Brown, like Major, is falling prey to the media’s habit of linking unrelated stories

Before Christmas, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Sir John Major gave his thoughts on politics ancient and modern. Since leaving Downing Street Sir John has been sparing with his public appearances, and because he has always commanded personal respect and has a fair-minded way of talking, these occasional interventions get attention. The moderation of his language, however, should not distract us from the sharpness of his views.

What attracted the headlines this time were Major’s pointed remarks about ‘sleaze’. He said that in the case of the present government, but not (despite media impressions) his own, sleaze had become ‘systemic’. He did not deny that during the last years of Conservative government in the 20th century a relentless media and opposition barrage attached the word ‘sleaze’ indelibly to the word ‘Tory’, but Sir John insisted that corrupt behaviour in those days was associated with individuals rather than an entire party or government. There was no institutional culture of sleaze. Today, he said, it is different.

This set me thinking. Between 1993 and (for John Major) the end, such was the accumulation of unsavoury stories involving Conservative MPs that, when I was writing my book Great Parliamentary Scandals (now in its fourth edition), my researchers and I gave up individual chapter headings for many of the stories from the Major years, and included instead a bumper chapter called ‘Steve Norris, Tim Yeo, Uncle Tom Cobley & All — 1993-97. Back to Basics’. After that we had to write another chapter, ‘Graham Riddick, David Tredinnick & Many More — 1994-96. Cash for Questions’. And then another: ‘David Ashby — 1994-96, ‘They’re a Bunch of Shits’.

The tales were easily agglomerated thus. So what did Sir John mean when he remarked to Andrew Marr that in his own day sleaze was individual, whereas now it is ‘systemic’? I picked up an old edition of my book and re-read — for the first time in a decade — all those chapters.