MAJOR: I’M SICK AND TIRED OF EU
How arch-Remainer once railed against Brussels rules when he was in Downing St
‘Devoid of common sense’
HE has become one of the most vocal opponents of Brexit.
But during his time in Downing Street, John Major fumed he was ‘sick and tired’ of EU rules.
Newly-declassified Cabinet Office files lay bare the former prime minister’s frustration at Brussels bureaucracy.
After being handed a summary of EU issues by one of his policy chiefs in April 1995, Sir John furiously scribbled: ‘Oh god. It goes on and on. I am getting pretty sick of all this.’
In a similar document from several months earlier, the Cabinet Office’s European secretariat consolidated issues of interest to France, which held the EU’s rotating presidency at the time. It detailed how Paris was keen to use a crisis in Algeria to drum up financial support for the Mediterranean region from EU countries including the UK.
‘Plenty of problems here,’ Sir John said in a handwritten note. ‘ Why not block help for the Med if they impose?’ He added: ‘I’m sick and tired of playing by the rules.’
When presented with a paper setting out prominent EU matters in December 1995, Sir John simply wrote ‘bad’ beside a section on extending the remit of the European Court of Justice.
While other files show his approach to be predominantly pro- EU, Sir John’s criticisms shine a light on his private frustrations while he was trying to lead a Tory party bitterly divided over Europe.
Those divisions boiled over in 1993, when the Tory leader called three eurosceptic ministers ‘bastards’. The comment, accidentally recorded after a television interview, is thought to have been directed at Michael Howard, Peter Lilley and Michael Portillo.
At the forefront of his frustrations with Brussels was the bloc’s final push to replace the UK’s imperial measures with the metric system in 1995.
Sir John raged at his officials when he was faced with a barrage of criticism and concern from the public over fears that distinctively British could government He be was measures eradicated. presented document such as suggesting the with pint a be that 2000 – 70p fined for a a pound’. British shouting up to £500 stall ‘Lovely after holder tomatoes the could year unit, Annotating Blackwell, Sir John the wrote: head paper ‘Dear of his by God!!’ policy Norman Elsewhere released by the in National the document, Archives in Kew, West London, he noted: ‘Heaven help us! What a mess.’
He also wrote that there should be ‘no prosecutions’ under the full introduction of the metric system.
In a letter to the president of the Board of Trade, he said: ‘This directive should not be enabled to confuse potential thrust He Sir the and added: John area. of elderly, damage to metrication, stated ‘This cause This irritate the is that real issue a government.’ potential trouble.’ the the which has general population had disaster the largely UK ‘clearly on been sensible’. a voluntary implemented basis, in was the make However, it clear he added: that we ‘ We do must not anticipate domestic prosecutions through over-legalistic interpretations devoid of common sense.’ The metric system was fully implemented across the EU in 1995 but exemptions were allowed to appease the UK – such as the use of miles on road signs. Europe abandoned any threat to force the UK into a full metrication in 2007. The National Archives files reveal how Sir John’s woes over metrication were foreseen by Margaret Thatcher in her later years in power.
In a handwritten note in December 1987 on a letter to Sir Geoffrey Howe, then the foreign secretary, she wrote: ‘We can’t phase out imperial units – there would be an enormous row. Media and Parliament would be united against a change.’
In fact, metrication began in Britain with the creation of the Metrication Board in 1969 – four years before the country joined what was then known as the Common Market.