Nigel Lawson |
  title=Chancellor of the Exchequer |
  years=1989–1990 | after=Norman Lamont

succession box one to two |
  before=Margaret Thatcher |
  title1=Conservative Party (UK)|Leader of the
British Conservative Party |
  years1=1990–1997 |
  after1=William Hague |
  title2=Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom|Prime Minister |
  years2=1990–1997 |
  after2=Tony Blair

end box

	Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

The Right Honourable Sir John Major, Knight of the
Garter|KG, Order of the Companions of Honour|CH
(born 29 March 1943) is a United Kingdom|British
politician who served in the Cabinets of Margaret
Thatcher as Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs|Foreign
Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer before
succeeding Thatcher as Conservative Party
(UK)|Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1997. He
retired from the British House of Commons|House of
Commons in the United Kingdom general election,
2001|2001 general election.
==Early life==
John Major was born on 29 March 1943, the son of
Tom Major-Ball, a travelling showman.  He was
christened John Roy Major but only the name John
is shown on his birth certificate. He used the
middle name Roy until the early 1980s.

He was born at the St Helier Hospital, Carshalton
in the wealthy Worcester Park area of London
Borough of Sutton|Sutton and he grew up in the
much poorer Brixton where the family were forced
to move after the failure of his father's
business. He had an undistinguished education at
Rutlish Grammar School and left school at 16. He
applied to become a bus conductor, but his
application was rejected, allegedly because of
poor arithmetic.  His first job was as a clerk in
an insurance brokerage firm in 1959, and, for a
time, he manufactured gnomes with his brother,
Terry Major-Ball. He eventually went to work as an
executive at Standard Chartered Bank in May 1965
where he rose quickly through the ranks, before
leaving on his election to Parliament of the
United Kingdom|Parliament in 1979.  He is an
Associate of the Institute of Bankers.

He married Norma Major|Norma Wagstaff (now Lady
Major) on 3 October 1970.  They have a son (James
Major) and a daughter (Elizabeth Major).

==Political career==
===Early political career===
Major was interested in politics from an early
age, giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton
market. He stood as a candidate for London Borough
of Lambeth|Lambeth Borough Council at the age of
21 in 1964, and was unexpectedly elected in the
Conservative landslide in 1968. While on the
council he served as Vice-Chairman of the Housing
Committee, being responsible for the building of
several council housing estates. Despite moving to
a ward which was easier for the Conservatives to
win, he lost his seat in 1971.

He stood for election to Parliament in St. Pancras
North in both general elections of 1974 but failed
to win the traditionally Labour Party (UK)|Labour
seat. In May 1976 he was selected by Huntingdon
(UK Parliament constituency)|Huntingdonshire
Conservatives as their candidate at the next
election, winning the safe seat in the United
Kingdom general election, 1979|1979 general
election. Following boundary changes, Major became
Member of Parliament|MP for Huntingdon in 1983 and
subsequently won the seat in the United Kingdom
general election, 1987|1987, United Kingdom
general election, 1992|1992 and United Kingdom
general election, 1997|1997 elections. He stood
down at the United Kingdom general election,
2001|2001 general election.

He was a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1981
and an whip (politics)|assistant whip from 1983.
He was made Under-Secretary of State for Social
Security in 1985 and became political
minister|minister of the same department in 1986.
He entered the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the
Treasury in 1987, and he was appointed Secretary
of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs|Foreign Secretary in 1989. He spent only
three months in that post before becoming
Chancellor of the Exchequer after Nigel Lawson's
resignation in October 1989. Major presented only
one budget (the first one to be televised) in the
spring of 1990. He publicised it as a budget for
savings and announced the TESSA (Tax Exempt
Special Savings Account) arguing that measures
were required to address the marked fall in the
household savings ratio that had been apparent
during the previous financial year.

When Michael Heseltine's challenge to Margaret
Thatcher's leadership of the Conservative Party
forced the contest to a second round and Thatcher
withdrew, Major entered the contest alongside
Douglas Hurd. Though he fell two votes short of
the required winning margin of 187 votes in the
second ballot, Major's result was sufficient to
secure immediate concessions from his rivals and
he became Leader of the Conservative Party on 27
November 1990. The next day, 28 November  1990,
Major was summoned to Buckingham Palace and
appointed Prime Minister

===Major as Prime Minister===
Major was Prime Minister during the Gulf War.
During the first years in office, the world
economy slid into recession after the long boom
during the 1980s. Expected to lose the United
Kingdom general election, 1992|1992 election to
Neil Kinnock, Major took his campaign onto the
streets, famously delivering many addresses from
an upturned soapbox as in his Lambeth days. This
populist "common touch", in contrast to the Labour
Party's more slick campaign, chimed with the
electorate and Major won an unexpected second
period in office, albeit with a small
parliamentary majority. This proved to be
unmanageable, particularly after the United
Kingdom's forced exit from the Exchange Rate
Mechanism|ERM on Black Wednesday (16 September
1992) just five months into the new parliament.

Despite Major's best efforts, the Conservative
Party collapsed into political infighting. Major
took a moderate approach but found himself
undermined by the right-wing within the party and
the Cabinet. In particular, his policy towards the
European Union aroused opposition as the
Government attempted to ratify the Maastricht
Treaty. Although the Labour opposition supported
the treaty, they were prepared to undertake
tactical moves to weaken the government, which
included passing an amendment that required a vote
on the social chapter aspects of the treaty before
it could be ratified. Several Conservative MPs
voted against the Government and the vote was
lost. Major hit back by calling another vote on
the following day (23 July 1993), which he
declared a vote of confidence. He won by 40 but
had damaged his authority.

Later that day, Major gave an interview to ITN's
Michael Brunson. During an unguarded moment when
he thought that the microphones had been switched
off, Brunson asked why he did not sack the
Ministers who were conspiring against him. He
replied "We don't want another three more of the
bastards out there. What's Lyndon B. Johnson's
maxim?..." Major later claimed that he had picked
the number three from the air, but many
journalists immediately named the three as Peter
Lilley, Michael Portillo and Michael Howard, who
were three of the more prominent "Eurosceptics"
(throughout the rest of Major's premiership the
exact identity of the three would be blurred, with
John Redwood's name frequently appearing in a list
along with two of the others). The tape of this
conversation was leaked to the Daily Mirror and
widely reported, embarrassing Major. (The maxim
referred to is Johnson's famous comment about J.
Edgar Hoover. Johnson had once sought a way to
remove Hoover from his post as head of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation|FBI, but upon realizing
that the problems involved in such a plan were
insurmountable, he accepted Hoover's presence
philosophically, reasoning that it would be
"better to have him inside the tent pissing out,
than outside pissing in").

At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference, Major
began the "Back to Basics" campaign, which he
intended to be about the economy, education,
policing, and other such issues. However, it was
interpreted by many (including Conservative
cabinet ministers) as being about personal
morality. As a result, it disastrously back-fired
on him by providing an excuse for the British
media to expose "sleaze" within the Conservative
Party and, most damagingly, within the Cabinet
itself.

Despite opening talks with the IRA when he took
office, Major continually denied he had done so.
When, in November 1993, he declared in the House
of Commons that "to sit down and talk with Gerry
Adams|Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA...would
turn my stomach", Sinn FÊin gave the media an
outline of the secret talks held regularly since
February. An IRA ceasefire was called in 1994. In
the House of Commons he refused to sign up to the
first draft of the "George Mitchell Principles"
which in turn ended the 1994 IRA cease fire. In
March 1995, Major refused for several days to
answer the phone calls of United States President
Bill Clinton, angered at his decision to invite
Gerry Adams to the White House for Saint Patrick's
Day
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,124363
8,00.html.

In 1995, tired at continual threats of leadership
challenges that never arose, he resigned as Leader
of the Conservative Party, and announced he would
be contesting the resulting leadership election.
John Redwood, the Secretary of State for Wales
stood against him. Major won by 218 votes to
Redwood's 89 (with 12 spoiled ballots, 8
abstentions and 2 MPs not voting at all) - easily
enough to win in the first round, but only 3 more
than the target he had privately set himself. 

His re-election failed to restore his authority. 
Despite his best efforts to restore or at least
improve the popularity of the Conservative party,
Labour remained far ahead in the opinion polls as
the election approached.  By December 1996, the
Conservatives had lost their majority in the House
of Commons. Major managed to survive to the end of
the Parliament, but called an election in March
1997 as the five-year limit for its timing
approached.  Major delayed the election in the
hopes that an improving economy would help the
Conservatives win a greater number of seats, but
the gamble failed and Labour won a massive
majority.

===1997 General Election Defeat===
On 1 May 1997 the Conservative party suffered one
of the worst electoral defeats since the Great
Reform Act of 1832.  In the new parliament Labour
won 418 seats, the Conservatives 165, and the
Liberal Democrats 46.  After the defeat
commentators speculated on whether or not it would
be possible for the Conservatives to overturn such
a large majority in a single election.

John Major himself was reelected in his
constituency of Huntingdon with a majority of over
18,000.  However, 179 Conservative MPs were
defeated and only 165 were returned, leaving the
Labour party with a majority of 179.

At about noon on 2 May 1997, John Major officially
tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom to Queen Elizabeth II.  Shortly
before his resignation, he gave his final
statement from Number Ten, in which he said that
"when the curtain falls, it's time to get off the
stage."  Major then said that he would go and
watch cricket later that day with his family.

Following his resignation as Prime Minister, Major
briefly became Leader of the Opposition and
remained in this post until the election of
William Hague as leader of the Conservative Party
in June 1997.

===After leaving office===
Few were surprised when Major lost the United
Kingdom general election, 1997|1997 general
election to Tony Blair, though the immense scale
of the defeat was not widely predicted. This loss
led to his resignation as Leader of the
Conservative Party. Since then Major has, in
marked contrast to his predecessor (Margaret
Thatcher), tended to take a low profile and to
stay out of front-line politics, contributing only
occasionally from the back benches and indulging
his love of cricket as president of Surrey County
Cricket Club.  In March 2001 he gave the tribute
to Colin Cowdrey at the latter's memorial service
in Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was elected to
the Committee of the Marylebone Cricket Club
(MCC), historically the governing body of the
sport, and still guardian of the laws of the game.

Following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in
1997, Major was appointed a special guardian to
Princes Prince William|William and Prince
Harry|Harry, with responsibility for legal and
administrative matters.

He has been a member of Carlyle Group's European
Advisory Board since 1998 and was appointed
Chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. He stood
down from Parliament at the United Kingdom general
election, 2001|2001 general election and has so
far declined the customary life peerage and seat
in the House of Lords that is given to former
Prime Ministers. He was knighted in 2005. He has
played only a very limited role in Conservative
Party politics since 1997, although he did support
the (unsuccessful) campaign of his former
Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, for the party
leadership in 2001, against strong Eurosceptic
Iain Duncan Smith.

Major's quiet retirement was spectacularly
disrupted by the revelation in September 2002
that, prior to his promotion to the Cabinet, Major
had had a four-year sex scandal|extramarital
affair with a fellow MP, Edwina Currie.
Commentators were quick to refer to Major's
previous Back to Basics platform to throw charges
of hypocrisy.

In February 2005 it was reported that Major and
Norman Lamont were holding up the release of
papers on Black Wednesday under the Freedom of
Information Act. Major angrily denied doing so,
saying that he had not heard of the request until
the scheduled release date and had merely asked to
look at the papers himself.

==Media representation==
During his leadership of the Conservative Party,
Major was portrayed as an honest ("Honest John")
but otherwise dull man, unable to rein in the
philandering, bickering and general sleaze within
his party. John Major's appearance was noted in
its greyness, his prodigious philtrum, and large
glasses, all of which were exaggerated in
caricatures. For example, in Spitting Image,
Major's puppet was changed from a circus performer
to that of a grey man who ate dinner with his wife
in silence, occasionally saying "nice peas, dear".
The media (particularly The Guardian cartoonist
Steve Bell) used the fact that Major was observed
by Alastair Campbell tucking his shirt into his
underpants to caricature him
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,737
1,802577,00.html wearing his pants outside his
trousers, as a pale grey echo of Superman.

Private Eye parodied Sue Townsend's The Secret
Diary of Adrian Mole, age 13¾ to write The
Secret Diary of John Major, age 47¾,
featuring "my wife Norma Major|Norman" and "Brian
Mawhinney|Mr. Dr. Mawhinney" as recurring
characters. The magazine still runs one-off
specials of this diary (with the age updated) on
occasions when Sir John is in the news, such as on
the breaking of the Edwina Currie story or the
launch of his autobiography.

Owing to the fact that he grew up in Brixton, the
so-called "capital of the Jamaican community in
London", he was regularly joked about as being
Rankin' John Major by Curtis Walker and Ishmael
Thomas, the hosts of an early 1990s BBC comedy
programme called Paramount City
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/p/param
ountcity_7775080.shtml.
Later he would also be depicted as Johnny Reggae
by the cast of 
The Real McCoy,(BBC)|The Real McCoy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/r/realm
ccoythe_1299002606.shtml. His Brixton roots were
also used by the Conservative Party's 1997
Election campaign in 'Black' newspaper The Voice,
using the slogan 'What can the Conservative Party
offer a working class kid from Brixton? It made
him Prime Minister'.
He is also most likely the Prime Minister featured
in J.K. Rowling's novel Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince

==Honours==

In the New Year's Honours List of 1999, John Major
was made a Companion of Honour for his work on the
Northern Ireland Peace Process. On April 23, 2005,
Major was made a Knight of the Garter|Knight
Companion of the Order of the Garter by Elizabeth
II of the United Kingdom|Queen Elizabeth II. He
formally received the honor on June 13, along with
Mary Soames, Baroness Soames|Lady Soames and Tom
Bingham, Baron Bingham of Cornhill|Lord Bingham of
Cornhill. Membership of the Order of the Garter is
an honour traditionally bestowed on former British
prime ministers (though, since it is an order
associated specifically with England, a
Scotland|Scottish prime minister would most likely
be made a Order of the Thistle|Knight of the
Thistle). It is limited, however, to twenty-five
people; the deaths of Francis Aungier Pakenham,
7th Earl of Longford|Lord Longford in 2001, the
Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire|Duke of
Devonshire late in 2004 and the former Labour
prime minister James Callaghan in March 2005
reduced the number of members of the Order to
twenty-two. This enabled Major and two others to
be appointed on St George's Day, the traditional
date of accessions to the Order. (Another vacancy
was apparent in July 2005 after the death of Sir
Edward Heath.)

==Titles and honours==
===Styles from birth===
*John Major, Esq ( 1943 - 1979 )
*John Major, Esq, MP ( 1979 - 1987 )
*The Rt Hon John Major, MP ( 1987 - 1999 )
*The Rt Hon John Major, CH, MP ( 1999 - 2001 )
*The Rt Hon John Major, CH ( 2001 - 2005 )
*The Rt Hon Sir John Major, KG, CH ( 2005 -    )

===Honours===
*Privy Council|Lord of Her Majesty's Most
Honourable Privy Council (1987)
*Companion of Honour|Member of the Order of the
Companions of Honour (1999)
*Knight of the Garter|Knight Companion of the Most
Noble Order of the Garter (2005)
==See also==
*Major Ministry
==External links==
*http://www.nmplive.co.uk/ Book John Major for
Keynote and Conference Talks
*http://politics.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,9174,
534415,00.html John Major's "bastard" quote from
The Observer
*http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/ An unofficial web
site about the 1990-1997 Conservative
administration.
*http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpn=John_Majo
r&mpc=Huntingdon The Public Whip - John Major MP
voting record

start box
succession box |
  before=Geoffrey Howe|Sir Geoffrey Howe |
  title=Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs|Foreign Secretary |
  years=1989 | after=Douglas Hurd

succession box |
  before=Nigel Lawson |
  title=Chancellor of the Exchequer |
  years=1989–1990 | after=Norman Lamont

succession box one to two |
  before=Margaret Thatcher |
  title1=Conservative Party (UK)|Leader of the
British Conservative Party |
  years1=1990–1997 |
  after1=William Hague |
  title2=Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom|Prime Minister |
  years2=1990–1997 |
  after2=Tony Blair

end box