John Major
John Major was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1997, won an election nobody expected him to win, and presided over a government destroyed by European division and scandal. Born in Surrey in 1943 to a former music-hall performer who made garden gnomes, he grew up in a two-room Brixton flat after the business failed, left school at sixteen with three O-levels, and was unemployed for a period before working in insurance and banking. He was a Lambeth councillor, entered parliament in 1979, and rose with unusual speed, becoming chief secretary to the Treasury, foreign secretary for three months, and chancellor in 1989. He succeeded Margaret Thatcher in November 1990 after she was forced out. He replaced the poll tax with the council tax, commanded British forces in the Gulf War, and negotiated Britain's opt-outs from the single currency and the social chapter at Maastricht in 1991. He won the 1992 election against Neil Kinnock with the largest popular vote ever recorded in Britain, campaigning from a soapbox. Five months later, on Black Wednesday in September 1992, sterling was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism after the Treasury spent billions defending it, destroying the government's reputation for economic competence in a single day. His party then tore itself apart over Europe. Governing with a small and shrinking majority, he resigned as party leader in 1995 and forced a contest to face down his critics, and a succession of financial and sexual scandals gave the press the word sleaze. He began the Northern Ireland process with the Downing Street Declaration in 1993, work Tony Blair completed. He lost heavily in 1997.
- Lived: 1943 CE – ?
- Nationality: British
- Roles: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1990–97)
