What's eating John Major?

Eighty-year old Sir John Major does not appear to be enjoying a peaceful retirement. Judging by his frequent tetchy interventions in public life, the former prime minister is far from a happy bunny.

Sir John’s latest outburst was not on his usual hobby horses of the iniquities of Boris Johnson or the horrors of Brexit, but came in a speech – delivered to the liberal Prison Reform Trust at the Old Bailey of all places – that will give comfort to the criminal community. For Major is worried that we are locking up too many people for minor offences.

On this topic – as on so many others – Major is out of step with public opinion. Most people rightly think that our courts and judges are often unforgivably lax and far too inclined to let offenders off with a non-custodial sentence for crimes for which they should be doing time.

But the interesting question about Major is not so much why he espouses such non-Tory views on law and order, (they are, after all, the standard fare of the chattering classes) – but why he seems compelled to utter them in ways designed to be unhelpful to the party that he presumably still nominally supports.

Despite this disaster, Major continued to blindly pursue his pro-EU path

Unlike Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, whose post-power thoughts are generally positive and supportive of the current Labour leadership, Major has inherited Ted Heath’s role as the incredible sulk – the bearer of the longest grudge in British political life.