The Conservatives deploy ‘the John Major story’
John Major has just finished giving a quiet but powerful speech to Conservative supporters in Solihull.
The stuff about the ‘danger’ from the SNP, briefed to the papers overnight, wasn’t new, but this didn’t stop Sir John adding his weight to the warning: the SNP he said is “a clear and present danger” and would create “merry hell” as they barter their way towards their end goal of Scottish Independence.
But the most memorable bits of the speech were the personal ones. Sir John told us that he wasn’t born into the Conservative party – “My family had absolutely nothing”- but preferred the Conservatives offering him “a hand up” to Labour offering him “a hand down”.
This is something which, for obvious reasons, David Cameron could never say.
Sir John may may have led the Tories to their worst ever defeat in 1997 but for his ‘story’ as well as the gravitas which comes with having held the highest office in the land he is an asset to the party.