Talk:Back to Basics (campaign)

message: Although John Major did not make it specific in the actual speech, authorised Spin doctor Tim Collins later did privately at the Tory Conference with journalists. Hence the Daily Mail frontpage headline the next day ("Major's Moral Crusade") which was not challenged by Tories even when referenced many times in later months. Major only claimed that it wasn't about that several months later when hypocrisy over it had been repeatedly exposed enough to render any ongoing claim farcical - certainly once he tried to claim that, it killed the campaign entirely.
Generally it is a very poorly researched article overall - it was a full scale attempt by a British prime minister to turn back the Sexual Revolution in its entirety, and it failed spectacularly, such that no (Tory) PM has attempted anything like it since (and there have been several since 1993 of course). It essentially marked Total Victory for the Sexual Revolution in Britain.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.99.210.174 (talk) 20:28, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Back To Basics campaign was about personal sexual morality from the outset 

message: Ironically, in 2002 Major himself was revealed to have had an affair with former Conservative minister Edwina Currie.
Shouldn't that first word be "hypocritically"? I can't see what's ironic about publicly calling for one thing while privately doing the opposite. 86.137.235.226 (talk) 10:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Is the sentence really appropriate at all? --82.27.233.58 (talk) 11:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I echo this question, pointing out that the relationship had ended as it had begun, in the 1980s, before he was even Prime Minister.  If their relationship was going on WHEN he was Prime Minister, then he would have been in a 'hypocritical' position over his campaign.Cloptonson (talk) 09:40, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I also question the relevance of putting the Major-Currie affair at the chronological head of the list of scandals, as I am sure readers would have gone into this article expecting the scandals listed to be those which took place during the lifetime of his premiership from the proclamation of the campaign, and therefore potentially discrediting it.  The affair was not publicly announced during that period.Cloptonson (talk) 09:48, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

text: I would question putting the Currie-Major affair in with the list of scandals but I believe it should be mentioned on this page. It is both ironic and hypocritical that a man calling for a return to "family values" was himself a liar and a cheat. Gymnophoria (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

text: It should certainly be included as it might well have forced his resignation had it been revealed at the time.Paulturtle (talk) 05:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not ironic 

message: We probably ought to include all the press criticism of Lamont in the autumn of 1992, when they were trying to hound him out after Black Wednesday (they succeeded in May 1993, after the Newbury by-election). Most notably the completely invented nonsense about him calling at a Paddington newsagent to buy champagne and Raffles cigarettes, but also the stuff about his credit card arrears and his not having settled his hotel bill from the Tory Conference. If anyone wants a cite it's discussed in Major's memoirs, Lamont's memoirs and Seldon's biog of Major, but my copies of those literary masterpieces are all boxed up somewhere. I can't remember whether the stuff about "Miss Whiplash" operating out of a flat he owned ("an absolute hoot of a story" Major later called it in his memoirs) attracted much attention at the time (1991) or in the "Back To Basics" era a couple of years later, although I do remember that she later claimed to have serviced double-figured numbers of MPs of both parties.Paulturtle (talk) 05:13, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lamont 

message: If someone wants to cast around for suitable cites, we could consider adding (1) his public berating of an Israeli colonel on the occupied West Bank in 1988, which looked a bit bad when he was revealed to have Palestinian links a few years later and (2) the jeering headline "From Toe Job To No Job" after he was sacked.Paulturtle (talk) 05:38, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mellor