Was John Major a feeble prime minister?

Answer 1

He is generally regarded to have been ineffectual, both in domestic and foreign affairs, although he DID see succesful British participation in the Gulf War of January 1991.

However, after this his reputation began to suffer. Despite having been an effective Chancellor under the last period of Margaret Thatcher's Premiership, he badly mishandled the economic crisis that hit Britain in Autumn 1992 known as 'Black Wednesday', when Britain had to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism due to not being able to maintain interest rates at the levels they were in Germany. Billions of pounds were wiped off UK shares within hours, Major's Chancellor Norman Lamont had to devalue the Pound Sterling, and Britain had to renegociate it's membership of European Monetary Union, for which Major was heckled by Euro-sceptics at the annual Conservtive Party Conference.

In all fairness, it wasn't entirely his fault- there was a GLOBAL recession in the early '90s which no single world leader was responsible for, and over which a number of Premiers lost their nation's elections, including US President George Bush Snr. But nonetheless, Major was not a strong leader, being indecisive, prevaricating and unable to stand up to strong opposition.

One of his worst acts was permitting the execution of the condemned Anglo-American prisoner Nicholas Ingram in 1995- Ingram was a US citizen but had an English mother and held dual nationality. He was sent to the electric chair for the murder of a grocery shop owner in Texas twelve years earlier- Major had the power to intervene and demand that the sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, but despite graphic protests in the press describing the appalling nature of electrical execution (it's neither painless NOR quick) he abandoned Ingram to his fate- it was one of the last executions to be carried out in the US using the electric chair before it was banned nationwide by the Supreme Court as 'cruel and unusual'.

Major was not a University graduate, and as such had done very well to get to be where he was, for which he deserves much credit (especially given the fact that he was taunted about it by the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, a loutish Welshman, and gave a memorably dignified response). But this can't take away from the fact that his leadership was distinguished only by ineptitude and lack of charismatic Government.