John Major
Sir John Major, KG CH is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. Major served in the Thatcher government from 1987 to 1990, and was Member of Parliament for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. He has since retired from active politics, leaving the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, and has since pursued his interests in business and charity work.
About John Major in brief
Sir John Major, KG CH is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. Major served in the Thatcher government from 1987 to 1990, and was Member of Parliament for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Since Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013, he has been both the oldest and earliest-serving of the living former British prime ministers. Major was born in St Helier, Surrey, the son of Gwen Major and former music hall performer Tom Major-Ball. He was christened John Roy Major but only used his middle name until the early 1980s. His birth had been a difficult one, with his mother suffering from pleurisy and pneumonia and causing an infection to his ankles. Following a German V-1 bomb attack in 1944, his father ran a garden ornaments business and his mother worked as a local library teacher. John Major later described the family’s circumstances as being ‘not well off but not well off at all’ He has since retired from active politics, leaving the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, and has since pursued his interests in business and charity work. He is married to former Labour Party leader Nick Clegg and the couple have a son and a daughter, both of whom were born in the 1970s and 1980s, and a son-in-law to ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair. He has a son, David Major, who is a successful businessman and former director of the London Stock Exchange. He also has a step-son, Michael Major, a former Deputy Prime Minister and a former Director of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) chief executive.
The Major family live in Worcester Park, a middle-class area of Surrey, where they have lived since the 1950s. The family moved from Worcester Park to Brixton due to their worsening financial situation. He left school in 1959 with just three O-levels. After working a variety of jobs and enduring a period of unemployment, he established a career at Standard Bank. In 1987, he joined the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and was promoted to Foreign Secretary in July 1989 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in October. As Chancellor, he presented the 1990 budget. He became Prime Minister when he won the 1990 Conservative Party leadership election after Margaret Thatcher resigned during the early stages of the contest. In the early days of his premiership, he launched the Citizen’s Charter, replaced the unpopular Community Charge with the Council Tax, and negotiated the European Union’s Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. In 1992, his government was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on 16 September 1992, a day which came to be known as Black Wednesday. He continued to push on with reforming education, health and criminal justice, privatising British Rail and the coal industry. On the international stage, he deployed British troops to the Gulf War and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1995, he chose to resign as party leader in June 1995, challenging his critics to either back him or challenge him; he was duly challenged by John Redwood but was easily re-elected.
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