Major difference in approach
ONE of the advantages of being a grey man is that you look no older on your return.
When John Major came back this week with a devastating takedown of a hard Brexit, he looked magnificent.
When Tony Blair rings the bell on Brexit he looks and sounds like the elite politician voters gave a kicking too in the referendum.
Major’s tone, quiet authority and certainty cannot be matched, not by the present crop of politicians anyway. His speech was a nail gun stapling each Brexit fantasy to the flimsy chipboard carcass they are held up by.
Authenticity is highly rated in today’s counter politics but sincerity ought to be no less so.
We forget Major came from a modest, if exotic, music hall background. His parents faced bankruptcy and uncertainty more than once.
Major knows what it is like, as he pointed out, to have the prospect of no money at the end of the week.
Major knows what it is like, to use the phrase of the moment, to have skin in the game, to have a stake in the process you are involved in and an appreciation of the risk of losing it all.
The double-pigeon breasted posers and blond buffoons who think they know what is best for Britain will never be personally affected by Brexit. If Theresa May does not satisfy their demands, they will slay her and send a harder emissary to square off with Europe, caring nothing for the consequences.
That’s why they are so cavalier about risks to thousands of jobs, to the security of Northern Ireland and the future of generations to come.
Whatever happens will not touch them, though it will hurt you. They have no skin in the game.