JohnMajor

Quora Answer : What's the general opinion of John Major's time as a PM?

Nov 16, 2017

As Tories go, he was a decent enough chap. Though it's a low bar to get over. Anyone can look like the "nice one" if your competition is Michael Howard and John Redwood and (pre- coming out) Michael Portillo.

He seems also not to have been a misogynist. So that's to his credit.

As a politician he was surprisingly effective. He achieved many of the great offices of state. More or less by stealth.

As a prime-minister he was basically without any useful plan. Most of the big policies were just continuations of Thatcherite policies. Privatising and closing the stuff that even she didn't think she could get away with, because they'd run out of the other stuff.

His government was good on helping set up the Northern Ireland peace process. It's not clear to me how personally involved Major was on this, vs. it being more about the wisdom of the British civil service across all governments. But if he was, I'd give him props. It was probably his greatest achievement.