John Major and the B*stards: Rant Against the Tory Right Caught on Tape (1993) | Political History

On this day in 1993, prime minister John Major became the subject of controversy when a supposedly off-camera conversation with ITN’s Michael Brunson was monitored, transcribed, and leaked by BBC staff. Having won a vote of confidence from his party that day, the prime minister concluded an interview with Brunson before he began candidly discussing the internal politics of cabinet and the Conservative Party more broadly. Major vented his frustrations at the presence of rightwing Eurosceptics the parliamentary party, accusing it of “harking back to the Golden Age that never was”. He described complaints against him as a “poison” emanating largely from “the dispossessed and the never-possessed”. Therein, argued Major, lay his predicament as prime minister. Should he keep his Eurosceptic cabinet critics close and continue to face their opposition over Europe? Or let them resign, getting them out of the way, but risking them stirring opposition on the back benches? “You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble,” he told Brunson. “Do we want three more of the b*stards out there?”

The timing of the leak was unfortunate for Major. The vote of confidence seemed to have finally put to bed whisperings about his leadership as well as divides over Europe that had wracked the party since debates over the Maastricht Treaty the previous year. The bitterness of his words reopened wounds only recently healed.

The three ministers in question were almost certainly Michael Howard, Peter Lilley and Michael Portillo. For his part, Major has reflected on his words over the years. “Calling three of my colleagues, or a number of my colleagues, ‘b*stards' was absolutely unforgivable,” Major told journalists in 2013. “My only excuse is that it was true."

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